“The Dropout” Composer Anne Nikitin Takes a Synthetic Approach to Elizabeth Holmes’s Treachery

Hulu’s limited biographical series The Dropout, which stars Amanda Seyfried as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has been getting rave reviews for both Seyfried’s performance and for its sharp take on the shocking real-life story of corporate and personal hubris. The show follows Holmes from her beginnings as an ambitious college student with Steve Jobs as her role model, through her attempts to develop healthcare technology, and then to her astonishingly fast rise to fame and fortune as CEO of a billion-dollar company.

“Winning Time” Co-Creator Jim Hecht on His Love Letter to the Lakers

Jim Hecht‘s road to co-creating Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers began in 2014. Hecht was, by his own admission, at a low point, and he was looking for a project that really spoke to him. During his daily meditation, which he admitted with the qualifier “this sounds very LA,” he had a thought: “You gotta stop writing sh*t that you think other people would want to see and start writing the show that you would want to watch.”

Behind-the-Scenes With Five Female Singaporean Creators

“The last three years were an eye-opener because of the pandemic,” said Michelle Chang, managing partner at Singapore-based Mochai Chai Laboratories. “We are the post-production house at the tail end. If the producers stop producing, we are dead. The good thing was my business partner Chai Yee Wei has the foresight of not putting all our eggs in one basket. He has built a digital restoration lab. As luck would have it, a lot of distributors came to us because streaming platforms were buying catalog content and they need to up-convert into a compatible format for the streamers.

“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” DP Shawn Peters on Lensing Samuel L. Jackson’s Rare TV Performance

Based on Walter Mosley’s eponymous novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey portrays 91-year-old Ptolemy (Samuel L. Jackson), a lonely widower suffering from Alzheimer’s, as he undergoes a transformation thanks to Robyn (Dominique Fishback), the teenage daughter of a family member’s friend, and an experimental new drug, offered at a beyond questionable clinic.

Jackson, who rarely takes on television projects, is sublime as the limited series’ Papa Grey: by turns helpless,

“The Lost City” Editor Craig Alpert on Finding Big Laughs With Sandra Bullock & Channing Tatum

The laugh-out-loud adventure comedy The Lost City, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, found its way atop the box office. Directed by the Nee brothers Aaron and Adam, the punchy comedy delightfully entertains as Bullock plays a successful romance writer who has been kidnapped by an obsessed treasure hunter played by Daniel Radcliffe, who believes the world in her latest novel is real and wants her to help find it. It’s up to Tatum,

“NITRAM” Director/Producer Justin Kurzel Casts a Lens on a Shocking Tragedy

In 1996, Australia was rocked by a mass shooting in the small, peaceful community of Port Arthur, Tasmania. The horrific incident took the lives of 35 innocent people and injured 23, and remains among the country’s greatest national tragedies. 

Director-producer Justin Kurzel (True History of the Kelly Gang, The Snowtown Murders) reunites with screenwriter Shaun Grant to explore the events that led to the mass shooting in the IFC Films release,

“The Wheel of Time” Cinematographer David Moxness on Lensing Amazon’s Lush Fantasy Epic

Amazon Prime’s sprawling sci-fi saga The Wheel of Time was one of the streamer’s big hits in 2021, and also one of its biggest swings. Adapted from Robert Jordan’s sweeping fantasy novels (14 in all), The Wheel of Time arrived on Prime and swiftly became the most-watched series premiere of 2021 and one of the top 5 series launches for Prime Video, ever. The interest stemmed from the love for Jordan’s source material,

Getting Intentional With Jeanne Mau, SVP of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at NBCUniversal

Jeanne Mau joined NBCUniversal only seven months ago, in a new position that was tailor-made for her skill set and experience. The former Senior Vice President of Global Inclusion at ViacomCBS is now NBCUniversal’s Senior Vice President of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Mau’s position has her overseeing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across NBCU’s vast television and streaming brands. It’s a thrilling opportunity for someone who has been doing the work for 20-years. 

How “Morbius” Production Designer Stefania Cella Creates a Brooding Vibe

Stefania Cella has suddenly become one of Marvel’s favorite production designers, more than happy to sink her teeth into Jared Leto’s much anticipated rogue scientist saga Morbius (opening April 1). She also designed the studio’s Moon Knight (March 30) and, at the moment, Cella’s in Atlanta working on Marvel’s much-anticipated Blade reboot. 

Immersing herself in comic book IP has been “challenging,”

Chatting With WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity & Inclusion Karen Horne

Karen Horne has been working to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities for more or less her entire career. WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Programs has been creating results-oriented programs across a wide swath of the entertainment, sports, and news divisions for more than two decades. “I’ve always wanted to work in this field,” Horne says of her work. “Also, I’ve never had a plan B.”

