The Amazing & Unconventional Creations of the Black Panther Makeup Designer
If Wakanda were a real place, its tourism would be booming right now. Black Panther is a visual feast that celebrates the best of Africa in bold and colorful ways through a fantasy utopia. Visiting the theater is the closest fans can come to seeing Wakanda up close, and they were rewarded with well researched and stunning designs. The makeup design, production design, and costume design were so enveloping that people were actually searching for flights to Wakanda.
Graphic Designer Erica Dorn Sweats the Details for Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
When Erica Dorn heard Wes Anderson needed a London-based, Japanese-speaking graphic designer for his new stop-motion movie, she jumped from the world of advertising into her first feature film and helped produce the precision-tooled typography, signage, documents and product packaging now on display in Isle of Dogs. Born and raised in Japan, Dorn moved at age 18 to England to study illustration, then worked on branding campaigns. Passing a two-week Isle of Dogs audition,
Broken Down, Dirtied, and Greased Up: Designing the Costumes of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Evil has never had a more sumptuous wardrobe than in Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), who fancies himself a great actor, utilizes thinly veiled, yet tremendously detailed costumes to fool the show’s dimwitted adults. Costume designer Cynthia Summers created Olaf’s many aliases, as well as the clothing for the rest of the cast, in season two.
“I think it’s wackier,” Summers said of the new episodes.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Production Designer Recreates 1958-era Manhattan
Production designer Bill Groom doesn’t remember much about 1958. After all, he was just eight years old when the feisty and fictitious Midge Maisel roamed the streets of New York. So when Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan Palladino asked him to conjure mid-century Manhattan for their Amazon period piece comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which started streaming on Amazon earlier this month, Groom did what he always does: research. Lots of research.
Unsane‘s Production Designer & Set Decorator on Perfecting Paranoia
On the surface, the most notable thing about Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane is that the ever-experimental filmmaker captured the frenzied 90-minutes with the assistance of a handful of iPhones, a down and dirty technique that nevertheless gives the film what Soderbergh calls a “velvet” smoothness. It’s a daring choice from an ever evolving filmmaker, but Usane’s greatest strength isn’t all in its technical wizardry. It’s the film’s ability to send any viewer veering off kilter nearly as soon as the action onscreen begins – it’s all unsettling angles,
Watch VFX Artists Help Create Thousands of Stop-Motion Animation Sports Fans in Early Man
Stop-motion animation is a form of movie magic that has astounded audiences for years. Just last week, we spoke to Isle of Dogs production designer Paul Harrod about the incredible level of detail, and ingenuity, required to pull of Wes Anderson’s latest stop-motion masterpiece (he already has The Fantastic Mr. Fox under his belt).
Stop-motion animation involves physically moving the objects in the film, usually clay made,
Ayşe Toprak on her Groundbreaking Documentary Mr. Gay Syria
The devastating Syrian civil war has made an impact on international film audiences largely thanks to two powerful documentaries: the Oscar-winning The White Helmets (2016) and the Oscar nominee Last Men in Aleppo (2017). Although director Ayşe Toprak’s new documentary Mr. Gay Syria tells its story against the backdrop of the civil war that’s killed 300,000 people since it began in 2011 and caused five million to flee and become refugees,
Beirut Screenwriter Tony Gilroy on Writing, Waiting, and Rocky Receptions
Tony Gilroy might have made his screenwriting debut with the 1992 cult ice-rink romance The Cutting Edge, but for much of his long, illustrious run in the business, he has focused on thrills and action. As both as a writer (the first four chapters of the Bourne franchise, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Great Wall) as well as directing (Michael Clayton,
Production Designer Paul Harrod on Building Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson’s latest caper, Isle of Dogs, premieres today after a warm reception last month as the opening night film at the Berlinale. The film sees Anderson making a return to stop motion animation, following The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and working in both Japanese (the human characters) and English (the canines, who are presumed to be speaking translated dog). A complex set involves a past-futuristic fictional Japanese city, called Megasaki,
Accept, Enjoy, Enthuse: Jeff Goldblum on his Mantra, Isle of Dogs & More
Jeff Goldblum is a bon vivant at heart. He always seems to be having a good time no matter what he is doing. No wonder he told Vanity Fair that his mantra is “Accept, enjoy, enthuse.” Even when he is only heard and not seen, as is the case in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion, Japanese-infused adventure Isle of Dogs, the 65-year-old actor brings joy to his role as Duke,
Pacific Rim: Uprising‘s VFX Supervisor on Creating 300-Foot Monsters in Photo-Realistic backdrops
When he was a British schoolboy, Peter Chiang used to stand in the local bookstore staring at the covers of science fiction paperbacks and dreaming about fantastical scenarios. “I just loved the imagery,” says Chiang. “I started illustrating space ships and monsters and creatures, growing up on Thunderbirds sci-fi cartoon series here in the UK, and watching Blade Runner, which had a huge impact on my life. I remember thinking ‘I want to do that.'”
