ASMR Meets Artisan: Slow Filmmaking at the Bianco Bianchi Workshop
In May 2025, I travelled to Florence to shoot a short film for the V&A — a meditative process film about the Bianco Bianchi family, masters of the nearly-forgotten art of scagliola. This was a rare opportunity to lean fully into slow filmmaking, pairing craft-focused visuals with ambient sound and a gentle voiceover to create a different kind of film for their online platform.
What is Scagliola?
Scagliola is a traditional Italian technique for imitating marble using selenite powder, natural glue, and pigments. The process dates back centuries but was nearly lost to time — until Bianco Bianchi, the family’s grandfather, revived it in the 1950s. Today, the craft lives on through his descendants, including Leonardo Bianchi, who narrates the film.
The film follows Leonardo and his family as they recreate a small panel from The Warwick Castle Table using the original scagliola process: mixing powdered selenite into an inky black impasto, carefully engraving the design, applying pigment by hand, and polishing it to a waxy, stone-like shine.
Leonardo’s voiceover carries the story, explaining the steps and offering personal insights.
Stripped-Back, Sound-First
With limited travel gear, I packed only my Canon C80, two lenses, and two lights. This forced a more pared-down, observational style — leaning into detail, repetition, and rhythm. This is where past experience came into play; I knew to talk with the maker before the work started to get a handle on what would happen and how long it would take. Once the work started I would move quickly and decisively to get the coverage I needed.
Sound was essential. I ran both a shotgun mic and a stereo microphone throughout, allowing us to capture the rich ASMR textures: scraping chisels, squelching plaster, sanding, drawing, pouring. Combined with Leonardo’s calm, thoughtful narration, the edit became more about feel than format.
Picture by Gianluca Zati
Craft as Character
What struck me most while filming was how deeply scagliola is woven into the identities of the people making it. This isn’t just decorative work — it’s an act of preservation, discipline, and generational memory.
Every step in the process requires a level of precision that borders on unforgiving. Engraving the black slab, for instance, offers no room for error. Leonardo explains:
“This is one of the few parts of the technique where you cannot fail. If you make an error, you cannot come back.”
That pressure lives in the hands — steady, repeatable movements shaped by years of muscle memory. Whether it’s his father Alessandro mixing the pigment paste, or his aunt Elisabetta carefully tracing out the design on paper, there’s a sense of care that can’t be rushed or approximated.
It’s also physically demanding. Leonardo jokes that he doesn’t need a gym membership — working with hammer and chisel gives him all the workout he needs. But beneath the humour is the truth: this kind of work leaves its mark on the body. Precision comes not only from technique, but from stamina and endurance.
And yet, there’s joy in the process. Leonardo describes how “turning something quite ugly into something beautiful” is what brings him satisfaction — not because it’s easy, but because it’s earned through a balance of control, knowledge, and trust in the material.
This isn’t performance. It’s practice — and over time, the practice becomes identity.
A Slower Pace of Museum Storytelling
This film was the V&A’s first real foray into slow TV — a style that trusts the viewer to engage at a different tempo. There’s no music, no cutaway interviews, no fast pace. Just the quiet accumulation of texture, motion, and voice.
It was a pleasure to make something that mirrors the process it documents — where every step is deliberate, and the goal is transformation, not spectacle.
“I haven’t been doing this all my life,” Leonardo says. “But I chose to become this… and I fell in love with it.”
If you're an institution or creative studio looking to tell rich, process-driven stories with care and atmosphere — whether in the arts, heritage, or design — I'd love to hear from you.
