How to Shoot Stunts & Action on a Budget

The stunts in the recent Liam Neeson action flick Non-Stop were breathtaking, thanks to the work of stunt coordinator (and Neeson body double) Mark Vanselow. In the upcoming Divergent, fight coordinator J.J. Perry helped turned Shailene Woodley into a credible action heroine. There will be more wild sequences on display in Noah, Darren Aronofsky's very singular take on the Biblical story in which he had his stars,

The Grand Budapest Hotel Production Designer Adam Stockhausen Goes Handmade

Seven years ago, a young art director was given an appropriately quirky assignment on the set of The Darjeeling Limited: design the dishes for the dining cabin of Wes Anderson’s India-traversing train. It took “an awful lot of versions” to win over the discerning director, but Adam Stockhausen must have made a good impression—since then, he has served as production designer on Anderson’s last two films, Moonrise Kingdom and The 

Getting Schooled by Anna Deavere Smith on her HBO Documentary

Playwright, actress, and professor Anna Deavere Smith does not like to be precious about the work she has done with her students over the years. She’s bracingly honest and laid back about the time and effort she’s devoted to helping young people who dream of carving out a career like the one she has had. “It’s not so noble as sharing the craft,” she said when asked why she continues to teach well into a successful career as varied as it is impressive.

Re-Drawing History With the Storyboard Artists of Mr. Peabody & Sherman

They rose to prominence more than half a century ago, a genius talking beagle who invented a time machine (plus won a Nobel prize and two Olympic medals) and the dorky little boy he adopted. As the whimsical world travelers who showed up in the middle of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Mr. Peabody and Sherman brought a generation of cartoon audiences to the farthest reaches of history thanks to their WABAC machine.

SXSW 2014: Home‘s Ronen Landa, the Horror Film Composer Scared of Horror

Composer Ronen Landa first came to SXSW in 2005. He was here with a documentary called The Dreams of Sparrows, a remarkable film shot in Iraq at the outset of the war. First time director Haydar Daffar collaborated with a team of Iraqi directors to capture life in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004. Landa had worked with the film’s producer, Aaron Raskin, who brought him in to compose.

SXSW 2014: Richard Linklater’s Epic, Masterful Boyhood

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was in pre-production for roughly a year. The film took 39 days to shoot, and then two more years for post-production. It premiered at Sundance in mid January, played at the Berlin International Film Festival in early February (where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director), and then played at the Paramount Theater here in Austin on Sunday morning, March 10, at 10:30 a.m. Linklater, a legend here in Austin,

SXSW 2014: Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers on Grand Jury Prize-Winning Fort Tilden

How do you write and shoot feature in a few months, cut it, have it accepted by a major film festival and then have it win that festival's major award? Writer/directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers would be the perfect speakers on a panel here at SXSW on this very subject, considering as recently as last May, their Grand Jury Prize Winning feature Fort Tilden wasn’t even a thought in their mind.

SXSW 2014: Catherine Gund’s Born to Fly Tracks Elizabeth Streb’s Genius

Dancers strut, cling, and leap from a giant swinging metal contraption. It looks like a massive mouse wheel, something you might see in a Cirque du Soleil performance or perhaps the circus. Despite the padding on the floor, the thing looks medieval and very, very dangerous, but the dancers atop, inside and below appear calm and in control. During one of the wheel’s rotations, a young man holding onto one of the bars appears to lose his grip,

SXSW 2014: Jason Bateman’s Directorial Debut Bad Words

There was something perfect about watching Jason Bateman’s Bad Words on opening night here at SXSW. There are no official press screenings here; your press badge allows you access to any film, but you take in the movie with the general public as well. The vibe is different from Sundance, which befits the laid back Austin setting. Screenings here differ from screenings at Sundance in another, significant way—one can enjoy a drink while watching a film.

SXSW 2014: Things to See & Hear

Now that SXSW is underway and The Credits lounge is open for business, let’s take a quick glance around the festival at some of the things going on over the next nine days. Obviously this is but a tiny little snapshot—SXSW is a festival with so much going on it’s a little like a moving Louvre, you can’t possibly hope to see everything in your allotted time, so you have to pick and choose your spots.

