How the Black Panther Production Designer Rooted the World’s Most Advanced Nation in African Culture
Everyone on the set of Black Panther felt 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. It was a challenge that would require the greatest talents of our time to come together. Miraculously, it seems they did.
Watch How They Made the Thunderbird, Obscurus & More in This Fantastic Beasts VFX Breakdown
It takes a small army (or sometimes a middle-sized one) to make a film like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. When you have a wizard losing a briefcase full of magical creatures in Jazz age New York City, you’re going to need a really good visual effects company. Thankfully for Warner Bros., director David Yates and his screenwriter J.K. Rowling (the original creator of the entire Wizarding world, of course) they had Double Negative Visual Effects.
The Breadwinner‘s Oscar-Nominated Director on Her Animated Film About a Girl Who Outsmarts the Taliban
When Irish director Nora Twomey auditions actors for her animated movies, she does not look at them. She listens. And when 10-year old Saara Chaudry tried out for the starring role in The Breadwinner, Twomey liked what she heard. “I put up drawings on the wall and look at the pictures of the characters to see if they match what I’m listening to,” says Twomey. “Saara had so much range and depth I immediately felt ‘This is Parvana.'”
Billy Zane on Playing the Evil King Balek in Samson
Samson’s tyrannical King Balek is not the first time Billy Zane has played the bad guy. He is probably best remembered as the arrogant Caledon Hockley in the Oscar-winning blockbuster Titanic. And he played a villain in the thriller Dead Calm. But he also was a quintessential “cool dude” in Zoolander, and his roles have ranged from a singing lawyer (in Chicago on stage) to an ex-demon on Charmed.
Oscar-Nominated Disaster Artist Screenwriters on the Art of Adaptation
Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter have a history of bringing character-driven stories to the big screen. They co-wrote the 2009 drama (500) Days of Summer together and they’ve successfully adapted several beloved books into screenplays.
In 2013, their cinematic adaptation of Tim Tharp’s novel The Spectacular Now arrived in theaters to rave reviews. A year later, their adaptation of John Green’s bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars opened to critical and commercial success.
Damon Cardasis on Bringing Authenticity to His Coming-of-Age LGBTQ Musical Drama Saturday Church
From interning for a casting director in Los Angeles, to working with producer Scott Rudin back in his native New York, to serving as an on-set assistant and post supervisor for and later as a co-producer with producer/director/writer Rebecca Miller, Damon Cardasis has experienced the in and outs of the filmmaking business. He is perhaps best known for producing Maggie’s Plan, starring Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke, through the production company he formed and still operates with Miller called Round Films — until now that is.
The Costume Designer Who Made Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating The Best Dressed Women on TV
The dreamiest clothing on TV lives on ABC’s Thursday night lineup. Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) gorgeous suits and capes started a frenzy on Scandal and Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) is the most suave dressed lawyer in any room on How to Get Away With Murder. Legendary costume designer Lyn Paolo created Olivia Pope’s iconic look and has taken over Annalise’s wardrobe. Paolo has a knack for signing onto long running shows with huge fan bases.
Watch Tom Cruise’s Insane Helicopter Stunt in Mission: Impossible – Fallout
We’ve written plenty in the past about Tom Cruise’s death wish. Or, to put it another way, Tom Cruise’s incredible dedication to pulling off increasingly insane stunts in his films, primarily in the Mission: Impossible series he’s been starring in for 22 years. We also wrote about how Cruise spent a year prepping for a stunt in the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Fallout,
I, Tonya‘s Oscar-Nominated Editor Tatiana S. Riegel on What Makes a Scene Work and Why
One could make a case that the most competitive category in the upcoming Oscars isn’t for best picture or best director, but for film editing. Your nominees represent a fantastic cross section of genres and styles—Baby Driver‘s insanely perfect music-to-mayhem editing; the gorgeously cut, perspective-swapping World War II epic Dunkirk; the feverish revenge drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and the perfectly paced, dreamy and dread filled The Shape of Water.
Talking Frank Capra and Marmalade Addiction with Paddington 2 Director Paul King
Paul King, the director behind Paddington 2 is 100% lovely. Fitting for a gent who created a film with 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, right?
