Best of 2019: Joker’s Makeup Designer on Creating the Clown Prince of Chaos
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays!
It’s hard to think of a more iconic look from the world of comic books than the Joker — Batman’s most nefarious adversary. Nicki Ledermann was all too aware of this when she was approached to design the makeup for Joker, director Todd Phillips’ new feature that offers up the origin as to how Arthur Fleck,
Best of 2019: Breaking Down Three Key Scenes With Ad Astra’s Editors
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On Tuesday we published the first part of our conversation with Ad Astra editors John Axelrad and Lee Haugen. Director James Gray’s film (which he co-wrote with Ethan Gross) is the rare intimate epic. It involves some of the most breathtaking sequences in any film this year, as well as a very personal father/son story in which our hero,
Best of 2019: Carmen Ejogo on her Pivotal Role in True Detective’s Season Three
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In season three of True Detective, creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto returns to the series’ Southern Gothic roots, with two detectives, Vietnam vet Wayne “Purple” Hays (Mahershala Ali) and Roland West (Stephen Dorff) trying to solve the murder of one child and the disappearance of another in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hays takes the lead on the case in 1980 and is doing desk work and starting to lose his memory by the time we reach 1990 (West,
Best of 2019: Makeup Designer Burton LeBlanc on Creating Misery in the Colonies in The Handmaid’s Tale
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In Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the radioactive Colonies are more felt than described. We’re told it’s where all Gilead’s undesirables, the childless handmaids, the criminals, the sick and insane, are sent to die. In Hulu’s adaptation of Atwood’s novel, however, the Colonies became one of the show’s most fecund sources of misery in season two. As Maria Elena Fernandez described in a piece for Vulture,
Best of 2019: Avengers: Endgame Visual Effects Supervisor on Happy Hulk, Lebowski Thor & More
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The Marvel universe’s supersized super-villain Thanos (Josh Brolin, plus CG) last year dealt a heavy hand to overpopulation in Avengers: Infinity War, wiping out half of humanity with a snap of his fingers warmed by his Infinity Stone encrusted gauntlet. Five years onward the Avengers are looking stuck, with those remaining still in mourning and low on solutions.
Best of 2019: Craig Mazin on Getting the Details Right for the Shocking Chernobyl
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In April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded, sending radiation into the atmosphere and ultimately causing many radiation-related deaths. While the disastrous accident, attributed to faulty reactor design and insufficiently trained operators, is widely known, the details of its aftermath are less so. Screenwriter Craig Mazin looks to change this and up the knowledge base with Chernobyl,
Best of 2019: Fleabag‘s Emmy-Nominated Cinematographer on Crafting a Nearly Flawless Second Season
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There’s no such thing as flawless art. Flaws are baked right into anything a human being creates, and often they are hard to disassociate from the strengths that make any art worthwhile. Yet I’ve heard several people call Fleabag‘s second season flawless, and I’ve been hard-pressed to argue the point. Few shows on television are as personal,
Best of 2019: How Us Cinematographer Michael Gioulakis Captured Doppelgangers in the Dark
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019.
“I have an aversion to moonlight, at least in movies.” So says cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, who had ample opportunity to capture dark spaces in Jordan Peele‘s critically acclaimed horror film Us. Peele’s follow-up to Oscar-nominated thriller Get Out casts Lupita Nyog’o as a high-strung mother who’s being stalked, along with her husband (Winston Duke) and kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex),
Best of 2019: Spencer Averick on Finding Truth & Humanity in the Edit of When They See Us
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019 from some of our favorite films and shows of the year.
Netflix rarely releases viewer numbers, but on June 12th, the streaming service tweeted that Ava DuVernay’s miniseries When They See Us has been its most-watched content in the US since the show’s premiere on May 31st. In the UK, When They See Us has been running second only to Black Mirror.
Best of 2019: The Irishman Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on Crafting Scorsese’s Masterpiece
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019 from some of our favorite films and shows of the year.
Beloved auteur Martin Scorsese’s new film The Irishman has brought Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci together onscreen for the first time in 24 years and added Al Pacino, whom he’d never worked with before, building a cast that sounds truly compelling to lovers of great acting and great film.
Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns on Helping Sam Mendes Write his WWI Epic 1917
“The third time,” director Sam Mendes said to screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns when asking her to co-write 1917 with him, “is the charm.” And in a film that shows how random luck is as much a factor in surviving war as anything else, he was right.
