Every evening at six, behind the grey facades of Milan, the sciure come out. They have been doing aperitivo for sixty years, and they are better at it than you.

Case study: Fun is wasted on the young

Notice: Unsolicited concept. Not commissioned by, affiliated with or endorsed by Aperol or Campari Group. Aperol is a trademark of its owner.

The film

At six o’clock, a whole casa di ringhiera of sciure gets ready and turns the courtyard into a party, while the only young man in the building can’t stay awake.

It opens on grey Milan at 17:55: fog over the rooftops, a tram sliding past, wet cobbles, and four title cards. A MILANO / LE SCIURE / NON SONO MAI / STANCHE. In Milan, the sciure are never tired. Leo, twenty-six, drags himself home in a grey hoodie and collapses on the sofa. His phone is at 1%, and so is he.

At 18:00 a church bell rings. Seen from straight overhead, a door opens on each floor and a warm light comes on, so the iron balcony rings of the courtyard light up orange one by one, bottom to top. Each sciura looks into the lens from her doorway, deadpan. Lipstick, pearls, a cloud of hairspray lit from behind. Then the pour: ice, prosecco, and the first full orange of the film as the Aperol goes in.

The sciure walk the balcony rings in step, the portinaia unlocks the gate, string lights come on and the courtyard starts dancing. Leo tries to keep up and doesn’t. At two in the morning he’s asleep on a bench under his grandmother’s camel coat, and behind him the sciure are still dancing. Embroidered on the cushion under his head: Sun minga stracca. I’m not tired.

The reframe

Aperol has been the colour of aperitivo since 1919. The sciure are the people who have practised that ritual longest, so the series makes them its experts and heroes. Youth is the punchline, not the target audience.

When everything is optimised, filtered and performed, the scarce thing stops being youth or beauty. It becomes ease. Ritual. Time. The confidence of someone who doesn’t need you to watch. And who has that in abundance? People who stopped performing decades ago.

The formula

Every episode follows the same eight rules, so any episode can be written, storyboarded and generated from one page.

1. One real Milanese custom, inflated into a myth. The casa di ringhiera, the bull in the Galleria, the Prima della Scala, the fog. Nothing invented that a Milanese wouldn’t recognise.
2. A bilingual title-card opener that states the myth as fact: A MILANO / LE SCIURE / [do what] / [promise].
3. The roles are inverted. The young character is tired, grey and on his phone. The sciure are the ones with the energy, the plan and the stamina.
4. A grey city that turns orange. Each episode opens desaturated and cold. Orange enters with the first act of fun and spreads until it fills the frame.
5. A chorus of deadpan close-ups. Each sciura gets one look straight into the lens per episode, held a beat too long.
6. A ritual montage. The getting-ready (lipstick, pearls, hairspray) and the 3-2-1 spritz pour, cut tight to the beat in macro.
7. An impossible-architecture reveal. A familiar Milanese space is shown at a scale or angle that makes it magical, usually from straight overhead.
8. A Milanese dialect payoff, then the campaign line and the end card. No spoken dialogue anywhere else.

A grey city that turns orange

The look is a warm fable grammar moved to Milan: cooler, more architectural, with Aperol orange as the only saturated colour on screen. There’s no orange in the first quarter of an episode. It enters with the first act of fun (a lit window, a lipstick, the first pour) and spreads until the closing shots are fully warm.

The camera keeps to a few rules: symmetrical frontal framing with characters looking into the lens, straight-overhead shots of courtyards, tables and staircases, macro slow motion for the rituals, and a low dolly at the eye level of Ambrogio the dachshund, the series’ recurring point of view.

The cast

Four sciure, a portinaia, a dog and one tired young man appear in every episode. Cast for faces with real character, not for glamour.

• Sciura Maria Luisa, 78. The leader, who plans every evening like a military campaign. One raised eyebrow ends any argument.
• Sciura Ornella, 81. Former Scala ballet corps. Out-dances everyone and never breaks a sweat.
• Sciura Franca, 74. The practical one, who knows every tram route. Her handbag holds whatever the scene needs.
• Sciura Gisella, 86. The oldest, who appears to be asleep. Always the last one standing, and winks at camera.
• Signora Rina, the portinaia. Checks her watch, then unlocks everything at exactly 18:00.
• Ambrogio, a dachshund in a tartan coat. Goes from bored to delighted in every episode.
• Leo, 26, Maria Luisa’s grandson. Always tired, always the first to fall asleep.

Six episodes

• La Ringhiera. At six, the building’s sciure turn the courtyard into a party, and Leo falls asleep.
• El Tor. Tourists queue to spin badly on the bull mosaic in the Galleria. The sciure show them how, and it becomes a dance-off under the glass dome.
• La Prima. On the opening night at La Scala, the sciure skip the opera and run the real after-party on the theatre roof.
• La Scighera. Young people are lost in the Milanese fog. The sciure lead them home by memory, then out again.
• El Tram. A retired tram, parked overnight in the depot, becomes the sciure’s bar. Leo gets on at the wrong stop.
• I Lavandai. The sciure reclaim the Navigli from the trendy young crowd, at the old washing stones.

Each episode is one 2:00 hero film, one 0:30 cut and three 0:15 vertical cuts: the chorus close-ups, the ritual montage and the payoff.

Where the brand sits

Aperol is the series’ colour, not its plot: the fun comes from the sciure, and the orange shows where the fun is. It appears in three places only: as the orange arc in the grade, in the pour (the liquid and the glass, never the label), and on the end card as a real composited packshot.

The alcohol-marketing rules are built into the format. Everyone near a drink is and looks over 25. Drinking never causes the fun; the sciure are fun already, and nobody is shown drunk or drinking fast. Nobody drives: the tram episode takes place in a parked tram. Every end card carries a responsible-drinking line.

Making it with AI

A 2:00 episode is about 45–60 generated shots of 2–8 seconds each, cut together in an editor. The looks are locked before any motion: a face-lock plate and character sheet for every character, the environments in both the grey and the warm grade, then one key frame per shot, animated with a single camera move and a single action. The bottle is never generated. A real packshot goes in at post, because AI garbles labels.

Credits: Format inspired by the Thebasick films (‘A magìa d’e nonne, ‘O Spitale d’e Bambule).

Companion essay: Fun is wasted on the young · Next project: The Gardener →