Building a Plane From Scratch With the Production Designer of Non-Stop

Have you ever walked through a missile silo? What about into the Oval Office or onto an alien planet? We didn’t think so. But chances are each of the millions of moviegoers who have flocked to see Non-Stop know what the inside of an airplane looks like. And since he was charged with creating an interior that looked totally realistic and doubled as a functional movie set, that posed a pretty big challenge for production designer Alec Hammond.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies with Non-Stop Stunt Coordinator Mark Vanselow

Using an airport bathroom can have the degree of difficulty of a gymnastics floor routine. But when your job is United States air marshal and there’s a mystery man on your plane threatening to kill one passenger every 20 minutes, taking care of business means means squeezing into the stall to swap punches with a bad guy like two angry sardines in a can. And though star Liam Neeson, playing air marshal Bill Marks, no doubt took some licks during filming,

Post Oscars Wrap-Up: Our Social Awards Season App Delivers the Goods

The things that we could agree would happen, like Ellen hosting with her easy going charm (has there ever been a more relaxed, amiable host?) and Gravity mopping up a slew of technical awards. And how did our Social Awards Season App, the DataViz, fare in predicting the winners?  Let’s have a look.

To access the DataViz and see for yourself, click here. For our brief synopsis, see below:

Best picture

Predicted Correctly?

Our Social Awards Season App Gears up for the Oscars

We’re a week away from the biggest night in Hollywood, and our DataViz, a collaboration between The Credits and global social analytics and monitoring firm Brandwatch, a truly one-of-a-kind Social Awards App, is proving its mettle for the second year in a row. The DataViz tracked, crunched and analyzed how critics and the public predicted who would the various categories in the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Golden Globes, Producers Guild of American Awards and Directors Guild of America Awards,

Looking at the Legendary Career of Oscar Nominated Visionary Hayao Miyazaki

This Friday marks the nationwide release of legendary Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s eleventh feature film, The Wind Rises. With this picture, Miyazaki is nominated for his third Oscar for best-animated feature film. He was previously nominated in this category in 2006 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and he won in 2003 for Spirited Away, the first anime movie to win in that category.

Honorary Academy Award Winner D.A. Pennebaker on the Award’s Beguiling Charm

When the late, great Peter O’Toole learned he was to receive an honorary Academy Award in 2002, his initial reaction caught Hollywood by surprise. The Irish-born wag, then 70, dashed off a letter to the Academy asking them to hold off on the honor until he was 80. “I’m still in the game and might win the bugger outright,” wrote O’Toole, who was counting on a future shot at winning a competitive Oscar after being shutout seven times.

In Their Words: Some of This Year’s Oscar Nominees on Their Craft, Part II

Yesterday we took a look at four filmmakers whose work has earned them an Oscar nomination (in Gravity cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's case, his sixth), sharing with you some of their thoughts on their craft. In one of the most anticipated Oscars in recent memory, it's refreshing to step back and reflect on exactly how these talented individuals created such memorable moments in such a fantastic year for film.

In Their Words: Some of This Year’s Oscar Nominees on Their Craft, Part I

One of the strongest years in recent cinema history will officially come to a close this Sunday at the 86th annual Academy Awards. What just about everyone agrees on is that, with a few exceptions (most people seem fairly convinced Cate Blanchett has Best Actress locked up, for example), it’s anyone’s guess (including our social awards season app, the DataViz—but it's doing just a little bit more than guessing) who might take home Oscar.

Olympic Stars Who Made it in Hollywood…and 3 Who Should

Like Hollywood, the Olympics has its A-listers. Your Shaun Whites, your Bode Millers, your Apolo Ohnos and Lindsey Vonns. These are the high wattage stars of the Olympics who have returned multiple times (with varying degrees of success) intent on capturing another medal. Then there are the promising young athletes trying their hardest to ascend to the podium, looking for their one chance to be on top. Full of comeback stories,

Georgian Filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili on her Powerful Debut In Bloom

The debut feature from Georgian filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili, In Bloom, is a powerful coming-of-age story that takes place in in 1992, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shot in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, it’s about two 14 year-olds, Eka (Lika Babluani) and her best friend Natia (Mariam Bokeria) whose ordinary lives—school, friends, domestic strife—are set against the sudden changes to the social order of the country as well as a backdrop of war in the Abkhazia region.