Behind-the-Scenes of Rogue One on a Deserted Island in the Maldives
While a good chunk of any Star Wars film will be filmed at the colossal Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, there are still quite a few crucial set pieces that take place all across the world. For Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, that includes films shot in Jordan, Iceland, the Isle of Dogs, and, a deserted island in the Maldives.
On location in the Maldives.
Gorgeous Early Concept art for Arrival
If you haven't seen director Denis Villeneuve's brilliant sci-fi film Arrival yet, you're in for a treat. The short and sweet synopsis is this: Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors.
Costume Designer Madeline Fontaine on Outfitting the Inimitable Jackie Kennedy in Jackie
The sets, the tone, the colors — Jackie, which opens Friday, presents the early 1960’s and the tragic days just after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in precise, crisply re-created detail. With director Pablo Larraín’s at the film’s helm, Natalie Portman smolders and sears as the former First Lady, in an Oscar catnip performance.
She’s outfitted, unsurprisingly, in historically identical fashion to Jackie Kennedy, with a wardrobe that perfectly reflects the clothing the real Jackie made so iconic.
One DP Visualizes Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and now Iron Fist
He’s the go to cinematographer for Marvel's crop of Netflix shows, focusing on a new breed of super-flawed superheroes. First Manuel Billeter filmed private eye Jessica Jones in muted tones appropriate to her downbeat Hell's Kitchen environs. Then he showcased Harlem as backdrop for the bullet-proof ex-con with a mission in Luke Cage. And now, Billeter's serving as director of photographer for martial arts thriller Iron Fist,
Annie Awards: Zootopia & Kubo and the Two Strings Lead the Pack
Walt Disney Animation’s rollicking Zootopia was a critical and commercial success, and now the film is feeling the love from the International Animated Film Society—Zootopia leads all the feature nominees for the 44th annual Annie Awards with 11 nominations. (You can read our interview with Zootopia's animator Darrin Butters here, and the animation supervisors here.) Right behind Disney's packed, exuberant smash is Laika's moving,
Oscar Watch: Academy Award-Winning Composer Lightens Up for Secret Life of Pets
Nominated for eight Academy Awards over the past decade, French composer Alexandre Desplat has a gift for infusing somber period pieces incuding The Imitation Game, Philomena and The King's Speech with majestic scores. But Desplat also has a playful side. For animated hit The Secret Life of Pets, which opened in July, Desplat shifted gears from his Oscar-winning Grand Budapest Hotel music to score the New York City misadventures of runaway dog Max (voiced by Louis C.K.) and rebel pet leader Snowball the Bunny (Kevin Hart).
Composer Joby Talbot on the Many Musical Influences in Sing
With stars like Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, and Scarlett Johansson lending their voices, Sing is sure to be the must see family movie this Christmas (the official release date is December 21). The anthropomorphic animation about following your dreams features music by composer Joby Talbot. In a movie about a singing competition, the music becomes a character all its own. Talbot’s task was to weave together a score amidst a story featuring over 100 songs made popular by artists from Aerosmith to Sir Mix-A-Lot.
From Storyboard to Screen: Behind the Scenes of Disney’s Moana
Disney is in on the joke about “princess movies” in the new animated feature Moana (in theaters Nov. 23). In the film, a road trip by sea in which a young Polynesian woman named Moana leaves her island home to find the demi-god Maui and return a lost object to its right home, there is more than one joke about the title character’s princess credentials.
The Credits recently sat down with Hyrum Osmond,
Composer Michael Levine on Scoring Landfill Harmonic
Few people would have the creative vision to construct an entire orchestra from a mountain of trash, but such is the story of the Paraguayan town featured in Landfill Harmonic. Nearly ten years ago, the community came together to build instruments from the garbage flooding their home. The recycled music makers gave local students an opportunity to learn to play symphonies and propelled them to international acclaim.
The story was so transcendent that it attracted the attention of eight-time ASCAP award winner,
Sonic Soul: Talking to Manchester by the Sea’s Sound Designer
What does a sound editor on a film do? While most people could reasonably explain the role of editor, costume designer or cinematographer (and think they know what a producer does—often they don't), it's a safe bet that your average movie lover would have a tough job explaining the role of sound editor. "The way a movie sounds, it can be elusive even to the director," says seasoned sound designer and supervising sound editor Jacob Ribicoff. With a ton of great films under his belt,
Production Designer Stuart Craig on Fantastic Beasts and How They Came to Be
In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Hogwarts graduate Newt (Eddie Redmayne) crashes his way through New York in 1926, fresh off a steamer ship from London, in hot pursuit of his various ill-trained magical beasts, whom he just can’t seem to keep trapped in a suitcase. After the case gets accidentally swapped with other nondescript brown luggage, Newt’s predicament grows, given that only one of the bags contains an entire fantastic beast-sanctuary.
