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,

Silent Sunday Nights Host Jacqueline Stewart’s Easy Going Film Expertise

Jacqueline Stewart is a film scholar, researcher, author and archivist. But when she gets before the cameras as the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), she’s once again a kid watching movies late into the night with her aunt Constance.

“I was obsessed with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies as a kid. They always seemed to be on TV the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve,

How Costume Designer Jeriana San Juan Helped Shape HBO’s The Plot Against America

These are trying times. When The Wire creator David Simon and his longtime collaborator Ed Burns set out to adapt the late, legendary novelist Philip Roth’s terrifyingly prescient 2005 novel “The Plot Against America,” they were doing so in a pre-pandemic world. At first, Simon and his team were “merely” adapting a novel that seemed, with eerie clairvoyance, to peer around the bend of time into our present day. The book envisions a truculent presidential candidate rising to power on an America First platform,

DP Kira Kelly on Lensing Netflix’s Self Made Followed by a Sudden COVID-19 Furlough

Self Made, Netflix’s four-episode biopic on Madam C.J. Walker (Octavia Spencer), the businesswoman, philanthropist, and first female American self-made millionaire, traces Madam C.J.’s late 19th-century rise from washerwoman to the successful founder of a haircare empire staffed by and made for African-American women. The production contrasts vibrant, colorful historic sets and costumes with a contemporary soundtrack, for an immersively satisfying period series that feels completely modern.

“Even before I got the job,

An Easy Girl Director Rebecca Zlotowski on Her Version of French Feminism

Lush and sun-kissed, An Easy Girl, the latest feature from French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, is a Cannes-set summer vacation coming-of-age centered on a teenager named Naïma (Mina Farid) and her visiting older cousin, Sofia (Zahia Dehar). A screen descendant of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, Dehar is enviably confident and sexy; however, many French audiences have struggled to separate Dehar’s character from her real-life persona, the one who was involved in an underage prostitution scandal in 2009.

Westworld Cinematographer & Director Paul Cameron on Season 3’s Big Time Ambitions

“As a DP,” says director of photography Paul Cameron, ASC, “you tend to walk into a location and visualize it and pitch it to a director.” But what happens if you are the director? Well, he allows, “I may have been a little stronger in pitching my ideas” back to the cinematographer.

Cameron had a chance to pitch in both directions, in quick succession, on HBO’s currently unfurling third season of Westworld.

Stunt Coordinator Kathy Jarvis Drives the Action in Paramount’s TV Series 68 Whiskey

A television series set on a military base during the height of the Afghan war is where you’ll find one of the best stunt coordinators currently working on television—Kathy Jarvis. Creating the stunts for 68 Whiskey, the Paramount Network comedy/drama about a team of medics battling to save lives while keeping their sanity in the midst of constant carnage and danger, is giving her an opportunity to use the range of skills she’s developed over her long career.

Swallow Production Designer Erin Magill Builds a House of Horrors

Handsome husband, rich in-laws, and a stunning house might seem to provide a comfortable perch for the newly pregnant housewife at the center of Swallow. And yet, Hunter (Haley Bennett) suffers privately from a disturbing disorder hinted at in the film’s title. For the psychological thriller (now playing), production designer Erin Magill joined writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis in setting up a seemingly perfect milieu riddled with dark secrets.

Magill,

Styling Teenage Romance With To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You Costume Designer Lorraine Carson

Costume designer Lorraine Carson has helped steer the look of the romantic comedy franchise To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (based on Jenny Han’s novel series) for the second and third films. As the franchise’s ensemble has grown up, so too has their wardrobe. With the second film currently available on Netflix (with the third film in post-production), we spoke to Carson about realizing character growth through costume,

Universal Archivist Jeff Pirtle on the Legacy of Noble Johnson, Harriet & More

When we interviewed Jeff Pirtle, Director, Archives & Collections at NBCUniversal last October, we learned, among other things, about Universal’s gleefully ghoulish collection of assets that touch upon the studio’s rich history of monsters. From the original set design from Jaws to gorgeous black-and-white photos of Bela Lugosi from 1931’s Dracula, Pirtle helps maintain some of the most coveted assets in the film world, as well as keep his eye on upcoming productions and fresh opportunities to extend the collection.