Emmy Watch: How Fargo Production Designer Re-Created ’70s Prairie Noir
Coming off 18 Emmy nominations and three wins in 2014, Fargo posed a frosty challenge to production designer Warren Alan Young as he tackled the limited series' second season. (They announce the nominees for this year’s Emmy Awards at 11:30 a.m. EST.) For the show, set in wintry 1979 Minnesota and filmed in Calgary, Young needed to conjure period-perfect storefronts, kitchens, cars and diners tailored precisely to creator Noah Hawley’s prairie noir vision. "Noah wanted us to create a world that looked,
The Man Behind the Brilliant Sets on Key & Peele & Time Traveling Bong
Gary Kordan was the production designer for the entire Key & Peele comedy series, the legendary sketch comedy show that was not just brilliantly performed, but ambitiously produced, from the costumes and sets to the direction. Kordan also helped build multiple eras for Time Traveling Bong, a three-part miniseries starring Ilana Glazer and Paul Downs from Broad City. Kordan created sets for a dozen different times in history,
SXSW 2016: A Q&A With the Writer/Director, Production Designer & Producer of American Fable
Many first time directors might find themselves tempted to make their debut entrance into the world of filmmaking with simple, festival-ready fare, but for Anne Hamilton, the writer and director of American Fable, that approach just wouldn’t do.
Standing as easily one of the most visually striking films to play at this year’s SXSW, American Fable is what Hamilton & Co. have labeled as a “fairytale thriller”
Mad Max: Fury Road Earns 6 Oscars, Crushing Technical Categories
It's not all that surprising that Mad Max: Fury Road did so well at the Oscars last night, winning six Oscars, the most for any film. George Miller's sand blasted chase epic was a technical marvel, reminding viewers what a thrill good, old fashioned stunts are. Although it's a mistake to consider the film solely a marvel of practical effects—there was a lot of great special effects required, they were simply more subtle than you typically get in a film of this size.
Oscars 2016: Spotlight Surprises With Best Picture Win
A genuinely surprising Oscars wrapped with Tom McCarthy's Spotlight winning Best Picture over equally likely contenders The Revenant and The Big Short. Mad Max: Fury Road cleaned up the technical awards, which wasn't surprising, but Mark Rylance beating out Sylvester Stallone for Best Supporting Actor sure was. Despite five nominations, Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn't pick up a single award (but droids C-3PO,
Know Your Oscar Nominees: Production Design
And we're back (again) for part VI of our "Know Your Oscar Nominees" technical guide. So far we've covered the short film category (that's live action, animation and documentary), visual effects, editing, costume design, and sound mixing and editing. Now it's time to look at production design.
If there’s an overwhelming theme that the films nominated for best achievement in production design share,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies‘s Production Designer Melds High Society With the Undead
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the film adaptation of the novel adaptation of Jane Austen’s iconic tome of class, manners, marriage, and love, opens this week. Starring Lily James as heroine Elizabeth Bennett and Sam Riley as Mr. Darcy, these two have something else on which to focus their fraught, unlikely courtship: the undead. As a zombie disease sweeps through the bucolic British countryside and London walls itself off from the plague,
The Real Effects Used to Simulate the Raging Sea in The Finest Hours
The Finest Hours tells the incredible true story of a daring rescue mission conducted by a handful of men from the Chatham, Massachusetts, Coast Guard when a huge storm struck New England on February 8, 1952. The storm ripped two 500-foot oil tankers in half, leaving their crews stranded at sea. Despite hurricane-force winds and 60-foot waves Bernie Webber (played by Chris Pine) successfully skippers a 36-foot wooden lifeboat, with a destroyed compass,
Production Designer Jon Billington Talks Alien Invasions in The 5th Wave
Director J Blakeson brings Rick Yancey’s novel The 5th Wave to the big screen this week, a blockbuster version of the popular young adult title. Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Cassie, a suburban teenager fighting for her life while searching for her younger brother, taken by aliens in the fifth of a series of deadly attacks on humanity. The unseen alien invaders, creative for their type, have explored a variety of ways to kill off humankind during the first four waves,
Get to Know Your Golden Globe Nominees for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Earlier we published a primer for the Golden Globe nominees for Best Motion Picture, Drama. The idea here is while you probably haven't had the time to see all these films, we have, and we've also interviewed a ton of people from them, thus offering you a chance to give these interviews a glance and bolster your film IQ going into the big night. You can do with this info what you want—we suggest you use it to casually mention minute details of the filmmaking process to whoever you might be watching with.