Production Designer Ruth De Jong Talks Manchester by the Sea
When we caught up with production designer Ruth De Jong, she was on a ranch, outside of Atlanta, in the middle of a project. Considering her golden touch (De Jong has worked with Paul Thomas Anderson, Terrence Malick, and most recently Kenneth Lonergan), I briefly wondered which visionary she was working with now. She was actually working on a Super Bowl commerical.
De Jong's career has been a study in good taste. She's worked on multiple projects with Anderson,
Manchester by the Sea‘s Writer/Director Kenneth Lonergan—Part 2
In Part 2 of an interview with writer/director Kenneth Lonergan about his latest release, Manchester by the Sea, which opens Friday, the New York City native speaks about his penchant for acting in his own films, his choice of classical music to accompany a drama like Manchester by the Sea that is set in a working-class milieu and how the current political climate might affect his artistic vision in the future –
Talking to Manchester by the Sea‘s Writer/Director Kenneth Lonergan—Part 1
At 54, Kenneth Lonergan has experienced the highs and lows of the movie biz. The filmmaker has basked in the glow of having his directorial debut, 2000’s You Can Count on Me, bestowed with rave reviews and two Academy Award nominations – one for his screenplay and the other for his leading lady, Laura Linney. And he has dealt with the frustration when the running time of his more ambitious sophomore effort,
Costume Designer Lynn Falconer on her Vintage Designs in Ouija: Origin of Evil
Ouija: Origin of Evil taps into one of the most iconic eras for horror costumes, the 1960s. Mia Farrow’s blue nightgown in Rosemary’s Baby or Tippi Hedren’s green skirt suit in The Birds have become synonymous with terror. Costume designer Lynn Falconer mastered the era creating gorgeous vintage looks that reach the sinister standards of our favorite horror classics. We spoke with Lynn about mining estate sales for inspiration,
Loving‘s Breakout Star Ruth Negga on the Role of a Lifetime
If, as expected, Ruth Negga, the breakout star of Loving, snags a best actress nomination, it will likely be met in some corners by furrowed brows and the question, ‘Who’s Ruth Negga?’
They’ll know soon enough. Predominantly a British stage actress who’s played Ophelia at the National Theatre and legendary singer Shirley Bassey in the 2011 BBC biopic Shirley, Negga was born in Addis Ababa to an Irish mother and an Ethiopian father and lived there until she was four before being raised in Limerick and London.
Oscar Watch: Designing the Look of Loving With the DP, Costumer & Production Designer
In telling the true story of a white man and his black wife, director Jeff Nichols nails the late fifties period with uncanny precision. His Oscar-buzzed Loving (opening wide Nov. 11) begins in 1958 when police arrest Richard and Mildred Loving at their own Virginia home in the middle of the night and throw them in jail for being a mixed race couple. Banished from Virginia, Richard and Mildred (played with slow-burn intensity by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga) decide to fight back and eventually win a landmark 1967 Supreme Court case declaring all anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
Hair & Makeup: Meet the People who Transform SNL Stars
Saturday Night Live is an institution, and that's always felt particularly keenly during presidential election years. This season, of course, we've witnessed Kate McKinnon and Alec Baldwin transform into Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Their performances have been, in short, hysterical. The nuances of their impersonations, from McKinnon's compassionate take on Hillary's struggles with connecting with audiences, and Baldwin's spot-on physical incarnation of Trump (the pursed lips,
How Arrival’s Production Designer Created an Alien Language
Oscar-nominated production designer Patrice Vermette was tasked with creating an alien language for the new movie Arrival — and although he started by studying the languages used in other films about alien invasion, he ended up “reverse engineering” the language that Amy Adams uses to communicate with the invaders in the new film (in theaters Nov. 10). Vermette took a feelings-first approach to crafting the alien language by thinking about what it said to the audience without words.
Oscar Watch: La La Land‘s Director Damien Chazelle & Star Emma Stone on Their Moving Musical
Oscar-nominated writer/director Damien Chazelle set out to make a genre film with La La Land. Inspired by classic song-and-dance movies such as Singin’ in the Rain and Swing Time, he wanted to create an old-fashioned musical but “keep it grounded” in realism and contemporary Los Angeles.
“It was about trying to use real locations, use a lot of real spaces,
