Oscar Watch: Baby Driver’s Supervising Sound Editor Dissects the Movie’s Unique Syncopated Style
As a contingency for speaking with me about his work on Baby Driver, supervising sound editor, sound designer, and re-recording mixer, Julian Slater, made me promise two things: watch it on a really good system and turn up the volume. After running a check on my speakers and ensuring my neighbors were out for the day, I cranked it up and was blown away. It would take dozens of viewings to begin to appreciate the layers of audio that Slater has choreographed for Baby Driver,
Sundance 2018: Trans Filmmaker Luis De Filippis on Their Bracing Directorial Debut For Nonna Anna
Toronto-based filmmaker Luis De Filippis’ short film For Nonna Anna focuses on the intergenerational relationship between a trans grandchild and their aging, ailing grandmother. Selected for Sundance’s Shorts Program, For Nonna Anna is a tender, achingly wrought stunner in miniature, one told by a filmmaker of remarkable skill and compassion.
“It is imperative as Trans people that we tell our own stories on screen,” De Filippis explained in For Nonna Anna‘s press materials.
Director Greg Barker & Obama Advisor Ben Rhodes on the President Obama Documentary The Final Year
Well into Barack Obama’s second term, filmmaker Greg Barker began chronicling the actions of the president’s foreign policy team. The result is The Final Year, which spotlights Secretary of State John Kerry, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and speechwriter and adviser Ben Rhodes, along with a few powerhouse cameos by Obama himself. The documentary observes policy discussions, but turns more on poignant moments. These include an election night in which the Obama camp’s hopes for its legacy are dashed.
How The Commuter DP Replicated a New York Train on a UK Soundstage
When cinematographer Paul Cameron got the call from Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra to film The Commuter with Liam Neesom, the Los Angeles-based director of photography faced a daunting question: How do you spend an hour of screen time in the cramped confines of a train and make it look exciting? The answer came to Cameron in the middle of the night, he says. “I envisioned this rig, drew it out and sent it to pre production saying ‘Here’s what I think we should do.”
Sundance 2018: Burden Cinematographer on Lensing a Timely Look at Racism in America
Australian cinematographer Jeremy Rouse moved his wife and two children to a small town in rural Georgia in order to join director Andrew Heckler’s debut drama Burden. The film, based on an astonishing true story, is a part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition, and is one of the most timely films screening here—in a year in which many of the entries deal with, either directly or indirectly,
Sundance 2018: Talking to The King Composer About How Elvis’s Life Mirrors Modern America
If you were going to try and diagnose America’s current overall political and social health through the lens of Elvis Presley’s life, you’d want documentarian Eugene Jarecki as your filmmaker. And for Jarecki, composer Robert Miller was the man he tapped when he thought about how to create a score that would help elucidate the connections he was trying to make, while also living comfortably in a film that would be filled with indelible music,
How Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams Producer Envisioned Sci-Fi Reboot
Paranoid, brilliant and prolific, sci-fi visionary Philip K. Dick not only wrote the source material for Minority Report and Blade Runner; he also churned out 130 short stories half a century ago that anticipated with eerie precision many of today’s man-versus-technology conundrums. Anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, now streaming on Amazon Prime, adapts Dick’s fiction as foundation for 10 episodes populated with robots, holograms, smart watches,
How the VFX Team Created Rotting, Terrifying Ghost Sharks for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
What does it take to create the visual effects for a film as massive as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? Try hundreds of dedicated artists working on set and in locations around the globe. Moving Picture Company deployed some 700 visual effects artists, as well as an on-set crew, to create some 1,200 shots for the film. One of the most inspired creations in Dead Men Tell No Tales were the skeletal great white and hammerhead sharks that menace our beloved pirates.
How Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri‘s Production Designer Fire-Proofed an Entire Location
By the time Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri production designer Inbal Weinberg joined up with Martin McDonagh, the writer-director had already spent months traveling the south in search of a title town. He found it in Sylva, North Carolina. Hired over Skype on the strength of her Americana-themed designs for Frozen River and The Place Beyond the Pines, Weinberg met McDonagh in person for the first time at the Asheville airport,
How I, Tonya‘s Makeup Department Head Helped Craft one of the Best Scenes in 2017
Arguably the most emotionally riveting moment in the hit film I, Tonya, happens in front of a makeup mirror.
The movie chronicles the life of figure skater Tonya Harding, who was implicated in a vicious assault on her rival skater Nancy Kerrigan shortly before the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
In the scene, Harding, played by Margot Robbie, sits alone in a darkened, silent room staring grimly at her reflection.
