How “Candyman” Composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe Manipulated Madness Into Music

It’s hard to believe that someone as soft-spoken as Brooklyn musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe could be responsible for the dread-inducing soundscape that underscores the return of cinema’s most horrific throat-slashing boogeyman. And yet, that’s exactly what Lowe has achieved in his score for Candyman (opening Aug. 27). The film, from co-writer/director Nia DaCosta and co-writer/producer Jordan Peele, updates the original 1992 horror movie by tracking artist Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) as he tries to wrap his bee-stung arms around the mysterious re-emergence of the murderous Candyman in Chicago’s newly gentrified Cabrini Green neighborhood.

How Underwater Cinematographer Ian Seabrook Got The Shots in “Jungle Cruise”

Disney’s latest blockbuster based on a ride, director Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise, is a banter-filled romp down the Amazon. Blue-blooded adventurer Lily (Emily Blunt) drags her fusspot brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), to South America in pursuit of the petals of an all-powerful healing tree. Their guiding trinket is an arrowhead, pilfered with great difficulty from a retrograde London men’s scientific society. Upon landing on the other side of the world, the pair wind up in the hands of riverboat captain Frank (Dwayne Johnson),

“Free Guy” Co-Writer Zak Penn on The Art of the Re-Write

Zak Penn started his career on a high note when he sold his first script at age 23 and landed Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star. The thrill didn’t last long. Last Action Hero got re-written, Penn was relegated to a “story by” credit and the would-be blockbuster flopped at the box office.

But Penn survived the ignominy and 28-years later, he’s become an expert at crafting tentpole action epics like The Incredible Hulk,

How the Emmy-Nominated “WandaVision” VFX Team Made Magic

Laden with special effects, big-name stars, and an audacious high concept, WandaVision represented a big swing for Marvel Studios when it debuted in January on Disney+. The bet paid off. Creator Jac Schaeffer’s series quickly became one of the season’s most talked-about new shows and it’s now validated all that buzz with a whopping 23 Emmy nominations. The hook? Superheroic witch Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and android Vision (Paul Bettany) disguise themselves as man and wife living sitcom-perfect lives in small-town New Jersey.

“Ted Lasso” Casting Director Theo Park on Filling Out AFC Richmond’s Roster

Who would have expected an earnest tale of an American football coach brought on to mind an English soccer team to be the pandemic’s breakout hit? Created by Jason Sudeikis, the titular star of Ted Lasso, the show’s joyful brand of storytelling is up for Emmy awards across the board.

Relentlessly upbeat, armed with a bottomless well of musical and literary trivia and a penchant for encouraging heart-to-hearts,

Tracey Scott Wilson on Penning the Queen of Soul’s Meteoric Rise in “Respect”

Writing a biopic is no easy task, particularly when the subject is an international icon who was a very private person. Indeed, crafting the screenplay for Respect, the highly anticipated drama chronicling Aretha Franklin’s rise from the church choir to the global stage, proved challenging, as well as rewarding, for Tracey Scott Wilson. But the fledgling feature film screenwriter, with an award-winning background in both theater and television (she co-executive produced Fosse/Verdon,

“The Suicide Squad” Production Designer Beth Mickle on Creating Gonzo Sets

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is a film filled with highly ambitious, no-holds-barred set pieces, nearly all of which are done with practical effects. It’s a story that takes the characters into all kinds of physical environments as they work together to achieve their objective without dying in the process. Collaborating with Gunn to help make his vision a reality onscreen is production designer Beth Mickle. The Credits spoke with Mickle about how she got this high-profile gig,

Marlee Matlin on Her New Film “CODA” & Its Refreshing Focus on a Deaf Family

Marlee Matlin is unquestionably the best-known and most successful deaf actor working in American film and television. She exploded on the scene with her Oscar-winning performance as Sarah in the 1986 movie Children of a Lesser God and has worked steadily ever since. From her Emmy-nominated performances in Law and Order, The Practice, Seinfield, and Picket Fences to the memorable characters she created for The L Word,

Emmy-Nominee Hannah Waddingham on the Joy of Making “Ted Lasso”

Before Ted Lasso became a phenomenon, setting a record for most Emmy nominations by a freshman comedy (20 total, including seven for its actors), its virtues were spread, among my friends, more like a whisper campaign. One buddy in particular kept needling me via text. What finally broke me was the realization that here was my most sports-agnostic pal pressuring me to watch a show about an American football coach being hired to lead an English Premier League soccer team.

