Emma Donoghue on Adapting Her Novel Room for the Big Screen
It’s still pretty rare — and usually unadvisable — for a novelist to adapt his/her book for the movie version. Sure, there have been notable exceptions over the years: Carrie Fisher did it for Postcards from the Edge and John Irving won an Oscar for The Cider House Rules, his first and only screenplay. But lately more novelists are defying convention and tackling the screen versions of their hit books.
Watch Kathleen Kennedy Promise Female Director for Star Wars
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, one of the driving forces behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, recently spoke at Fortune Magazine’s Powerful Women Summit. Among the topics she touched upon was how the majority of the people on her Star Wars executive team and in her story group are women. She also pointed out that of the two films already cast,
Writer/Director James Vanderbilt on Turning Recent History Into Truth
In Truth, opening Friday, writer and first time director James Vanderbilt, who wrote, among other scripts, the screenplay for Zodiac, has taken a tough, hard, look at the behind-the-scenes story of the CBS 60 Minutes II news staff that reported on President George W. Bush’s late 60’s and early 70’s National Guard duty in the run up to his re-election in 2004. It’s a compelling procedural which dramatizes the personal and professional costs of news reporting in the already fast paced TV news cycle at the historical moment when Internet blogging entered the political and cultural arena.
Director Cary Fukunaga on Filming the Haunting Beasts of No Nation
Although he's probably best known for directing the first season of True Detective, Cary Fukunaga is most likely to be found making movies on the front lines of contemporary conflicts. The California-bred Japanese-American filmmaker's first feature, Sin Nombre, chronicled the quest of Central American immigrants to reach the United States. His latest is Beasts of No Nation, set during a civil war in an unnamed West African country,
Composer Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL) on Black Mass
Dutch composer Tom Holkenborg, also known as Junkie XL, is one of the most prolific film composers working today, and one of the most impressively wide-ranging. He recently scored George Miller's wildly imaginative Mad Max: Fury Road, and will be the man behind the mixer on the highly anticipated films Deadpool and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. His most recent effort was Scott Cooper's gritty,
Watch How Filmmakers Use Color to Elicit Specific Emotions
Filmmakers are expert emotional manipulators. Nearly every decision made during the production of a film, from wardrobe to lighting to set design, is done to convey, and manipulate, emotions. The same is true during post production, when editors, sound designers and color graders shape the film into it’s final, and hopefully most moving, iteration.
When it comes to color grading, it’s probably the least understood and most subtlety effective means of making an audience feel a certain way.
NYFF: In Where to Invade Next Michael Moore Picks Flowers, Not Weeds
After a six year hiatus, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is back with a kind of travel journal – Where to Invade Next. Moore’s mission was to find the best ideas from each country he visited, claim them as his own, and bring them home to America to help solve some of our biggest problems. The film is not about pointing finger or placing certain nations on a pedestal – its purpose is to serve as idea factory and catalyst for change.
NYFF: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet & More Talk Steve Jobs
Last Saturday we attended the New York Film Festival’s (NYFF) powerful panel discussion on and screening of Steve Job in anticipation of the film’s wide release on October 23. Earlier today, as part of our coverage of the Festival, we focused on the insights of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, director Danny Boyle and author Walter Isaacson.
Today we are turning to the actors – their thoughts in their words.
Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin & Walter Isaacson Talk Steve Jobs at NYFF
This past weekend we attended a panel discussion of Steve Jobs at the 53rd New York Film Festival (NYFF). Steve Jobs, like The Social Network (about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), is a masterfully crafted story of one of the most influential men of the last fifty years. The film, directed by Academy Award winner Danny Boyle, written by Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote the The
Watch This Conceptual Video for Avengers: Age of Ultron End Credits
As any film lover knows, there's not a single moment of screen time that wasn't conceived of and laboriously created by scores of people. This is especially true for end credits, and it's extra especially true for Marvel films, where extra scenes and crucial information is often embedded. We've all seen the shawarma scene in the credits from 2012's The Avengers. Title sequences and end credits are the first and last thing you see in a film,
Costume Designer Kate Hawley Talks Crimson Peak
Costume Designer Kate Hawley knew what she was getting into when director Guillermo Del Toro hired her for his cheeky horror film Crimson Peak, which he described to her as just a little Victorian-era film. Having first worked with him on pre-production concept work when he was attached to direct The Hobbit series, Hawley and Del Toro connected over some of the 600 books she travels with,
The Legendary Roger Deakins: A Director’s Cinematographer
In 1995, cinematographer Roger Deakins — a man who had been working in the business for two decades — earned his first Oscar nomination for his work on the beloved Frank Darabont drama, The Shawshank Redemption. Now, twenty years later, Deakins has established himself as one of the most well-known and respected cinematographers in the world.