The pipeline programs Horne has implemented at WarnerMedia since 2020 alone have been crucial,

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” Oscar-Nominated Hair & Makeup Team on Helping Chastain Channel Faye

Come this Sunday at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram, and Justin Raleigh may all win their first gold statuette for hair and makeup. The makeup department head, hair department head, and head special makeup effects artist, respectively, are nominated for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the biopic starring Jessica Chastain, nominated for lead actress, and Andrew Garfield as the renowned and scandal-ridden evangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker.

Oscar-Nominated “The Power of the Dog” Editor Peter Sciberras on Building Unbearable Tension

Jane Campion’s tense, character-driven Western, The Power of the Dog, is a critical favorite and Oscar frontrunner. The film’s vast landscapes (shot in New Zealand, much to the chagrin of actors not involved with the movie) are a backdrop to a slow-moving family melodrama: sweet and earnest George (Jesse Plemons) marries widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst), bringing out the worst in Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), George’s volatile, curiously standoffish brother. 

The brothers are also partners in a successful ranch,

Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”

“When I started out, I had no objective whatsoever to become a re-recording mixer,” says Paul Massey, who may well be the most accomplished accidental Oscar winner in history. Growing up in London, Massey played trumpet in wedding bands, worked at a recording studio and then, he says, “I made a slow, totally unintentional transition to film post-production.”

Like Ridley Scott, one of his most frequent collaborators, Massey, Academy Award winner for Bohemian Rhapsody,

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

For Dune‘s Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jon Spaihts, the opportunity to help Denis Villeneuve find a way to crack the elusive code to adapting Frank Herbert’s magisterial, meaty sci-fi tome came at a funny time. “I’d decided I wanted to focus on a personal project that I’d direct myself, so I told my reps, ‘No new jobs,'” Spaiths says. “Then my agent called and said Denis Villeneuve is doing Dune, and I said,

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” DP Greig Fraser on Taming an Epic Sci-Fi Beast

Denis Villeneuve is the director to finally tame a film version of Dune, Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel that, over the decades, accidentally spawned a cottage industry of unsuccessful visual projects (see: David Lynch’s 1984 Dune, the SyFy channel’s attempt in 2000, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune, which never saw the light of day). Casting Timothée Chalamet as young prince Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani of the Fremen,

How the Oscar-Nominated “tick, tick…BOOM!” Editors Evoked the Excitement of Live Theatre

The magic of live theatre is a precious element that is often elusive to the lens. Countless legendary Broadway performances have sparkled and faded in a night, rarely ever recorded. Even a long run of a popular musical will never see the exact same show cross the stage twice.

Many movie adaptations of musicals are enormous affairs with extravagant sets, costumes, and visual details that fill in the gaps that exist only in the imagination of a live audience.

“Dune” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team on Sandworms, Ornithopters & More

The experience of seeing writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-nominated epic Dune was, for this viewer, as much an auditory experience as it was a visual one. The sounds of the alien world depicted in part one of Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel are mesmerizing, from the whispering sands shifting across the desert planet of Arrakis to the oddly soothing purr of the dragon fly-winged aircraft, the ornithopter. For supervising sound editor Mark Mangini and supervising sound editor and sound designer Theo Green,

“The Adam Project” Screenwriter Jonathan Tropper on Teaming With Ryan Reynolds & Shawn Levy

The development of The Adam Project has its own time-traveling origin story, one that dates back roughly ten years. Screenwriter Jonathan Tropper says the production took flight, in part, because of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) which stars Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Dwayne Johnson in a reboot of the beloved Robin Williams’ film that sucks them into a video game in an adventurous fight for survival. 

“Before Jumanji came out,

Cinematographer Jon Furmanski Reunites With Amy Schumer in “Life & Beth”

When she co-hosts ABC’s Oscar telecast on March 27, Amy Schumer will likely deliver the kind of withering punch lines that forged her reputation as one of America’s most daring comedians. But in her new Hulu series Life & Beth (which debuted on March 18) Schumer brings unexpected angst to her title character, an unhappy wine salesperson trying to make a fresh start in the face of death, disapproval, and dysfunctional family ties.

“The Outfit” Director Graham Moore on His Meticulous, Mobbed-Up Debut

Graham Moore, who won both an Oscar and a Writers Guild of America award for his adaptation of The Imitation Game, has joined a growing list of scribes going behind the camera to helm a production. The Outfit, his feature film directorial debut, has arrived, which the longtime scribe co-wrote with Jonathan McClain. 

The movie follows a highly skilled English tailor, played by Academy Award winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies),