Hearing Is Believing: MPAA’s TED2013 Master Class With Music Supervisor Randall Poster
Everyone knows ‘seeing is believing,’ but master music supervisor Randall Poster will tell you: what you hear in motion pictures is just as tantamount to the images whirring across the screen. Poster is one of the most sought after music supervisors in Hollywood (a sampling from his impressive oeuvre: Rushmore!, Velvet Goldmine, Boardwalk Empire) —and he brought his prowess to TED2013, where he hosted the dynamic MPAA sponsored-Master Class,...
The Last Exorcism Part II’s Ashley Bell Shares Another Dance With the Devil
When we last saw Nell Sweetzer she was in the middle of the woods at the top of an altar giving virgin birth to a demon baby while the reverend who tried to save her soul suffered a fate that would make William Peter Blatty proud. If it made fans cringe, well, that was the point. Nearly three years and $68 million in box-office receipts later (against a budget of $1.8mm), The Last Exorcism has an awkwardly named but hotly anticipated sequel,...
From Return of the Jedi to Jack the Giant Slayer, the Worlds of Production Designer Gavin Bocquet
Starting out as a draftsman on Return of the Jedi (1983), Gavin Bocquet’s career as a production designer coincided with the development and implementation of CGI technology into all spheres of the movie business. Bocquet was at the forefront of that revolution, working regularly for George Lucas, honing his craft on the TV show The Young Indiana Jones Adventures and the trilogy of Star Wars prequels. His career reflects the developing integration between practical production design and ever evolving CGI technology...
The Polymath: Chatting With John Ottman, Composer and Editor of Jack the Giant Slayer
Perhaps one of the most famous film sequences of the past thirty years was edited together in a living room using a splicer. By somebody who is also a composer. A composer who has gone on to score a slew of films (while somewhat begrudgingly continuing to edit, too), making him one of the few people in the film industry who is a professional at both of these demanding positions. John Ottman, the composer and editor on Warner Bros...
Lovesick: Comedian Natasha Leggero Knocks Our Socks Off in the Ben Stiller Produced Burning Love
Sixteen lovelorn bachelorettes bunk up in an L.A. mansion where they’ll compete for the heart of hunky firefighter Mark Orlando and, naturally, embark on some epic makeout sessions and drunken catfights along the way. If it sounds like the “plot” to just about every reality show out there, that’s because it is. But Burning Love, an instant cult classic that started as a Yahoo web series and began its TV run on E! Monday night,...
Can We Predict The Oscars? Social Media Reveals Who The Public’s Rooting For
They are known as quants (short for ‘quantitative analyst), and their undisputed supreme leader, at least in the public’s perception, is Nate Silver. You’ve heard of Silver, the man who went from relative obscurity before the 2008 presidential election to a household name thanks to his pinpoint accuracy predicting the last two presidential elections.
Quants are not just employed to help us figure out who the next Commander in Chief is going to be, of course. There are other races that capture the public’s interest and imagination—namely,...
Meet Lucy Alibar, Oscar Nominated Screenwriter of Beasts of the Southern Wild
It’s not often you hear an Oscar nominee recount her road to recognition as a rapid one, but that’s just how Lucy Alibar describes it. Turning her one-act play Juicy and Delicious into Beasts of the Southern Wild with co-writer and director Benh Zeitlin, the first-time screenwriter won her film a spot in more than twenty film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Deauville, and Cannes—the last of which she paid her own way to by selling everything from chocolate peanut butter cookies and homemade gelato to postcards and hugs on Indiegogo.com...
Celebrate The Other Oscar Nominees – You Know, The Ones Ryan Seacrest Likely Won’t Interview
Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director–these might be the most anticipated categories of the Oscars, but this year, let's celebrate the other half. After all, the year's best films wouldn't stand a chance without the genius nominees in less-publicized realms like Production Design, Cinematography, Makeup/Hairstyle, Sound Editing, and Visual Effects.
Here at The Credits, we love all parts of film, which is why we created this infographic to celebrate the many industry icons who are making big waves (but perhaps not big red carpet debuts) at this year's 85th Academy Awards...
An Evening With George Stevens Jr., Celebrating his Honorary Oscar and his Remarkable Career
George Stevens Jr. has lived and breathed films since he was a child. His father, the legendary director George Stevens, instilled in Steven fils a love of story. It was a teenage George Jr. who paced around his father’s bed one night, excitedly telling him the truncated story of a book he had read that his father should turn into a movie. That movie turned out to be the legendary western Shane (1953),...
Talking With Malik Bendjelloul, Director of Oscar Nominated Documentary Searching for Sugar Man
A surprise hit at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Best International Documentary, first time filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man opened last summer to strong critical reviews and robust commercial success. The story of singer-songwriter Rodriguez, from his late 1960s emergence from the streets of Detroit; his startling and strange success in South Africa during the waning days of Apartheid in the 70s and 80s;...
