Why I Make Editorial Films — And Why I'll Never Stop
Nobody tells you how scared you are the first time.
You have the creative direction. You have the stylist beside you. You have a set, a subject, a location. On paper, everything is yours. In practice, you spend half the day wondering how far you can push it.
The first editorial is never what you hoped for. That's the truth nobody says out loud. But you do another one. And another. And somewhere along the way, the fear becomes fuel.
The difference nobody talks about
Commercial work is a contract. A client has an idea, an agency has sold it, a budget has been approved. By the time you arrive on set, the concept is fixed. Your job is to execute it brilliantly. The compensation is real. The craft is real. But the creative freedom has a ceiling, and everyone knows where it is.
Editorial work is something else entirely. There's no client waiting for deliverables. There's no agency brief. There's just you, a stylist, a model, a location — and the question of how far you're willing to go.
No fee. No ceiling.
The day it rained in Tuscany
My favorite film I've ever made started with a phone call.
A stylist called last minute — they were heading to central Tuscany, to the geothermal zones where the earth itself smokes. Volcanic vents. Steam rising from the ground like something out of the underworld. One outfit. Uncertain weather. Three hours by car.
I grabbed my gear and drove. It was raining the whole way.
When I arrived, the location was exactly what she'd described — and somehow more. Steam everywhere. The landscape raw and strange and ancient. We didn't have much time. The weather wasn't cooperating. In most productions, that's a crisis. For me, it was perfect.
That film became Oblivion. Standing there in the Tuscan steam, I felt it again — that thing that's hard to name but impossible to mistake. Dante's own circle of lust, in a landscape that had been waiting for this exact image.
I was happy. Completely, simply happy.
How I build a film
Before I ever set foot on a location, I hear it.
Music comes first. I start imagining a sound before the casting is done, before the look is built, sometimes before the location is chosen. Not one genre, not one style. Something that creates a feeling rather than names one.
The three elements I need: location, outfit, subject. Each one carries energy. My job is to find the version of each that gives the maximum. The one that creates friction, or tension, or something you can't quite explain but can definitely feel.
What I haven't done yet
The honest answer: further.
I want to work with people who know more than I do. Stylists with twenty years of instinct. Directors of photography who've built visual languages I haven't discovered yet. I believe deeply that you never stop learning.
I want the next Oblivion. And the one after that.
Why editorial and not just commercial
Two words: freedom and creativity.
The commercial work pays well and I do it with full professionalism. But the editorial work is where I remember who I am as a filmmaker. Where the only brief is the one I write myself.
That's not nothing. That's everything.
Nicolas VS is a photographer and film director based in Rome. Available worldwide for editorial commissions, fashion film direction, and visual storytelling.