Biography
After graduating the Center for the Media Arts in New York City, Natale got his start in the entertainment industry as an assistant audio post-production sound engineer for feature films and TV commercials. While he maintains an interest in sound design, Natale set his sights on his passion for film production, and went on to independently produce, write, direct and co-edit Un-Real (2004), a short, no-budget slasher about a delusional filmmaker who becomes so immersed in the notion of realism in cinema that he films himself murdering people for authenticity in his next horror opus. The film had a successful festival run, and sent Natale on the path to his true calling.
His next film, Lost Suburbia (2007), was part of a four director collaborative feature-length horror anthology based on local ghost stories from his suburban New York hometown. The crowd-sourced, micro-budget film had several sold out local screenings upon it's release, and won the Audience Choice Award at the Long Island Big Fish Film Festival in New York. In his segment, Misery Loves (2006), Natale tells the story of four young men who have similar designs on ending their lives.
Natale earned a European Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Directing at ÉICAR: The International Film School of Paris, where he was the first non-French student to take home the coveted Kodak Vision Award for Best Student Film for his short Cassie (2008), which would afford him a prize of 35mm film stock for his thesis project, The Lesson (2009), which won the Best Screenplay and Best Editing awards at the school the following year, plus the Sixième Prix at the 22nd Festival International du Court-Métrage in Sens, France. Both of these films would go on to screen at festivals around the world, and their controversial thematic elements caused exactly the kind of audience reaction Natale had hoped for.
The following years found Natale living between Paris and New York, writing scripts and making music videos, most notably the visceral and unsettling clip for the song "Truth It Is" by electronic duo Winkie, which won the Best Music Video Award at the Nevada Film Festival, and a short script he wrote for long-time friend and colleague, Sean King titled This Mortal Coil (2010), about a teenager's obsession with vampire culture that goes to dangerous limits, and won the Best Short Screenplay Award at the Macabre Faire Film Festival in New York.
