“Stranger Things 4” Music Editor Lena Glikson on Cutting Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”
From the get-go, Netflix hit Stranger Things has excelled in the art and craft of needle drops. Encompassing eighties classics from David Bowie’s “Heroes” in Season One to “Everlasting Love” in Season Three, song choices curated by three-time Emmy nominated music supervisor Nora Felder have consistently amplified the characters’ emotions to uncanny effect.
But nothing in Stranger Things’ previous hit list prepared audiences for this summer’s zeitgeist-smashing anthem “Running Up That Hill.”
“Elvis” Editors Jonathan Redmond & Matt Villa on Keeping the King’s Story Rocking Along
The broad strokes of Elvis’s (Austin Butler) life are all there in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis — the precarious childhood, Army stint, loss of his beloved mother, marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), glittering Las Vegas residency masking a perilous personal descent. But this isn’t a biopic. Rather, the director’s first feature since 2013’s The Great Gatsby is also an electrifying tale of rags to riches to ruin, this time set to a compelling score mixing the best of the King’s musical catalog with unexpected contemporary bops.
“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” Production Designer Liz Toonkel Appreciates the Little Things
If you closed your eyes, could you picture the hardware on your kitchen cabinets? The knobs on your bathroom sink? When is the last time you stopped to notice your surroundings? Marcel the Shell (Jenny Slate) appreciates all the small things because to him, they’re very, very big.
The star of the viral videos, created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp, is used to oversized adventures, but he is finally making his big screen debut.
“Elvis” Sound Guru Wayne Pashley on the Sonic Glue Holding Baz Luhrmann’s Biopic Together
Bursting through in the golden age of television, Elvis Presley had stunning good looks and taboo-shattering dance moves that instantly attracted legions of female fans, but his legacy rests in that sound. His voice was inimitable with the pain and power he had to share to survive.
Wayne Pashley, the re-recording mixer, sound designer, and supervising sound editor of Baz Luhrmann’s epic biopic Elvis bravely took up the mantle of resurrecting one of the most famous voices ever recorded.
“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” Director Dean Fleischer Camp on His Big-Hearted Feature
Director Dean Fleischer Camp has turned Marcel the Shell, the itty bitty seashell turned YouTube sensation that he created with actress/comic Jenny Slate, into a feature film. But he and Slate, who provides the distinctive voice for the philosophical, one-eyed, one-inch mollusk, knew it had to be on their terms.
“I basically make movies to try to trick my dad into crying in public,” says Fleischer Camp who developed the script with Slate and Nick Paley.
How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight
Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career, Weingarten’s mixed on Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic Dunkirk, traveled to another dimension in Interstellar, captured the spirit of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, and tracked the drama behind The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In director Joseph Kosinski’s world-beating Top Gun: Maverick,
“Winning Time” Cinematographer Todd Banhazl on Capturing the Flow State
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty sounded, on paper, like a no-brainer for HBO. Based on Jeff Pearlman’s book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” the source material had every ingredient you’d want for a prestige series. It had larger-than-life figures in Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar (as well as their foils and foes around the NBA), it’s set largely in Los Angeles in the late 70s and early 80s (gaudy,
“Elvis” Composer Elliott Wheeler on The King’s Music & That Doja Cat Collab
The dazzling visuals of director Baz Luhrmann’s spine-tingling biopic of Elvis, which were beautifully shot by cinematographer Mandy Walker, undoubtedly hold your attention. But it’s the rhythmic melodies of the soundscape that flutters the soul. Elvis is made to be seen (and heard) in the theater.
The journey explores the relationship between the legendary artist and his manager, a former carny named Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who sees the potential profit in Elvis’s musical gift.
“The Black Phone” Co-Writer/Director Scott Derrickson & Co-Writer C. Robert Cargill Wring Our Nerves
The always versatile Ethan Hawke first teamed with writer-director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill on their 2012 horror film Sinister, in which he played a good guy protecting his family. In Derrickson and Cargill’s new horror movie The Black Phone (opening Friday), Hawke plays a very bad man. Wearing a mask and preying on children, Hawke portrays “The Grabber,” who’s partially based on serial killer John Wayne Gacy,
“Moon Knight” Cinematographer Gregory Middleton on Creating Marvel’s Head Trip
Moon Knight cinematographer Gregory Middleton came to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with considerable world-building experience. He helmed six episodes of HBO’s colossal fantasy series Game of Thrones, as well as three episodes of Damon Lindelof’s fantastic adaptation of Watchmen (also for HBO), so it would be unfair to say he was daunted to take on Marvel’s vaunted, ever-expanding cinematic universe.
