Although Stefan Duscio works on enormous film sets around the world, the Cobram-born cinematographer didn't always think Hollywood was for him.
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“For a long time, film felt like a universe away from me,” he said.
But the approachable 38-year-old has proven himself wrong.
Mr Duscio has walked on red carpets around the world, filmed in remote parts of Asia and South America, and created captivating music videos for American pop-star Beyonce.
But as a cinematographer, he remains out of the limelight.
“A cinematographer is responsible for the visuals of a film,” he said.
“I make decisions about every shot and every scene, and how the visual language changes over the film.
“I’m responsible for choosing what camera and how it moves, and I’m responsible for lighting of the film.
“It involves a lot of conversations with directors about how they imagine the film could look, and I help translate that to a crew.
“There's a lot of team work, which I love.”
But Mr Duscio never dreamed this would be his path.
Growing up in Cobram, he loved comics, and wanted to work in that field.
“I grew up wanting to be a writer and illustrator for comic books,” Mr Duscio said.
“I was always obsessed with Saturday morning cartoons and Japanese animation.”
He attended Cobram Secondary College and credited an English communications project as the potential start to his fascination with movies.
“A lot of people saw this crazy mafia film I made with my Italian friends in high school, and it got distributed across half of the town on VHS,” Mr Duscio said.
“I thought it would be a fun way to tick the box, but perhaps it sparked an early film-making bug.”
Mr Duscio's parents weren't artists; his dad, Philip, worked at the RACV holiday centre, and his mum, Sue, at a doctors’ clinic.
But there was undoubtedly creativity in his bloodline, as his grandmother, Joan Ball, was a well-known artist in the region.
“My grandmother was a prolific painter in the region, but didn’t start until her 40s or 50s,” he said.
After graduating, Mr Duscio moved to Melbourne with his comic book dream still in mind, and studied media arts at RMIT.
“I learned a bit more about animation and film theory, and gravitated towards photography,” he said.
However, the film world was still a daunting prospect.
“It always felt so technical and you needed to be well studied and researched to be invited into that world,” Mr Duscio said.
But after a few chance encounters with world-class Australian cinematographers, Mr Duscio got his foot in the door.
He worked with the late Andrew Lesnie filming Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, and Greig Fraser, who shot Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Zero Dark Thirty, and has been working on the new Batman movie.
“They were highly successful, but also approachable,” Mr Duscio said.
“They talked it down and made it seem easy.
“If it weren’t for them, I might not have gotten the bug.”
Mr Duscio cut his teeth volunteering on student film sets in Melbourne, then began shooting commercials and music videos, and then moved into television programs.
He landed his first feature film at 27 years old.
It was an Australian romantic comedy called Any Questions for Ben?.
“I was shooting on film all around Melbourne with a really big crew,” Mr Duscio said.
“That was probably one of the big early breaks for me.”
From that point onward, Mr Duscio worked on a movie a year, did commercials on the side, and climbed up the ranks quickly.
One of his biggest career highlights so far, came earlier this year.
Mr Duscio got to walk a Hollywood red carpet for The Invisible Man — a blockbuster film starring American actress Elisabeth Moss which he filmed last year.
“Being in Hollywood, that was super-exciting,” he said.
“It was one of those out-of-body-experience moments.”
Now Mr Duscio is back home in inner-city Melbourne, enjoying quality time with his partner Sarah Kinkel and their children, 5-year-old Rafael and 3-year-old Elise, after a shoot in Canada was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic.
And while he often works far from home, taking jobs on the other side of the world has been getting harder.
“Sarah and I make the decision together a lot more carefully,” Mr Duscio said.
“Every decision is a lot more loaded.”
Mr Duscio hasn't forgotten his roots — he travels to Cobram at least twice a year to visit family and friends.
“It was a beautiful place to grow up, we were such free-range kids,” he said.
“We had so much imagination and so much time on our hands.
“A bunch of my friends still live there, and it’s great to catch up.”
Mr Duscio said people from Cobram seemed to be everywhere.
“I’m always bumping into people from Cobram all over the world,” he said.
“I feel like we punch above our weight — we're definitely overachievers.”
But maybe having reminders of home wherever he goes makes the glitz feel a little less intimidating.
Because after all these years, Mr Duscio is starting to feel like he belongs.
“I’m getting back to feeling at home.”