Black Panther‘s Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Hannah Beachler Builds a new Nation
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Everyone on the set of Black Panther had the weight of being a trailblazer. Realizing Wakanda for the screen meant reclaiming a painful history, honoring a rich heritage, and imagining the hope of the future right now. It also has the potential to confirm the demand for more diverse storytelling.
A Star is Born’s Oscar-Nominated Sound Mixer on Capturing Brilliance Up-Close
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Warner Bros.’ A Star is Born, the fourth version of the film and Bradley Cooper’s first time directing, has earned a hero’s welcome as the best iteration yet of the tale of love, talent, and the price of fame. Lady Gaga stars as Ally, a struggling musician with powerhouse pipes,
A Quiet Place‘s Oscar-Nominated Sound Designers on Triggering our Brain’s Reptilian Fear Response
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn had the unusual challenge of applying their expertise to a film that would be so quiet, it had the word in its title. John Krasinski’s thrilling, chilling A Quiet Place was predicated on a brilliant idea; alien monsters have turned the planet into one giant Amtrak quiet car.
Berlin Station‘s Executive Producer on Making TV for Troubled Times
On one of the very few scripted television dramas to reflect the current global political climate, the covert C.I.A. operatives of Epix’s Berlin Station have found themselves mired in complex situations wrought by any number of familiar cranks and villains—internal whistle-blowers, far-right political parties, Russian thugs, mysterious hackers, and the list goes on. In depicting the inner workings of a fictionalized Berlin C.I.A. office, spy novelist Olen Steinhauer’s first television series works hard to examine the moral gray area of international espionage,
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Oscar-Nominated Directors on Being Bold
Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman asked themselves a question: how could they tell a story and be as wild and bold as they could adapting a comic book to the big screen that hadn’t been seen before. Enter Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Now the three are Oscar-nominated directors, and their film has become a critical and commercial smash hit.
The coming of age story from Sony Pictures Animation follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore),
Back to the Future With Star Trek: Discovery’s Production Designer
Star Trek: Discovery has been boldly going places even past incarnations of the iconic TV series have never been. It took a mere two episodes for the show to break completely new ground; the Starfleet’s first mutiny carried out by the star of the show, Sonequa Martin Green’s Michael Burnham.
The major advances are not the only narrative. Behind the scenes, a top-flight crew has been making the most of the latest technology and some very special locations to pull off the kind of show Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry would have loved and made,
Celebrating the ASC’s Top 10 Films of the 20th Century
The American Society of Cinematographers recently released their “100 Milestone Films in Cinematography of 20th Century.” For the uninitiated (which is 99% of the viewing public), the ASC is “an honorary organization made up of the best cinematographers in the world,” says cinematographer Richard Crudo, ASC (this explains why you often see an “ASC” after a cinematographer’s name in the credits.) “Membership is by invitation only and is extended after the candidate has been proposed by members and has passed a screening process.”
The titles in the ASC’s list were compiled through an internal poll conducted by the Society.
Star Trek: Discovery‘s Art Director Gives you the VIP Tour
When Art Director Jody Clement stepped in to work on CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery, she was no stranger to ambitious sci-fi television series. She’d already worked on Guillermo del Toro’s deliciously creepy The Strain, as well as BBC America’s narratively complex Orphan Black. For Star Trek: Discovery, Clement was stepping into both a major new show and TV history simultaneously.
“We do our initial research based on canon,
Star Trek: Discovery Set Designer on Developing New Worlds
Since 1966, Star Trek has been boldly going where no one has gone before. Through dozens of planets and vast reaches of space, the series has explored the most wonderful and most fearsome places the universe has to offer. Set designer Emilie Poulin is charting the Starfleet’s newest adventures on Star Trek: Discovery.
The locations on Star Trek: Discovery are very active. Because the storylines are rooted in exploration,
Cold Pursuit Director Hans Petter Moland on Liam Neeson’s Killer Plowman
In Hans Petter Moland‘s Cold Pursuit, Liam Neeson plays a humble snowplow driver named Nels Coxman living in the winter wonderland of Kehoe, Colorado. The film opens with Nels receiving Kehoe’s ‘Citizen of the Year’ award, which hs gratefully (and awkwardly) accepts. His beaming wife, Grace (Laura Dern) looks on. All is well. For roughly four minutes or so. In no time at all, the fuzzy, warm feelings give way to the title’s promise;
Director Catherine Hardwicke Delivers Gina Rodriguez as Action Star in Miss Bala
Catherine Hardwicke was 48 years old when she directed her first feature-length film. That movie, Thirteen, a dark look at a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, garnered Golden Globe nominations for its stars, Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood, as well as an Oscar nod for Hunter and an Independent Spirit Award for Nikki Reed.