For the sequel to 2015’s hit Paddington, King collaborated with writer Simon Farnaby on the script and reunited the core cast of Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Ben Whishaw. This go around, he adds Hugh Grant to the mix,
Cinematographer Neville Kidd on Visualizing Netflix’s Epic New Sci-Fi Series Altered Carbon
In sci-fi series Altered Carbon (streaming Friday, Feb 2, on Netflix), the streets of San Francisco 350 years in the future teem with pulsating 3D ads, flying cop cars, prostitute holograms and “sleeves,” formerly known as human bodies, embedded with “cortical stacks” of consciousness that enable rich people to live forever. Inhabiting one of those sleeves is recently resurrected rebel soldier Takishi Kovacs (Joel Kinnamen of The Killing),
Actress Daniela Vega & Writer/Director Sebastian Lelio on Their Oscar-Nominated Film A Fantastic Woman
Chile-bred, Berlin-based director Sebastian Lelio has become an international filmmaker who moves between styles and countries. He’s also exceptionally prolific, with not one but three movies awaiting release. First up is A Fantastic Woman, one of this year’s five foreign-film Oscar contenders, which will be released today, Feb. 2, in the U.S. It’s the tale of a transgender woman, played by Daniela Vega, who fights for her right to grieve her older lover after his sudden death.
Early Man Co-composer on Collaboration & Finding The Right Caveman Yells
To soundtrack fans, British composer Tom Howe may not be a household name, but he’s been clocking eighteen hour workdays for over a decade, and has over sixty IMDB credits to his name. He believes some of the most rewarding and successful projects on that list have been collaborations. Howe got on the international radar by creating theme music for The Great British Bake-Off. In 2017, he scored the music for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and created additional music on the blockbuster Wonder Woman itself.
Costume Designer April Napier on Crafting Early Aughts Authenticity in Lady Bird
It’d be an understatement to say Lady Bird has taken the country by storm. After quietly positive bows at Telluride and TIFF earlier this year, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut has gone on to become one of the best-reviewed film of all time on Rotten Tomatoes (until a certain someone got the score lowered from a perfect 100 to a near-perfect 99), score five Oscar nominations in a heavily competitive year and stack up a $40M+ box office against a shoestring budget.
A Peek Inside the Baby Driver Sound Editing Bay
We recently spoke with Julian Slater who provided the sound design, editing, and mixing for Baby Driver. In conjunction with the amazing work of Oscar nominated editor, Paul Machliss, Baby Driver was one of the most stunning films of the year. Slater has since scored two Oscar nominations for his epic feat that synched the killer soundtrack with an incredible array of effects. IndieWire released a short video that will take you inside Slater’s editing bay to witness the magic in action.
Writers/Directors The Spierig Brothers on Their Deliciously Detailed Horror Winchester
What makes an enduring haunted house classic? Much can be said for dread-inducing camera work, eerie sound design or clever ghostly effects, but for the Spierig brothers, it’s the human story underneath that can transform a horror flick from simply scary to downright legendary. Enter Winchester, a dramatization of the curious true-life mystery of Sarah Winchester and her fascinating, illogical home known as the Winchester Mystery House. And while the details of the true story are sketchy at best,
Baby Driver‘s Oscar Nominated Editor Paul Machliss on Marrying Music to Mayhem
Of all the masterly edited films of 2017, it would be hard to argue any were quite as revolutionary as Baby Driver. Edgar Wright’s music-charged heist flick was so flawlessly designed and edited it seemed almost as if the songs on the soundtrack had been recorded specifically for the scenes they amplified. In our interview with supervising sound editor Julian Slater, we learned, among other things, that the brilliantly matched music-and-turbo-charged-getaways were so complicated,
Living Biblically‘s Showrunner on Bringing the Bible to CBS—in a Comedy
A.J. Jacobs’ best seller, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, is now a new television sit-com that premiered on CBS on February 26, 2018. Mad Men’s Jay R. Ferguson plays Chip, a journalist who consults a priest (Ian Gomez) and a rabbi (David Krumholtz) for guidance when he is rocked by two life-changing events, the death of a friend and the news that his wife is having a baby.
Inside how The Final Year Looks Back on President Obama’s Swan Song
There once was a time, not long ago, when the sum of US foreign policy goals couldn’t be distilled to an acronym that fit on a hat. Simply stating such a thing might inspire yearning for eighteen months past — or stoke the fires of long-burning vitriol. The Final Year, director Greg Barker’s evenhanded front-row look at a swath of the last Presidential administration’s policies being enacted, or at least striven for,
Director Paul McGuigan on Nabbing the Perfect Actress to Play Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Scottish director Paul McGuigan, whose credits include Lucky Number Slevin and Victor Frankenstein, says he tries not to watch his own films too often “because you start to go nuts.” But his latest, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, was different. “I’ve watched it more than any of them because I still find it moving myself, the pairing of Annette [Bening] and Jamie [Bell]. I find it moving and touching because they were real people.”
Those real people are Hollywood icon Gloria Grahame (Bening) who starred in numerous films in the 40s and 50s and won an Oscar in 1952 for The Bad and the Beautiful and Peter Turner,
