Bad Times at the El Royale’s Art Director on Building the Lunatic Lodge

In Bad Night at the El Royale, location is everything. The titular lodge sets the mood and structures the interlocking plot twists suffered by seven shady characters who cross paths there on a stormy night in 1969. Director Drew Goddard wrote the story and production designer Martin Whist defined the vision. It was up to supervising art director Michael Diner to make sure all the physical pieces of the environment came together on time and on budget.

Ike Barinholtz on his Funny/Terrifying Directorial Debut The Oath

In a future that seems as if it could arrive tomorrow, American citizens are instructed to pledge their loyalty not to their country, but to the president. That’s the premise of The Oath, the first feature directed by Ike Barinholtz. The comic actor, known from such series as madTV and The Mindy Project, also wrote the satire, which begins as a family gathers for Thanksgiving dinner.

Barinholtz plays the host,

First Man Writer Josh Singer on how Great Moments Require Sacrifice

Screenwriter Josh Singer didn’t realize it at the time, but great things were just around the corner in 2014 when he and director Damien Chazelle first brainstormed their First Man movie about Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic 1969 mission to the moon. “It was actually a pretty low point for me,” Singer recalls. “The Fifth Estate, which I wrote, had come out and not done well at all.

Maniac Casting Director Avy Kaufman on Matching Parts and Players

Avy Kaufman segued from casting print ads to film and television 30 years ago, and based on the success and scope of her work since then; casting director is the role she was born to play. Her 256 credits, according to imdb.com, include a range of genres produced by big studios and indie filmmakers alike. Among her most notable movie projects are The Sixth Sense, Brokeback Mountain and Syriana. For television,

A Star is Born’s Sound Mixer on Capturing Brilliance Up-Close

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, and Cooper as Jackson Maine, the alcoholic rocker on the waning side of stardom who brings her into the spotlight.

VFX Artists Explain How They Made Venom Marvel’s Freakiest Character

For a superhero movie, Venom boasts an unusually strong cast of heavy hitters including Tom Hardy in the title role along with Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed. But in this Marvel Comics-based story, it’s the visual effects that drive the spectacle by transforming Hardy’s ordinary human reporter Eddie Brock into a tentacle-sprouting “symbiote” freak. To learn more about CGI-powered monster mutations, The Credits checked in with the VFX company DNEG in London,

How the Crazy Rich Asians Editor Helps Us Navigate the World of Singapore’s Elite

Crazy Rich Asians hinges on dynamics. The complicated web of relationships will either catch true love or tangle the unsuspecting couple. Rachel (Constance Wu) gets off to a rocky start with her boyfriend’s mother (Michelle Yeoh), but there are even more delicate power struggles within the family. In the elite Singapore circles of Crazy Rich Asians, a look, a gesture, or even a flower can be a symbol of judgment.

Nicole Holofcener on Adapting & Helming The Land of Steady Habits

She doesn’t really rehearse, shoots a limited number of takes and prefers not to watch dailies. While such an approach to filmmaking may seem a bit impractical to some, for writer/director Nicole Holofcener, it defines a decisiveness that has enabled her to produce a body of highly realistic and instantly relatable work.

In her past films — Walking and Talking, Lovely and Amazing, Friends With Money,

Three of Night School’s Writers on Developing the Hilarious Script

Is Night School the next Girls Trip? Like its predecessor, it’s simultaneously goofy and excellent, as well as helmed by Malcolm D. Lee, in which he directed Tiffany Haddish in her breakout role. Here, Haddish co-stars with Kevin Hart, who plays Teddy, a terrible high school student who grows up to be an ace barbecue salesman. All looks reasonably bright for Teddy until he accidentally burns down the store that employs him,

BlacKkKlansman Costume Designer Marci Rodgers on Dressing the Year’s Most Urgent Film

Costume designer Marci Rodgers was out of the country working on a movie when she got a call from Spike Lee. Rodgers and Lee worked together on his Netflix series (and adaptation from his feature film) She’s Gotta Have It, yet he was calling about a new project, a feature film based on an incredible true story about a black cop in Colorado Springs infiltrating a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.

White Boy Rick Director Yann Demange on Capturing Detroit’s Decline With Fresh Eyes

Detroit, the most American of cities, home of Ford and Motown, had by 1984 been, in many ways, been abandoned by America. It took an outsider, Paris-born, London raised director Yann Demange, to see this American story with fresh eyes and bring it to the screen in White Boy Rick.