In the past two decades, he has been nominated for twelve Academy Awards for films as varied as Fargo,
Building Life on Mars With The Martian’s Production Designer Arthur Max
Arthur Max has worked with director Ridley Scott as the production designer on everything from Gladiator to Prometheus. He talks to The Credits about working closely with NASA to create the (largely) scientifically accurate world of The Martian and how his work, and Hollywood generally, have a surprising history of influencing America’s space agencies’ designs.
The Martian is a sci-fi movie,
Sicario Reunites Director Denis Villeneuve & Cinematographer Roger Deakins
In Sicario, director Denis Villenueve and cinematographer Roger Deakins have re-teamed after their successful first collaboration on Prisoners (2013). In that film, Villeneuve extended his explorations of morality and violence seen in his earlier Canadian films, but integrated them into conventions of the Hollywood child kidnapping sub-genre. The result was a disturbing and frightening movie that gave equal focus to the semi-abstract, atmospheric environment as it did to the stand out performances of its cast.
Filmmaker Gillian Armstrong on her Doc Women He’s Undressed
Gillian Armstrong, whose now-classic My Brilliant Career (1979) was the first Australian feature length film to be directed by a woman for 46 years, has worked both inside and outside of Hollywood her entire career. Her latest film merges both worlds: Women He’s Undressed(it comes out on October 10 in select cities), a documentary about fellow Australian Orry George Kelly, the three-time Oscar-winning costume designer (for An American in Paris,
Meet Tigris, the New The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 Character
Model-turned actress Eugenie Bondurant is a tall, striking beauty who appears in the final The Hunger Game: Mockingjay – Part 2 as a character named Tigris, a former Hunger Games champion who so identifies with tigers that she has had plastic surgery to make herself look more feline. Bondurant worked with a dance choreographer to help develop tiger-like movements and “just a rhythm for this character. I looked on YouTube and went to the zoo and did things like that but really the main thing is working with the choreographer because she helped tremendously.”
Steadicam Inventor Garrett Brown to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
In July of 2014, we ran a two-part interview with Steadicam® inventor Garrett Brown. It was just announced that Brown will receive the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award during the Television Academy’s 67th Engineering Emmy Awards. There are few individuals who have made a greater impact on film and TV that Brown. Brown was awarded an Oscar for Technical Achievement in 1978 for his invention.
Brown, a Philadelphia-based cinematographer, introduced the Steadicam in the early 1970s, a device that supports a handheld camera that allows the operator to film a subject in motion without the shaking that typically comes with handheld shots.
The Good Wife Set Decorator Beth Kushnick
Beth Kushnick has been a set decorator for approximately three decades. From the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, she worked on countless films including Jumanji, Private Parts and Frequency.
In the early part of this century, she moved predominantly to television where she worked on several programs — including 3 lbs., Law and Order: Trial by Jury and Canterbury’s Law —
Chatting With Mississippi Grind Filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are a filmmaking duo best known for 2006’s Half Nelson. They’re latest collaboration, Mississippi Grind, is a character driven story exploring addiction and redemption, starring Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn and Sienna Miller. The Credits talks to the pair about recapturing the aesthetic of seventies classics and cracking that elusive on-set chemistry.
What originally drew you to making this film in the south?
Found Foot-age: Finders Keepers Directors on Their Insane Doc
In Finder Keepers, filmmakers Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel chronicle one of the strangest feuds in the history of small-town America. John Wood, who lost his foot in a small-plane crash, lost it again when he couldn't pay the rent on the Maiden, N.C. storage unit where he'd stored the amputated, embalmed limb in a BBQ smoker. The contents were sold at auction to Shannon Whishnant, a local entrepreneur with more ambition than shame.
The two men disputed custody of the leg for years,
