Hollywood Production Designer Matthew Ferguson Helps Build Ryan Murphy’s Gorgeous Alternate History
Ryan Murphy’s Netflix limited series Hollywood has all the glitz and glamor of 1940s Hollywood but with an alternate spin on history. We chat with production designer Matthew Ferguson about the challenge of getting the period details right and finding the balance between fact and fiction. The show debuted this past May 1 on Netflix.
Murphy and his team envision an alternative history of Hollywood in 1947,
Costume Designers Revive Late Forties Glamour for Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood
Writer-producer Ryan Murphy and his team envision an outrageously optimistic alternative history of the movie business in 1947 via their new show Hollywood. Debuting May 1 on Netflix, the period melodrama boasts a huge ensemble headed by David Corenswet as a fresh-faced actor who works as a gigolo before getting his big break. Along the way, he meets a black screenwriter/prostitute (Jeremy Pope), the voracious wife of a studio boss (Patti LuPone),
Costumers Organize to Make 16,000 Protective Masks
Seven weeks ago, costumer Nickolaus Brown expected he’d be spending this spring in Atlanta outfitting Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds for their Netflix action flick Red Notice. Instead, he’s now hunched over a sewing machine in his Los Angeles home, making masks for hospital workers. On a recent afternoon, Brown explained, “I’ve done eight so far and I’ve got twelve more to go, so it’s going to be twenty by the end of the day.”
Director Martha Stephens on Her Timeless Coming-of-Age Drama To the Stars
Yearning, acceptance, identity, and female friendship and empowerment: They are all integral themes of director Martha Stephens’ coming-of-age tale, To the Stars. The film, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, is available for digital download now.
Set in 1960s rural Oklahoma, To The Stars features Kara Hayward (Moonrise Kingdom) and Liana Liberato (If I Stay) as Iris and Maggie,
Makeup Artist Matteo Silvi Tries to Rough Up Chris Hemsworth in Extraction
Makeup artist Matteo Silvi is used to traveling the world on film assignments. For example, his recent work with actor Chris Hemsworth on Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and Men in Black: International took Silvi to England, Scotland, Morocco, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia.
Extraction, which debuted this past Friday, April 24, is no different. The high-octane actioner starring Hemsworth as Tyler Rake,
Stunt-Coordinator-Turned-Director Sam Hargrave on His Action-Packed Debut Extraction
If you’re searching for an edge-of-your-seat movie experience to escape the current COVID-19 reality for a couple of hours, look no further than Extraction, streaming on Netflix beginning April 24. The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, a fearless mercenary who is called upon to rescue the kidnapped son of an incarcerated crime lord. The seemingly straightforward mission becomes complicated when Rake develops compassion for the kid and is intent on protecting him at all costs.
Composer Herdís Stefánsdóttir on HBO’s Fabulous New Unscripted Series We’re Here
There’s a new unscripted show in town, and it wants you to know We’re Here. That’s both the name and the aesthetic of co-creators Johnny Ingram and Stephen Warren’s fabulous, fierce, and fun show featuring renowned drag queens Eureka O’Hara, Shangela Laquifa Wadley, and Bob the Drag Queen. On the series, the Queens drive into towns across America, and recruit local residents representing a wide swath of humanity as ‘drag daughters,’ to participate in a one-night-only drag show.
VFX Producer Andrea Knoll on Creating the Futuristic Yet Natural World in Tales from the Loop
Tales from the Loop, Amazon’s latest sci-fi offering which stars Rebecca Hall and Jonathan Pryce, resists easy definition. Set in Ohio but based on paintings of Sweden, the residents of the small town at the center of the series are all loosely bound by a machine known as the Loop, a technology intended to unlock the universe’s mysteries and the town’s main employer. Thanks to decades in business and the abandonment of various detritus—robots and body-switching contraptions left in the woods,
Cinematographer Priyanka Singh on COVID-19, Her New Documentary & More
Cinematographer Priyanka Singh jumped on the phone from Mumbai more or less exactly at the moment that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was locking down the country—and its’ 1.3 billion residents—on March 24. “Right at this very minute, our Prime Minister is addressing the nation and saying, ‘It’ll go on for three weeks,'” Singh said. “There’s a country-wide lockdown for the next three weeks. This means a curfew, a state of emergency. We just have to figure out what to do in the next three weeks.