Sound Editor Trevor Gates on Keeping “Fear Street” Real, Upbeat, & Horrifying

Based on master of teen horror genre fiction R.L. Stine’s novels, Netflix released writer-director Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street trilogy over the past three successive Fridays. Opening with a neon-lit shopping mall murder spree, Part One – 1994 introduces the seemingly cursed teenaged residents of Shadyside and their luckier next-door neighbors in Sunnyvale. In Part Two – 1978, intrepid Deena (Kiana Madeira) and her nerdy younger brother,

Emmy-Nominated Composer Virginia Kilbertus on “Endings,” “The Lighthouse” & More

Composer Virginia Kilbertus was not entirely prepared for her Emmy nomination for outstanding music direction and composition for a daytime program. Although she’d submitted her work on Hulu’s Endings, a sci-fi adventure set in a near-future where four foster kids discover they’re not alone after the disappearance of the last elephant on Earth, she hadn’t been tracking the nominations since. “I hadn’t been anticipating when they were announcing it,” Kilbertus said by way of phone from Toronto.

“Loki” Makeup Department Head Douglas Noe on Designing Misfits & Minutemen

In ancient Norse mythology, Loki was a shape-shifting trickster inviting difficulty upon his companions as well as himself. In director Kate Herron’s new Disney+ series, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is true to his Norse roots. His journey begins with an arrest, having crossed a power-sapping organization called the Time Variance Authority. Loki is accused of being a variant, an offense that causes time-branching events that, to put it briefly, messes up the general order of things.

Documentarian Morgan Neville on “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain”

Charismatic author, chef, and world traveler Anthony Bourdain went from relative obscurity working in a New York restaurant to international success at the age of 43 when his memoir Kitchen Confidential was released. It started a meteoric rise to fame and led to Anthony Bourdain becoming a household name. When he killed himself at 61, his suicide shocked fans all over the world. Now Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville has created a fascinating, poignant portrait of the complicated man in Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.

Veteran Voice Actor Jeff Bergman on Voicing the Looney Tunes Gang in “Space Jam: A New Legacy”

In Space Jam’s contemporary follow-up, Space Jam: A New Legacy, from director Malcolm D. Lee, the movie’s apex basketball game comes about thanks to star LeBron James’s youngest son, Dom (Cedric Joe), who doesn’t want to play the sport at all. Dom would rather design and program his own video games, an interest which inadvertently leads him and his father into the bowels of the Warner 3000 ServerVerse,

“Black Widow” Stunt Coordinator Rob Inch on the Art of Adrenaline

In her swan song as Russian assassin-turned-Avenger Natasha Romanoff, Scarlett Johansson fights her way through Black Widow (opening Friday) on a mission to destroy evil mastermind Dreykov (Ray Winstone) and his network of brainwashed female killers. But first, Natasha has to confront her equally ferocious kid sister Yelena, portrayed by Florence Pugh. (Some light spoilers ahead). Abandoned as children by their spy parents (David Harbour and Rachel Weisz),

“Summer of Soul” Editor on Piecing Together the Nearly Forgotten Black Woodstock

For nearly half a century, videotapes documenting the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival gathered dust in the basement of a Bronxville home. Filmed by Hal Tuchin and his four-person camera crew, the trove included goosebump-inducing performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples, B.B. King, the 5th Dimension, jazz drummer Max Roach and other masters of American music. Tuchin tried to package his work as “The Black Woodstock”

“Werewolves Within” Director Josh Ruben on His Hilarious Creature Feature

Werewolves Within invites you to the cozy town of Beverfield, Vermont, where things that go bump in the night are manifold. They might be a creature out to get you, or, they might be your neighbor, out to bother the crap out of you. Director Josh Ruben has crafted a deliciously nimble murder mystery/monster story/comedy in the comfy (if cold and often creepy) confines of this wooded would-be paradise. Based on Mishna Wolff’s script, 

Creating the Wonderful World of Disney+’s “The Mysterious Benedict Society”

They met in an improv group while students at Brown University, and joined forces as screenwriters after graduating. Some three decades later, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi have racked up a noteworthy roster of film credits that include Destroyer, The Invitation, Ride Along and Ride Along 2, and Clash of the Titans. Their finely-tuned creative process moves from talking deeply through plot points to outlining extensively to splitting up scenes to write individually before reconvening to edit and polish — almost always while sitting in the same room,

How the “Mare of Easttown” Editor Carefully Constructed HBO’s Brilliant Murder Mystery

Easttown is filled with secrets and lies as thick as the townsfolk’s accents. These deceptions cloud the journey to uncover the truth about a tragic and twisted mystery. It soon becomes clear that only detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) has the connections and clever intuition to catch a killer. Thankfully we didn’t need our own detective notebook to track down the suspect. Mare of Easttown editor Amy Duddleston worked diligently to be sure viewers didn’t lose track of a single clue while layering the suspense.

Dressing Icons and Con Men With “Genius: Aretha” and “Better Call Saul” Costume Designer Jennifer Bryan

Costume designer Jennifer Bryan can pivot from glamour to gaudy, from an icon to a con artist, without missing a beat—or a thread. Bryan’s work can currently be seen on National Geographic’s third season of Genius, which focused on the monumental career and legacy of Aretha Franklin (Cynthia Erivo).

Bryan’s now hard at work on a very different kind of show, trading in Aretha Franklin’s shimmering dresses (and profound decency) for the gaudy,