Italy – Blackmagic Design today announced that the third season of the Italian crime documentary series Nella Mente di Narciso was shot with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K digital film cameras while the offline editing, DI grading and finishing were completed in DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Returning to RaiPlay and Rai 2, the 20 episode series is hosted by criminologist and psychologist Roberta Bruzzone and explores some of Italy’s most notable crime cases through forensic analysis and dramatic visual reconstruction. Produced by La Casa Rossa Srl and directed by Serena Pasquali Lasagni, the new season was designed around a more stylized visual language intended to convey the psychological tension of each story without explicitly recreating violent events.
Set in the basement of a former factory converted into a multipurpose space, the series uses a carefully constructed environment of vintage televisions, worn wooden tables, exposed beams and aged walls to create an atmosphere suspended between reality and memory. One of the defining visual devices of the season is the use of dark silhouettes against hard backlight, a motif that appears throughout the series.
“It was a visual choice that allowed us to present the victims and perpetrators of each case without showing them explicitly,” said Lasagni. “We also assigned each case its own identifying color, building the narrative, set design and performances around that choice to create a symbolic and immersive visual language.”
Director of Photography Gianluca Braccieri used three PYXIS 6K cameras paired with Irix Cine and DZOFilm Vespid Prime lenses. “Having established a strong visual tone in earlier seasons, we wanted to raise the bar again,” he said. “The full frame sensor gave us a creamy, detail rich image with a softer, more cinematic feel.”
Braccieri worked with wide apertures, often shooting at up to T1.5, to create selective focus and isolate key details within the frame. A custom lighting setup built around high output LED fixtures, softer panel lights and LED tubes helped create a tense, atmospheric look, while Tiffen Black Pro-Mist FX filters were used to soften highlights and enhance the mood. Shooting at the camera’s second native ISO of 3200 also helped retain detail in dark, high contrast scenes.
The production combined sequence shots, low angle compositions and overhead camera moves to draw viewers deeper into the psychology of each case. For more complex moves, the camera was mounted on a slider and crane system with a DJI Ronin 2 head, allowing the team to maintain a compact and flexible setup on set.
Captured in Blackmagic RAW at 5:1 constant bitrate, the series was edited, graded and finished in DaVinci Resolve Studio. “Staying in the one tool throughout meant we eliminated the traditional conform phase typical of pipelines involving multiple applications, which was a huge time saver,” said Colorist Lorenzo Gabriele.
“In the grade, my goal was to bring consistency to the footage while preserving its character and reinforcing the series’ crime mood. I paid particular attention to skin tones throughout, using Resolve’s Qualifier to isolate faces by sampling pixels so I could maintain natural skin tones and avoid a digital effect, even in the presence of artificial lighting,” Gabriele concluded.
The third season of Nella Mente di Narciso is available now on RaiPlay and Rai 2.