Selah and the Spades Star Celeste O’Connor on the Power of Tayarisha Poe’s Film
Amazon Studios has premiered writer/director Tayarisha Poe’s new indie Selah and the Spades to near-universal acclaim. It’s the story that takes place in an elite boarding school, where seventeen-year-old senior, Selah Summers (Lovie Simone), runs the Spades, a powerful clique that supplies illegal drugs to the student body. That’s just one of the vices these cliques, or ‘factions,’ offer, which also includes gambling and illegal parties. When her right-hand-man Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) gets distracted,
Under Lockdown, Tech & Film Meet in New Ways to Un-Stall an Industry on Hold
The first feature film made entirely over Zoom may still be a blessed long way off, but in accordance with COVID-19 social distancing procedures, formerly eschewed technologies are finding a current warm welcome among the film and television industry. Whether it’s a newfound acceptance of older, familiar names like Skype, or industry-specific digital tools being put to creative off-label uses, it’s thanks to technology that film crews can,
How Motherland: Fort Salem Cinematographer Jon Joffin Casts a Spell
It may not be an infinite playlist, at least not yet, but if quarantine lasts much longer, who knows? In any case, cinematographer Jon Joffin, ASC, was waxing virtually about some of the shows he’s been watching in lockup:
Among them were Amazon’s ZeroZeroZero, the Gabriel Byrne-starring series which follows a shipment of cocaine from Mexico to its cartel purchasers in Italy, which Joffin describes as shot “in a beautiful,
Run DP Melds Drama and Rom-Com Elements in HBO’s New Series
Merritt Wever won a comedy Emmy for Nurse Jackie, picked up a drama Emmy as the rifle-wrangling pioneer in Godless and last year wowed critics for her empathetic turn as a sex crimes detective in Unbelievable. Now she’s mixing it up in HBO’s black-humored thriller Run (it premiered this past Sunday night, April 12). Job one for cinematographer Matthew Clark: capture the chemistry between Wever’s bored housewife Ruby and Domhnall Gleeson,
Little Fires Everywhere Cinematographer Jeffrey Waldron on Crafting Chaos Beneath the Surface
One of the many, many odd things about life mid-pandemic is how suddenly bizarre it is to watch shows and films that depict people touching, hugging, kissing, and gathering in large numbers. Even the folks who just filmed these series agree. There’s a kind of pre-coronavirus surreality to it, and if the show or movie doesn’t hold your attention, you can, at least for this viewer, find yourself more invested in how weird it is to see people cavalierly not keeping their distance than you are in the actual story.
Never Have I Ever Director Kabir Akhtar on Filming Mindy Kaling’s New Netflix Series
When director Kabir Akhtar heard the news that producer/writer/star Mindy Kaling was, along with co-creator Lang Fisher, putting together a new series at Netflix that would focus on a first-generation Indian American teenage girl, he thought, I need to be a part of this.
“Just the idea that a show could be made about a first-generation South Asian American,” Akhtar says, a first-generation South Asian American himself, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia,
Writer/Director Eliza Hittman on her Bracing, Brilliant Film Never Rarely Sometimes Always
When Eliza Hittman, writer/director of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, took the stage after the premiere of her film at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th of this year, she was greeted with rapturous applause. She and the stars of her film have gained critical acclaim for her intimate, powerful portrayal of one teenager’s perilous journey of the soul. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the challenges facing 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan),
An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19
The call came in 2014. It was 6 o’clock at night, Rachel Apatoff remembers. Would she be interested in working as a costume production assistant on a little TV show called Mad Men? It would bring her a straight 10 months of work, a nice stretch of employment for anyone in the industry, not just for a costumer.
Well, sure, Apatoff told them. When did they want her to start?
A Most Beautiful Thing Director Mary Mazzio Films a Miracle on the Water
Director Mary Mazzio was set to take her documentary A Most Beautiful Thing to SXSW this year. Then the spread of COVID-19 became such an undeniable reality in the United States that SXSW was canceled. The news of that cancellation came along with the shuttering of film and TV productions all across the globe. Once theaters started closing, world premieres were pushed back months, too.
“It’s a bummer,
Star Trek: Picard Director Hanelle Culpepper Makes History (And a Home in Space)
With news of rising numbers of COVID-19 infections and the economic fallout the disease destined to come with it, everyone is looking for watch lists for some quality home entertainment. Highly recommended by critics and viewers alike is CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Picard, which has been the most-watched original series to date for the streaming service. The first three episodes of the series were helmed by director Hanelle Culpepper,
The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined
“For the two months leading up to this moment, I was writing. I was already leading an isolation style life,” says writer/director Bronwen Hughes. Her usually intense TV directing schedule had this lull so she could complete a screenplay for a feature (a spy thriller she’s sending off to a major studio, she’d say no more), and then the world changed.
“Well, every physical shoot I’ve had or have, booked or about to book,
