Aeneas

Aeneas is from the poem "The Aeneid" written by Virgil. Andy Armano created a cinematic series of images where I model as Aeneas during the Trojan War period who later traveled to Italy, ironic :) to become the ancestor of the Romans. Andy organized the project very well. He created a shot list where the whole story was broken down into segments. It made shooting the project very smooth and fluid as we went through each segment. We worked in a movie director and actor style where we focused on the segment at hand and talked about the story in relation to what we were trying to capture.

Andy gave me the shot list a few days ahead of the shoot so that I knew exactly what to expect. In some segments there was a need for a lot of intense emotions. So as I learned the shot list I decided to make notes on what to focus on when the time comes for me to express the emotion for the shot. Then the night before those specific segments I thought it would be good to focus on those feelings and bring out the emotions. To be honest it wasn't a pleasant exercise. I literally had to mentally put myself in past experiences that were painful and uncomfortable so that I could truly express the feelings that Aeneas went through. Ironic enough, I went through some similar experiences and it worked out in the sense that what I was focusing on was very close to the story. I did this exercise the night before so that it was easier to get in that state of mind faster when it was time to capture it. When it was actually time to shoot it, the exercise paid off and I was able to emotianally get there quicker in order to keep the shoot going. As the project went on I learned more and more that modeling is very similar to acting. Its acting without words. And the image looks the best when the expressions are real and true.*What is Amazing now is that since that exercise I am more able to get to those emotions quicker on demand at any time* It was well worth it, not only for the shots but for the experience and how it improved my "expressions inventory".

This project was such a learning experience and I am so grateful to Andy for allowing me to be apart of his series of Heros. I am very proud of our work and how it all looks. We truly brought out all our creativity for this project and made sacrifices to make every image radiate beauty, originality, and art. I cannot wait to share it with the world.


Andy is in the process of post production and organzing the images in conjunction with the story. Above is the cover of the project(the one in color), and the black and white is what some of the images will look like in the show, with the text from the poem on the side.