How Billions‘ Production Designer Created the World of the Insanely Rich
Three years ago production designer Mike Shaw needed a change of pace from the lowdown penitentiary aesthetic he created for Orange is the New Black. In Showtime series Billions, Dash went the opposite way by designing the deluxe milieu inhabited by super-rich hedge fund shark Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis). “One of the biggest challenges in designing Billions is that a lot of people know what a millionaire’s lifestyle is like,
The Composing Team for Life Sentence Gives A New Beginning a Fresh Sound
Time seems to go by too fast. You rush to work, cram in family events at night and meet friends on the weekend. Suddenly weeks, months and years fly by. What we often forget is that life is also long. Much longer that Stella expected on new CW dramedy Life Sentence.
Lucy Hale plays a cancer patient who believes she has months left to live, only to find out she’s been cured.
How the Isle of Dogs Animators Drew Life from the Characters Frame By Frame
Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox was an incredible feat of animation. The storytelling transcended the inanimate objects and you can hardly believe the characters are mere puppets. A new featurette for Isle of Dogs dives deep into the artists’ methodology, giving us an incredible 3-minute documentary of the life of a stop-motion animated film.
Breathing a character into a lump of clay requires comprehensive planning. The film started in a storyboard,
Master of Movement: Dance Loving Director Duane Adler on his new Film Heartbeats
Duane Adler is the man who brought us the original Step Up with Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum dancing and falling in cinematic real-life love on screen. His films are affectionate updates of the classic dance movies like Top Hat and An American in Paris, with gorgeously staged musical numbers that allow the characters to communicate and move the story forward. His latest film is Heartbeats,
Chatting With Rising Star Zoey Deutch About her Critically Acclaimed Performance in Flower
Over the last few years, Zoey Deutch has been carving out a choice spot in the hierarchy of Hollywood ingenues. She stole every scene as Beverly in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! and has left a strong impression in every one of her roles. A young lady known for her commitment to equality and social change, Deutch won the Women in Film Max Mara Face of the Future in 2017,
The Death of Stalin Writer/Director Armando Iannucci On Finding Humor in the Horror of Politics
For some, politics is a horrific affair, but that’s not the case with writer/director Armando Iannucci. Throughout his illustrious career, Iannucci has found humor and humanity in the political world.
The auteur created the hit HBO comedy Veep, which has been making viewers cringe, laugh and marvel (it has somehow anticipated, with bracing, unfortunate clarity, our current bonkers political moment) since 2012. Before that, he produced the 2005 British television comedy The Thick of It,
Watch Hugh Jackman’s Evil Logan Clone X-24 Come to Life
James Mangold‘s Logan was special. It recently made Oscar history as the first comic book-based screenplay nominated for an Academy Award, and in fashioning a brutal, brilliant and pared down story for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (his real name is, of course, Logan), it was perhaps the most fitting farewell a superhero has ever gotten. One of the film’s signature achievements was giving Jackman’s ailing Logan a nemesis worthy of the notoriously resilient mutant,
Tomb Raider‘s Production Designer on Creating a Grittier, More Realistic Adventure
Tomb Raider is back, with a leaner, grittier, younger, and altogether more relatable Lara Croft, played by Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, at its center. As with the first two Tomb Raider films, which came out in 2001 and 2003, starring Angeline Jolie as the aristocratic Croft, both how to make and how to interpret the movie as it relates to its wildly popular video game source material has remained a present factor.
Lean on Pete‘s Composer on why This Gorgeous Film Needed a Live Score
Though the score created for Lean on Pete is placed only in chosen scenes, those scenes are chosen expertly. The score is a powerful element that helps bring cohesion to the emotional and physical journey taking place in the movie. Lean on Pete is by acclaimed filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), and is based on the novel by Willy Vlautin. The story’s centered on fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer),