Wilson-Cairns had originally come to his attention through a combination of a well-regarded script on “the Black List” — that rundown of the best crop of unproduced spec scripts — with a project called Aether.
How Cinematographer Roger Deakins & Team Pulled off the One-Shot Masterpiece 1917
For Sam Mendes, the multi-hyphenate who produced, directed and co-wrote the script with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917 was a personal story. It follows two British soldiers – Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) – tasked with delivering a message across enemy lines in order to stop a battle that could save hundreds of soldiers’ lives. The idea came to Mendes after his grandfather shared with him World War I stories where he himself had been a runner.
How Watchmen Cinematographer Gregory Middleton Captured Hooded Justice’s Harrowing Origin
Vancouver-based DP Gregory Middleton has lensed his share of prestigious series before Watchmen, having scored Emmy and ASC nominations for his work on different Game of Thrones episodes, and finding himself behind the viewfinder for shows like The Killing, cult hit movies like James Gunn’s Slither and many more.
But it was working with director Nicole Kassell on episodes of The Killing—rather than his earlier toe-dip into the DC Universe,
Sandy Powell & Christopher Peterson on Dressing De Niro (and More) in The Irishman
In Martin Scorsese’s three and a half-hour Netflix gangster opus, The Irishman, Robert De Niro plays real-life Philadelphia mobster Frank Sheeran across five decades. The film’s VFX team had their work cut out for them during Frank’s early years, while hair and makeup were responsible for the much aged De Niro who directly addresses the camera from a nursing home at the beginning and close of the movie.
Actor, Writer, and Producer Reggie Lochard on his Passion Project
Actor, screenwriter, and producer Reggie Lochard has a lot going on. He’s currently filming his passion project, “A” for Alpha., which he wrote, produced, and stars in. Last week, Lochard sat down with the Motion Picture Association’s Vice President for Multicultural and External Affairs, John Gibson, at the third annual New York State Multicultural Creativity Summit. The Summit was co-hosted by the Empire State Development, Motion Picture Association, and Ghetto Film School,
How Robert De Niro’s Makeup Team Traversed 50-Years in The Irishman
In describing The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s latest feature, one word that keeps popping up is “epic.” And deservedly so. A sweeping three-and-a-half-hour saga, The Irishman explores the true-life story of Frank Sheeran, an organized crime figure and close confidant of Jimmy Hoffa, who rose to the top of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Ultimately, he betrayed his boss, orchestrating Hoffa’s disappearance and demise. Robert De Niro plays Sheeran. Al Pacino costars as Hoffa.
How Jay-Z Connected the Oscar Hopefuls of Uncut Gems
The song “Marcy Me,” a poetically rhythmic Jay-Z track where the billionaire mogul reminisces about his time living in the Marcy Projects of Brooklyn raps, “Streets is my artery, the vein of my existence.” It’s an apt line to describe Howard Ranter (Adam Sandler), a fast-talking jewelry store owner in New York’s Diamond District who has to hustle the streets to crawl out of a life crashing around him.
But it’s more than lyrics that link Jay-Z to the movie Uncut Gems,
Editor Gordon Rempel on the Music of Editing
Gordon Rempel sees parallels between the approach he takes editing film and television and his love of making music. With more than two decades of experience in both fields, he would know.
“I actually have a musical background. I’ve been playing in bands continuously since I was a teenager. Music takes a lot of the same parts of your brain as editing does: it’s all rhythm, tempo, and pacing. And finding that accent point.
De-Aging the Iconic Actors of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
In 2015, visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman was working with Martin Scorsese on Silence, a stirring film about the Christian faith during 17th century Japan. The two ended up having a conversation that ignited a technological advancement within the visual effects industry—one that will likely become a new standard in how images can be captured and processed during filmmaking.
“We were talking about a project and I mentioned making one of the characters younger.
Unraveling Marriage Story with Editor Jennifer Lame
It was well past 9 pm on a Sunday night when the word “hello” drifted through the speaker of my phone. On the line was editor Jennifer Lame who pulled herself away from Christopher Nolan’s action-thriller Tenet.
“It’s nice speaking with you again,” she said in an even-tempered tone. A tone very unlike the characters in Marriage Story from writer/director Noah Baumbach that dissects the inevitable split between spouses Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver).