Yet Middleton had his work cut out for him with Moon Knight,
“Father of the Bride” Director Gaz Alazraki on Re-Tooling the Story as Cuban-American Comedy
Spencer Tracy charmed moviegoers as the original Father of the Bride in 1950. Then Steve Martin reprised the wedding-overwhelmed dad in Nancy Meyer’s 1991 romantic comedy of the same name. Now, Andy García headlines a new reboot playing an old-fashioned Cuban-American patriarch hilariously bewildered by complications that arise when his very modern daughter announces she’s getting married.
Father of the Bride (opening Friday in theaters and on HBO Max),
How the “Stranger Things” Sound Team Creeps You Out
When Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven experiences a flashback a couple of hours into Stranger Things‘ fourth season, sound effects tell the mutant teenager’s nightmarish origins story in a nutshell: thunder, whooshing, whistles, choral voices, more thunder, pistol shots, birds screeching, rumbling, slithering sounds, squishes and thumps flood her head with 50 seconds worth of precision-orchestrated mayhem. In Matt and Ross Duffer’s supernatural thriller, sound effects, melded with Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein‘s throbbing synthesizer music,
“Maid” & “Under the Banner of Heaven” Production Designer Renee Read on Building Trust
Production designer Renee Read is responsible for the look of two of TV’s most successful adaptations over the past two years. For Maid, Read was tasked with helping showrunner Molly Metzler Smith and the rest of the crew adapt author Stephanie Land’s 2019 best-selling memoir “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.” The series is centered on Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young woman relying on the Byzantine social services complex to get her and her daughter on their feet.
“Succession” Composer Nicholas Britell Goes Behind Season 3’s Score
Rarely has awful behavior been accompanied by such beautiful music, but the fictitious scoundrels of Succession have now spent three seasons buoyed by brooding scores from pianist-composer Nicholas Britell. A three-time Oscar nominee, Britell honed his skills at Juilliard and Harvard before becoming the go-to composer for directors Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave).
Vietnam Filmmakers in Focus: In Conversation With Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan
The Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) was established in July 2019 as a national film commission, and its top priority was fostering international collaborations.
With that in mind, we talk to VFDA chairperson Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan, the former director of Vietnam’s Cinema Department and former head of the organizing committee of the Hanoi International Film Festival (HANIFF). She is also a film critic and an author and co-author of seven books, including “
“Barry” Cinematographer Carl Herse on Lighting Season 3’s Dark Path
Barry cinematographer Carl Herse has his fingerprints all of season three in what is turning out to be a reckoning for the titular hitman (played by co-creator/writer/director Bill Hader). Herse joined the Barry team and lensed five of season three’s 8 episodes (1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) in what has turned out to be the darkest stretch of Barry’s decidedly pitch black journey thus far.
Citing influences as wide-ranging as Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood,
Breaking Down the Astonishing Technology Behind Ava DuVernay’s “One Perfect Shot”
The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What did their directors do to make them tick?
In One Perfect Shot,
“Succession” Director Mark Mylod on Season 3 & TV’s Most Irresistibly Twisted Family
Succession director Mark Mylod knows his way around family drama. Mylod’s been with the series since the first season, directing the second episode (the pilot was helmed by co-creator Adam McKay), and is now the most tenured Succession director of them all, with 12 episodes to his credit. He’s also something of an expert when it comes to palace intrigue, considering he’s a Game of Thrones alum, yet he admits that Succession‘s highly-anticipated and ultimately critically acclaimed third season presented some unique challenges.
“Jurassic World: Dominion” Co-Writer Emily Carmichael on Crafting the Most Dino-Packed Epic of Them All
Five billion dollars into the dinosaur cinematic universe launched 19 years ago by Steven Spielberg, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum, the Jurassic franchise comes to an end — at least for now — with the Friday [June 10] release of Jurassic World: Dominion. Sixth in the series of popcorn spectacles famed for VFX recreations of prehistoric “apex predators,” Dominion sees legacy characters from the original trilogy joining forces with Jurassic World stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt on a quest to save the world from ecological catastrophe.
“Ozark” Director Amanda Marsalis on Ruth, Wendy, and Bittersweet Goodbyes
When Ozark came to its bloody, sin-soaked end this year, you might have found yourself, Marty Byrd (Jason Bateman) style, sitting there quietly for a moment to do some accounting. The Byrd family had, against all odds, survived the chaos they’d been plunged into four seasons back when Marty’s business partner in Chicago made the mistake of cheating the wrong client. That put Marty in a life-or-death situation that would carry on for over a year—make matters right by laundering money for a powerful Mexican cartel,