“I didn’t know the history of Detroit. I had just moved to America. I was blown away as I read about the history of the most prosperous city;

How The House With a Clock in Its Walls was Actually Built

Horror master Eli Roth, known for directing The Hostel and Cabin Fever series, trades gore for wonder in his newest work, a PG adaptation of John Bellairs’ 1973 YA novel, The House With a Clock in Its Walls. Starring Jack Black as Uncle Jonathan, a self-proclaimed warlock, and Cate Blanchett as his sharp, competent witch neighbor, Florence Zimmerman, the plot of House and the fate of its young protagonist,

Real Navy Jets and Aviators Will Satiate Top Gun: Maverick‘s Need for Speed

The Navy may be as excited about the upcoming Top Gun remake as the fans.

“Much like the first film, these are going to be real jets and real U.S. Naval aviators flying in these scenes,” Naval Air Forces spokesman Commander Ronald Flanders told The Credits. “We’re excited about it.”

The movie is one of only two films currently supported by the Navy’s Hollywood office —  and the production underwent a lengthy approval process to obtain a production assistance agreement that outlines how the Navy will support the film,

TIFF 2018: The Tender Fragility of the Boy Erased Score

Boy Erased is a shattering portrayal of a family fractured by a challenge to their stringent religious beliefs. Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley, Lucas Hedges plays Jared, a young man from a religious family who begins to realize he is gay. Jared’s parents send him to a church-sanctioned conversion therapy camp where he struggles to find acceptance even within. Hedges’ performance is fragile and vulnerable, which makes many of the story’s events difficult to watch.

TIFF 2018: The Front Runner Composer Rob Simonsen on Scoring a Political Upheaval

Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner centers on Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman)’s doomed 1988 presidential campaign, undone by the candidate’s extramarital affairs and a media landscape shifting beneath his feet. The film plunges you into the fevered weeks when Hart’s campaign unravels, seemingly hour by hour, as the talented senator refuses to face the reality of his actions and his staff is left scrambling to play defense.

You’ll likely be too caught up in the drama (and marveling at a time when a politicians’ infidelities were career-enders) to notice just what composer Rob Simonsen‘s score is doing,

TIFF 2018: The Time-Altering Superpower of the Widows Editor

Oscar-nominated editor Joe Walker has spent a lot of time thinking about time. Our perception of time may change over the course of our lives, but in truth, it’s always experienced forwards. One thing happens after another and there is no way (yet) to go back. In Walker’s movies, however, time is a tool he can use to manipulate a story. When does a character know something? Is there a secret in the past that explains the present?

TIFF 2018: The Sister Brothers Director & Co-Writer on Their Funny, Soulful Western

When Patrick DeWitt’s novel “The Sisters Brothers” was published in 2011, something new was afoot in its pages. A bloody western set during the gold rush, it had everything you’d expect; gunfights, whiskey, brothels, and ne’er-do-wells of all stripes lusting after the riches buried in the rivers and mountains of California. These genre tropes, expertly handled by DeWitt, were the grimy, gritty package in which he delivered the story’s real gold— the titular Sister brothers and their endless,

TIFF 2018: First Man Actor Skyler Bible on Working on Damien Chazelle’s Revelatory Space Drama

First Man represents the first time we’re getting a full-blown biopic about the legendary astronaut Neil Armstrong. Academy-award winning director Damien Chazelle‘s film, scripted by Spotlight and The Post‘s Academy-award winning scribe Josh Singer (based on the book by James R. Hansen) tells the story behind the first manned mission to the moon, with the focus squarely on Armstrong (Ryan Gosling). The Apollo 11 mission that ultimately leads to Armstrong’s iconic first steps on the moon took a decade to prepare,

TIFF 2018: Hans Zimmer on The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman 1984 & More

Hans Zimmer is no stranger to working with directors who have a ferocious passion. Yesterday, we published our interview with the Oscar-winning composer about his score for Steve McQueen’s thrilling crime drama Widows. Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score blended perfectly with McQueen’s film about three women navigating the criminal underworld in Chicago to pull off a nearly impossible bank heist. They’re attempting to pay off their dead husband’s deaths and forge their own paths,

TIFF 2018: Legendary Composer Hans Zimmer on Scoring Steve McQueen’s Sensational Widows

Hans Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score for Widows gets under your skin. The legendary composer creates a sonic environment that feels as pressurized and cloistered as the predicament of our four heroines. When you see Steve McQueen’s brilliant crime drama, you’ll notice a persistent humming throughout. As the stakes rise for the three women at the center of the story (the widows of three dead criminals who now must pull off a monumentally dangerous heist to pay off their debts and forge a path of their own),