Chatting With Joy‘s Production Designer Judy Becker
Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and writer/director David O. Russell join forces again to tell the rags to riches story of Joy, a woman who built an empire on a clever design for a mop. We talk to production designer Judy Becker, who, like Lawrence and Cooper, also worked on Russell’s films Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, about being part of the Russell filmmaking family, how she was inspired by the Wizard of Oz and why she relished the chance to go full Dynasty when she was creating the set of the soap opera.
The Revenant‘s Production Designer Jack Fisk on Filming in the Great, Deadly Outdoors
Production designer Jack Fisk has worked with some of the greatest living directors over his long, distinguished career. Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Brian DePalma, Paul Thomas Anderson, and now, Alejandro González Iñárritu. The privilege of working with an auteur goes both ways in this case; these directors have sought out Fisk because he, like them, is an artist.
Fisk's work on Anderson's There Will Be Blood might be the closest antecedent to his incredible work designing
Brooklyn’s Production Designer Francois Seguin’s Period Perfection
Though the romance film is about as out of vogue as ever before, it’s a testament to the work behind director John Crowley’s Brooklyn that the quiet Saoirse Ronan-starring love story has become an Oscar favorite since its premiere at Sundance earlier this year. A respectful return to the traditions of melodrama, Brooklyn is stuffed with astonishing performances and masterful design, causing many critics to take note not just of the affecting emotional qualities,
Sandy Powell & Judy Becker on the Costumes & Sets Behind 1950’s Period Wonder Carol
Carol, a beautiful adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, about the evolution and dissolution of a relationship between two women in New York in the early 1950’s, opens today. Cate Blanchett stars as the title character, a lovely housewife in a convenient marriage (Kyle Chandler is Blanchett’s cuckolded husband) who embarks on a relationship with a younger store clerk, Therese (Rooney Mara). The film was directed by Todd Haynes and shot on a tight budget,
The Real Locations Used to Bring The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 to Life
To bring the Capitol to life in the final installment of The Hunger Games, director Francis Lawrence and production designer Philip Messina knew they needed to up the ante and look beyond Atlanta, where much of the production had previously taken place. They found locations in France and Germany that provided the unique combination of both futuristic and historic backdrops necessary to create the wartime metropolis that serves as the setting for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 2.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2‘s Production Designer on Creating the Capitol
Translating descriptions in a book to physical places for a movie is a tall challenge, one that risks leaving faithful readers disappointed. Production designer Philip Messina performed that translation four times in a row for Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series, culminating with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2.
The movie takes place as the rebel forces, including heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), storm the Capitol and seek to kill its leader,
Oscar-Winning Production Designer Adam Stockhausen on Bridge of Spies
Oscar-winning production designer Adam Stockhausen (who we previously interviewed for his work on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel) discusses his work on Steven Spielberg’s latest film, the Cold War-era Bridge of Spies, which is based on real events, and how you tackle such a well-documented period of history.
I understand Steven Spielberg is big on authenticity, particularly with this kind of true story.
HBO’s New Vinyl Trailer is Fast, Dirty, and Smashes You Over the Head
Back in September we interviewed Boardwalk Empire’s production designer Bill Groom, who was nominated for his fourth Emmy in a row for Terrence Winter’s prohibition era gangland drama. When we spoke, Groom was hard at work on HBO’s and Winter’s next big project, Vinyl, starring Boardwalk Empire alum Bobby Canavale as Richie Finestra, a hard charging music executive in 1970’s New York.
Building Life on Mars With The Martian’s Production Designer Arthur Max
Arthur Max has worked with director Ridley Scott as the production designer on everything from Gladiator to Prometheus. He talks to The Credits about working closely with NASA to create the (largely) scientifically accurate world of The Martian and how his work, and Hollywood generally, have a surprising history of influencing America’s space agencies’ designs.
The Martian is a sci-fi movie,
The Good Wife Set Decorator Beth Kushnick
Beth Kushnick has been a set decorator for approximately three decades. From the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, she worked on countless films including Jumanji, Private Parts and Frequency.
In the early part of this century, she moved predominantly to television where she worked on several programs — including 3 lbs., Law and Order: Trial by Jury and Canterbury’s Law —
