I was born in Taranto in the South of Italy.

In 1999, soon after getting a degree in Electronic Engineering at Università degli Studi di Pisa (Italy), I moved to Genoa (Italy) where I live now with my wife Sandra and my wonderful little daughter Adele.

I’ve been working since 2000 as an R&D SW and HW engineer for a telecommunication company formerly known as Marconi, acquired by Ericsson in 2006.

I’ve always been interested in movies and what’s behind the camera and I’ve always been fascinated by the quality of photography and camera movements you can find in great movies such as the ones by Hitchcock or Kubrick.

So when I was about to move to Genoa I decided to learn as much as I could about this world, while keeping my feet on the ground with my everyday job as an engineer.

I spent many nights trying to study and practicing 2D and 3D computer graphics, movie editing, movie directing, on-location sound recording, scene lightning and screenwriting.

In 2001 I was able to shoot my first short movie with a canon xm1 camera, a very expensive gift I received from my parents as a reward for my degree.

The short movie, casting my older brother Marco Schnabl and his then-girlfriend Alessandra, entered the Genoa Film Festival and was awarded with the Audience Award thanks to the large group of supporters I was able to put together!

It was a wonderful experience and I was almost convinced that I could make it through the world of filmmaking sometime one day or another. But soon I had to face the hard truth and put aside my ambitions: I can't be a film maker and have a full‑time day job at the same time.

So I tried to convince myself that if I was able to write down a screenplay I could have a chance to make movies for a living. I spent many nights thinking of something I could formalize in a movie plot, but despite my efforts I finally gave up.

I then came a across a guy who ran a little video production company and I spent a couple of years making 2d graphic animation for his commercials with the goal to put the extra money I earned in some movie gear like a tripod and a microphone.

In 2004 I was involved in filming a video for an Anthropology museum in Genoa. The task was overwhelming because I had to shoot it alone in the weekends with no budget in advance and in the end when the shooting was done I realized that the audio suffered from the noisy environment and was almost unusable. I spent countless nightly hours editing it to make it a barely watchable movie. In the end I was able to deliver the video but that experience was devastating.

So I decided to stop my off-work moviemaking activity and enjoy a more comfortable and plain life. But a friend of mine introduced me to a local acting company and I thought that studying as an actor could have helped me in the future to direct a film scene properly. So I began this very demanding experience and I went on stage several times.

In the meantime I met Alessandro D’Alessandro and Stefano Zino, two friends of mine who began working with me on some movie ideas. Alessandro is a very talented writer and producer, while Stefano is a photographer with unbelievable taste and technical skills.

In 2012 we finally decided to create a web series set in Genoa in the XVIII Century. The script was created by Alessandro and his wife; Stefano was the cinematographer and I was the director.

We managed to find a budget to shoot the prologue and we finally realized “Treasure of Gods Hidden War” 

That was a very fulfilling experience and I was involved in all the aspect of its making: from pre-production to the 3-day shooting, to the editing and grading phase. I even created most of the score…

Nevertheless the result was not up to the expectations and we were not able to shoot the following episodes due to lack of investors.

But that was a very positive learning experience.

With no new filming project foreseen, I came up with the idea to spend my spare time developing some movie gear that could help me improving the production of my yet to come filming experience.

So I began developing a wireless follow focus and a motorized dolly.

My last experience as a director has been the trailer of  “Whistling in the wind” in 2014. The actual short film has been directed by Alessandro D’Alessandro and is now in the last phases of post-production.