Bridging Directing and Post-Production. How Matteo Saradini Elevates Storytelling with Color Grading Expertise.

Today we are with Matteo Saradini, an Italian director and producer whose expertise spans directing and post-production. His filmmaking journey began in Italy, where he directed projects such as Fear and Vengeance and Blood Chronicle, showcasing his storytelling and production skills.

Sharing Matteo’s journey is invaluable because it demonstrates how his dream and resilience as a filmmaker, despite shifting toward post-production and color grading, has driven significant professional growth. He has acquired new skills that now enhance his storytelling.

About Matteo Saradini

After graduating in 2004, Matteo produced, shot, and directed Blood Chronicle, a mockumentary inspired by Richard Brooks’s In Cold Blood, followed by Don’t Shoot Now, a highly controversial documentary about the Beretta gun factory in Northern Italy. He also worked on various projects, ranging from music videos to award-winning short films, including M. Hood and A Brush of Red, screened at the Cannes Film Market.

In 2013, he moved to the U.S., where he honed his skills in the DI Finishing department, focusing on Mastering, QC, Conform, and Color. Since then, Saradini has worked at Company 3 and Blumhouse Productions on over 70 titles, helping bring films to the big screen. His work includes major titles such as Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Happy Death Day, and Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man.

He is currently completing post-production on the swing dance-themed noir film Apollo Jump, set to be released later this year, and Informal Crooks, a neo-noir starring Bailey Coppola (Megalopolis).

Here’s the post we shared with Matteo Saradini, featuring his work on the film ‘Informal Crooks’.

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Un post condiviso da Filmmakers World 🎥🎬 (@filmmakersworld)

Today, Matteo Saradini continues to direct feature films, using his color grading expertise to enhance his storytelling—one of the reasons we are excited to feature this interview.

Can you share a specific moment when your technical background helped solve a creative problem on set?

There have been multiple moments in my career where I could see that my post-production background became an asset by being on schedule with filming and learning how to film what is essential on set, knowing the difficulties of sorting through hours and hours of similar takes for the editors.

In several cases, I was able to film scenes quickly because I knew that removing let’s say, a dolly track on the floor in post would be much easier than reframing and moving the entire camera setup.

How do your editing and color grading skills influence your approach to directing?

I am very involved creatively with every technical aspect of my movies and I usually start all my projects with a clear color treatment that I include in my pitch deck; many times characters are associated with certain colors so I plan the cinematography accordingly or the position of certain color lighting on set because I know how I can increase the effect during color grading.

Usually, I put a page with the color palette and the colors to avoid; this is a guide for set design and cinematography. Even in my latest project, I decided to boldly go with black and white, playing with contrast which was something I have never done and it opened a whole world during my color sessions: playing with contrast, and highlights without worrying about color tonality, made me focus more on the storytelling aspect of color grading.

You’ve been involved with prestigious companies like Company 3 and Blumhouse. How have these experiences shaped your career?

They left a sign for sure, Company 3 is the place where everybody wants to be, there is history there and great professionals and artists you can learn from, like Stephen Nakamura (Ridley Scott’s colorist). I still remember working on Ridley’s pilot for Raised by Wolves and being blown away by the process, and the organization.

Working for them made me appreciate having a structure also in post-production, from the bare minimum, organizing folders to learning how their color science department has such importance in creating the desired looks.

I applied a lot of things I learned there into my newer position at Blumhouse where I run the facility and their post department. It was the missing step for me, learning what happens before post-production, how projects are getting made, and how to smoothly run the post process, staying on budget, licensing music, and stock footage. Both these two companies have been an incredible source of information.

If you can answer… Is artificial intelligence entering or has it already entered post-production houses? If so, how is it influencing this world?

AI has entered minimally and it’s more the realm of independent movies, I personally use it for my pitch decks for my projects, sometimes to create temp music. In major productions, there are legal limitations due to the most recent SAG strikes.

Strikes and new regulations also affected the VFX world, where AI-generated images cannot be used openly. There is some use of AI for pre-viz (to visualize visual effects before they are created) and there are several software that implement AI for certain plugins, like Premiere, resolve, and pro tools. I see a future where regulations will be more relaxed but it is too soon to say the impact that AI will have in the long run.

Your work spans both European and North American markets. How has working in different regions influenced your filmmaking style?

My filmmaking style is a mixture of the American cinema I digested when I was in Italy growing up and of course European genre cinema. It is a talent to be able to balance both sensibilities, only the greatest were able to do so like Kubrick or Sergio Leone. I have been looking for my voice and found it in genre cinema, with a European twist.

I realized moving to the States that most American film fans know about Italian genre cinema of the 70s and 80s (maybe most Italians don’t) so my target is the American audience that understands the quirks of European genre cinema and I also want to open my filmmaking to a more straight European taste, nuanced, possibly based on books or IPs that are not necessarily too commercially feasible for the American market.

I have plans, but as I said every director dreams to be able to please the audience as well as critics and only a few were able to do so in history.

What has been the most rewarding project you’ve directed so far, and why?

I would say my latest project ‘Informal Crooks’ is the one I had most control over from a budget and schedule perspective. The time and money were limited but I feel I was able to find the right balance between time constraint and creativity.

A lot of the challenges could be overcome thanks to my longtime collaborator DOP Loreto Di Cesare, we work as a team on set and we are essentially problem-solvers.

It was very challenging because we only had 10 days to film but the experience I gathered from previous productions gave me the know-how to accomplish everything in time and with satisfactory results. From a post perspective, I would say seeing ‘Get Out’ becoming what it did, for sure left a mark on my experience and career.

What advice would you give to young filmmakers passionate about cinema?

Take your camera and film your movie, this is the advice I read years ago from some other director and I decided to follow it. With all the pain and glory that will ensue: you will suffer but the reward will be greater once you see what you were able to accomplish. Regardless, you will always be surprised by what your mind can achieve on set and in post. 

Looking ahead, what are Matteo Saradini’s goals as a filmmaker? Are there any dream projects you’re hoping to work on?

I currently have too many projects to wrap my head around. I established a collaboration with novelist Vincent Spasaro from Italy and we have a few projects lined up, mostly in the thriller/horror genre. I have a couple of IPs I have been owning the rights for and I am waiting for the right time in my career to pull the trigger.

The goal is always to be able to tell the story that you want to tell, in the way you think is most right. My main dream, of course, is to be able to make a movie in Italy, my homeland I left a long time ago but I always think about.

Which projects is Matteo Saradini currently working on?

I am currently working on the post-production of two movies that somehow can be linked together: ‘Apollo Jump’ and ‘Informal Crooks’. They both are noir films, a great passion of mine. For some reason, I thought they could complement each other in a perfect double-feature night.

‘Apollo Jump’ is a thriller set in the world of swing and jazz, very unusual to see, and it’s entirely shot on Catalina Island, famous for the jet set in the 30s and 40s and where the most important jazz bands in history played. It is a very colorful, vibrant comedic, and thrilling adventure about credit card debts, hired hitmen, and dance shots in a mixture of Super 16mm and Sony Venice.

‘Informal Crooks’ is instead a black-and-white, pure noir film, dealing with time manipulation, a heist, and closed spaces. Two very different looks that I wanted to experiment with, which will be released simultaneously.
Informal Crooks has premiered as the closing movie at the Beverly Hills Film Festival on April 5th, 2025.

Thank you fam for reading, if you wanna learn more about the work of Matteo Saradini, go check his Instagram page and, in case you missed our previous mag piece, go check it out!

Much love!
FilmmakersWorld Team

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