Though by Hollywood standards she came a bit late to directing, the success of Thirteen demonstrated she was meant to be at the helm.
Bird Box‘s VFX Supervisor on the Monster You Can’t See
What happens when Marcus Taormina tells people that he was the visual effects supervisor on the wildly popular Netflix film Bird Box?
“People have a ton of questions,” Taormina says, “but the central one is the creature question. I tell them that there is a lot on the editing room floor.”
What Bird Box’s invisible malefactors actually look like is one of the many ambiguities in the film that have preoccupied the Internet since Bird Box bowed over the Christmas holidays.
How Aquaman‘s Colorist Battled Mera’s Red Hair—and Won
Aquaman made history over the weekend, becoming the highest-grossing film in DC Comics history. Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa)’s journey from high-seas crusader to King of Atlantis surpassed Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in his Batman trilogy.
FotoKem colorist Mark Griffith was one of the many, many people who had a huge-but-invisible role in Aquaman’s success. The colorist’s job is to tweak,
How I Am the Night‘s Creator Built Noir Series Around a Nearly Mythic True Crime
True crime fans have long obsessed over the “Black Dahlia” murder that first made headlines in 1947 when 22-year old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short turned up mutilated on the streets of Los Angeles. Mystery writer James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) authored a book about the case after his own mother was murdered in a similar fashion. A 2006 Black Dahlia movie further chronicled the mystery surrounding wealthy doctor George Hodel,
How A Dog’s Way Home‘s Director Found his Path
Remember Terry the Toad, the adorable nerdy high school kid who had a wild night in American Graffiti? And the government researcher out in the remote, bonding with the wolves out in the Arctic in Never Cry Wolf? Both were played by Charles Martin Smith, now a director who has specialized in films about kids and animals including the two Dolphin Tale movies and the current release,
Serenity Writer/Director Steven Knight on Creating a Twist no one Will See Coming
Writer-director Steven Knight is no stranger to making unconventional films. In the 2013 thriller Locke starring Tom Hardy, the entire plot takes place inside a car. For Serenity, underneath the allegory about a fisherman obsessed over catching an elusive bluefin tuna, lie deeper existential themes.
Knight admits directing can be daunting in a phone call having wrapped Peaky Blinders Season 5. “Every time I do,
How The Favourite‘s Oscar-Nominated Co-Writer Tony McNamara Twisted History
With 10 Oscar-nominations, Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite was matched only by Alfonso Cuaron’s elegiac masterpiece Roma for the largest haul of the year. The films couldn’t be much more different, but then again, every film Lanthimos makes couldn’t be much more different from his peers. The Favourite is nothing like anything the Oscar-nominated Lanthimos has made in the past, either, concerning itself with two rivals, Lady Sarah (Oscar-nominated Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Oscar-nominated Emma Stone) for the affection and patronage of Queen Anne (Oscar-nominated Olivia Colman) in 18th century England.
Aquaman‘s DP on the Challenge of People Talking & Fighting Underwater
Of all the superheroes (and there are a lot of superheroes if you haven’t noticed), cinematographer Don Burgess was challenged to lens the one with the most problematic superpowers and origin story. Unlike Batman’s gritty Gotham, Superman’s soaring Metropolis or even Black Panther’s glorious Wakanda, there is no superhero who presents a tougher challenge to a filmmaker than Aquaman and his underwater kingdom of Atlantis.
“When When I met Sam Raimi to interview for Spider-Man,
How Glass‘s Stunt Coordinator Channeled James McAvoy’s Inner Beast
M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable came out in 2000, and to get the movie made, the director deliberately billed it as a film about anything other than superheroes. Nineteen years on, a slew of superhero films have erupted from Hollywood, and they are by and large nothing like Shyamalan’s trilogy, which also includes 2016’s Split, and now, Glass. Is this final chapter even a superhero movie?
How Glass’s Production Designer Utilized a Defunct Psychiatric Ward
Are superheroes real? The central characters in Glass, M. Night Shyamalan’s conclusion to the trilogy that began with Unbreakable 19 years ago and was followed by Split in 2016, aim to find out. Chief among them is Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), an unorthodox psychiatric doctor who places David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) under her care in a sparsely populated Philadelphia sanitarium.