Oscar Watch: How The Post‘s Sound Designer Re-created 1971 Newsroom Hustle & Bustle
Gary Rydstrom has won four Oscar awards with his ingenious sound design, but none of that expertise prepared the veteran audio expert for the mundane obstacle he overcame to re-create the sonic tumult of the Washington Post newsroom circa 1971. Steven Spielberg’s The Post casts Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as publisher Kay Graham and editor Ben Bradlee, who risk treason charges from the White House by releasing portions of the Pentagon Papers.
Oscar Watch: Costume Designer Stacey Battat on Creating the Cloistered Couture of The Beguiled
Costume designer Stacey Battat last worked with Sofia Coppola on The Bling Ring, which featured a gang of fame-obsessed teenagers in Los Angeles who use social media to track celebrities whereabouts, then rob their homes when they’re gone. For her latest collaboration with Coppola, Battat had to travel back in time some 150 years to Civil War era Virginia, where she was tasked with dressing a largely female cast, set in a southern boarding school,
The Production Designer Who Recreated the Famous Kaczynski Evidence for Manhunt: Unabomber
Mentions of the Unabomber immediately call to mind the deadly postal packages containing explosives and that famous police sketch of the suspect in a hoodie. While working on Manhunt: Unabomber, production designer Erik Carlson realized, however, that the case actually hinged on hundreds of handwritten documents. The eight-episode Discovery Channel miniseries delved into the infamous FBI investigation that eventually resulted in Ted Kaczynski’s arrest. Carlson painstakingly recreated all 17 of the homemade bombs,
How a Scandal Director Pulled off the Most Explosive Episode of the Final Season
When Scandal first aired in 2012, it joined Grey’s Anatomy as must-see TV from prolific hit maker Shonda Rhimes, one of the most powerful and consistently excellent show creators in the business. Two years later, How to Get Away With Murder aired and ABC’s Thank God It’s Thursday lineup was born. Now in it’s final year, Scandal is going out with a bang. A crossover event with Murder was announced yesterday as stars Kerry Washington and Viola Davis swapped Instagram posts.
The Strange Ones Directors Play With Your Perceptions
Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein’s feature-length debut The Strange Ones is a slow burning, twisted coming-of-age story co-starring Alex Pettyfer and 14 year old James Freedson-Jackson, who won SXSW’s Special Jury Prize for breakthrough performance. He’s immensely deserving of the accolade, delivering a performance of almost unnerving poise for a 14-year-old actor. The film had begun its life as a short six years ago, but patience is a virtue in the filmmaking game,
Oscar Watch: SFX Makeup Artist Arjen Tuiten on the Immense Responsibility of Working on Wonder
The last time we spoke to special effects makeup artist Arjen Tuiten, he was explaining the laborious but successful transformation of Woody Harrelson into our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, for Rob Reiner’s LBJ. Working alongside makeup designer Ve Neil, Tuiten crafted new teeth, ears, age spots, freckles, and jowls for Harrelson. Becoming LJB also required reshaping Harrelson’s head so it matched the 6’4″ Texan’s, and the entire transformation process is one that no actor likes.
Oscar Watch: Director Luca Guadagnino on his Lush, Lyrical Call Me By Your Name
Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s lush and luscious love story Call Me By Your Name is an homage to the director’s love for cinema.
“Every movie is personal. This one connects me with my love for certain films,” says Guadagnino, citing French director Maurice Pialat’s À Nos Amours and the films of Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci as particular influences. “I was drawn to the possibility of telling this story through the lens of directors I love: Bertolucci,
Writer Extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin on his Directorial Debut Molly’s Game
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is famed for writing the words uttered by The West Wing’s imaginary president and the semi-fictionalized tech magnates of Steve Jobs and The Social Network. For his first film as a director, Sorkin scripted the dialogue of a criminal: Molly Bloom, a skier who turned to running big-money poker games after an injury ended her Olympic aspirations. Hardly a desperado, the title character of Molly’s Game is a thoughtful young woman played by Jessica Chastain.
Composer Henry Jackman on Channeling Indiana Jones for his Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Score
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is an action comedy set inside a computer game being played by four teenagers. We’ve already spoken with stunt performer Jahnel Curfman about how she helped star Karen Gillan, who plays the avatar Ruby Roundhouse, make the action feel as plausible and thrilling as possible. Now, we speak with composer Henry Jackman about how he to found a way to set the tone with music that matched the action,
Oscar Watch: The Disaster Artist Composer on Memorializing the Best Bad Movie Ever
Nearly everyone who loves a good story dreams of making their own movie at some point in their life. Very few actually ever try it, and even fewer succeed. In 2003, Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero set out to make The Room, a ‘real Hollywood movie’ that is often regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Ironically, their story has inspired one of this year’s strongest Oscar contenders. The Disaster Artist tells the story of two people who have been mocked as failures,