An Evening with Dror Moreh, Oscar Nominated Director of the Documentary The Gatekeepers
Dror Moreh’s stunning, sobering documentary The Gatekeepers is told from a remarkable point of view, or views, rather. Moreh managed to get six former directors of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, to speak to him for hours–on the record. The Shin Bet is, as the Los Angeles Times described the organization, "a combination of the CIA and the FBI.” The agency was created after the Six Day War of 1967,...
From Anna Karenina to Selina Kyle, a Look at Film’s Best Dressed Characters
Don’t ask a costume designer if clothes make the man. They’ll tell you—and most of us wouldn’t disagree—that some of the greatest roles—think Annie Hall or Richard Gere’s American gigolo—have been defined as much by their clothes as their lines.
Personal style can also be a narrative device in its own right. Think of last 2011's hit film Drive. The trappings of Ryan Gosling’s nameless anti-hero—his perforated leather driving gloves, indigo jeans and unforgettable scorpio-emblazoned jacket—helped fill the voids created by so much left unsaid...
The 2013 Sci-Tech Awards Honor 25 of Cinema’s Under-the-Radar Geniuses
Oscar night is rife with drama: red-carpet arrivals, teary-eyed acceptance speeches, shocking upsets, and the exultant moment when the team behind the Best Picture of the year rushes the stage. But two weeks before any of this occurs, there is a quieter event—the Academy’s Sci-Tech Awards—where many of the industry’s behind-the-scenes geniuses are recognized for their invaluable contributions to film.
They don’t deliver monologues, cry on command, or gain vast amounts of weight to play against type;...
A Q&A With A Good Day to Die Hard Cinematographer Jonathan Sela
At the ripe old age of 34, Jonathan Sela has turned his childhood passion of shooting films in Israel into a big time Hollywood career. As the cinematographer on A Good Day to Die Hard, Sela was reunited with director John Moore (they worked on The Omen and Max Payne together) to film the fifth installment of an action franchise that has spanned 25-years and grossed over a billion dollars worldwide...
How Would Lubitsch Do It? A Valentine’s Day Ode to the Classic Rom-Com
It’s Valentine’s Day, which means there’s a good chance you and your special someone might want to catch the latest lighthearted romantic comedy—but right now, there’s not much out that qualifies as such. Sure there is Silver Linings Playbook and Warm Bodies, two recent (and well executed) genre twists on the rom-com, but “light hearted” they are not. The former, up for 8 Academy Awards, is wonderful but dark, and the latter is witty and playful but also involves eating brains...
He Builds It, Audiences Come: A Q&A With A Good Day to Die Hard Production Designer Daniel Dorrance
Production designer Daniel Dorrance’s career has been something of a monster movie carnival. That’s not to say he’s worked exclusively on movies about monsters, but rather almost exclusively on giant, sprawling epics. He’s been responsible for the creation of massive sets and managing huge departments while answering to some of the heaviest of heavy weight directors. Those directors include Steven Spielberg (Hook, Saving Private Ryan), Francis Ford Coppola (Dracula), John Woo (Mission: Impossible II),...
Making his Mark: From Fake Tattoos to Ghastly Wounds, Meet Oscar Winning Makeup & SFX Guru Christien Tinsley
You may not know Christien Tinsley by name, but if you've seen American Horror Story, Sons of Anarchy, The Passion of the Christ or Gangster Squad, you've seen his work. A fan of fantasy and monster movies since he was a young boy growing up outside of Seattle, Tinsley is now a king in the biz: a well-regarded makeup and prosthetic artist and owner of Tinsley Studio and TinsleyTransfers,...
Look + Listen: The 2013 Grammys’ Film-Centric Nominees
While the film world braces for the onslaught of all-Oscars ephemera, we salute The Grammys for honoring one of the best unions in cinema: great movies and excellent music.
Please stop for a moment to ponder a time when movies were exclusively silent. No dialogue. No score. No foley. Just the thought makes us wince—and not because we can’t appreciate a good silent film once in a while. Rather, the realms of audio and visual seem to have been intrinsically born as one,...
Rock ‘N Roll Makeup Artistry: Getting to Know The Walking Dead’s Jake Garber
Jake Garber isn’t just an Oscar-nominated makeup artist; he’s a zombie guru who makes his living transforming ordinary people into Walkers on The Walking Dead with the critically acclaimed special effects crew, KNB EFX. A self-ascribed rock-n-roller, Garber has an acute predilection for crafting special effects makeup in sci-fi and horror titles, having had a hand in nearly every genre out there.
Donning his work uniform—a weathered leather jacket,...
We Are Living in a Star Wars Universe
The film world was riveted with the news that J.J. Abrams, perhaps the most logical successor to George Lucas for the Star Wars franchise, would direct Star Wars: Episode VII. As it’s been widely (and breathlessly) reported, Abrams has already successfully rebooted a space franchise with the release his 2009 Star Trek, which was a critical and commercial success.
Abrams admitted to Entertainment Weekly that he was more of Star Wars fan growing up...
