How Transformers Construction Coordinator Jonas Kirk Managed a Crew of 200
The role of the construction coordinator is a massive one. For Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, Jonas Kirk was the man responsible for the building and manufacturing of the massive sets the film required, which meant bringing in all the equipment, building and moving massive structures, managing the production budget and keeping his 200-man crew on schedule and on budget.
This was a tall order considering the production took place in Texas,
The Grand Budapest Hotel Production Designer Adam Stockhausen Goes Handmade
Seven years ago, a young art director was given an appropriately quirky assignment on the set of The Darjeeling Limited: design the dishes for the dining cabin of Wes Anderson’s India-traversing train. It took “an awful lot of versions” to win over the discerning director, but Adam Stockhausen must have made a good impression—since then, he has served as production designer on Anderson’s last two films, Moonrise Kingdom and The
Building a Plane From Scratch With the Production Designer of Non-Stop
Have you ever walked through a missile silo? What about into the Oval Office or onto an alien planet? We didn’t think so. But chances are each of the millions of moviegoers who have flocked to see Non-Stop know what the inside of an airplane looks like. And since he was charged with creating an interior that looked totally realistic and doubled as a functional movie set, that posed a pretty big challenge for production designer Alec Hammond.
In Their Words: Some of This Year’s Oscar Nominees on Their Craft, Part I
One of the strongest years in recent cinema history will officially come to a close this Sunday at the 86th annual Academy Awards. What just about everyone agrees on is that, with a few exceptions (most people seem fairly convinced Cate Blanchett has Best Actress locked up, for example), it’s anyone’s guess (including our social awards season app, the DataViz—but it's doing just a little bit more than guessing) who might take home Oscar.
The Monuments Men Production Designer Jim Bissell Re-Creates a Ruined Europe
In The Monuments Men, art experts weave through battlefields and behind enemy lines in order to find art looted by the Nazis. Before he was a dictator, Adolf Hitler was an art student, and he planned to take the best art from the countries he conquered and assemble it in a museum that would rival the Louvre in Paris. It was the act of a lunatic, and The Monuments Men had to capture that scope.
Production Designer K.K. Barrett on Creating Her’s Beautiful Future
One walks out of the theater after seeing writer/director Spike Jonze’s Her with lots of different feelings. First, and perhaps foremost, is a kind of bittersweet hope—similar to the way Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes you feel when it ends. These are films about love, warts and all, and what we’ll put ourselves through in pursuit of it.
In Sunshine,
The Many Moving Parts to The LEGO Movie
The toys and games of our youth have long been fodder for filmmakers. There have been six films (all direct-to-video, it should be noted) made from Mattel’s ‘American Girls’ line. Dungeons & Dragons was made into a feature film in 2000 and starred Oscar winning actor Jeremy Irons. G.I. Joe has been called into duty twice, in 2009 and just this year, in monster big budget spectacles. Transformers have been clanging their multi-purpose parts together since 2007 in three films,
Star Wars: Episode VII’s Galaxy of Talent Behind J.J. Abrams
As useful as IMDBpro is, it’s recommendable to take the “projects in development” rubric with at least a grain or two of salt. Because really, how could one man have 28 projects in development, including the next Star Trek and Mission Impossible, while also working on a little film franchise called Star Wars?
If it were any one other than J.J. Abrams, you’d be right to assume that most of these would fall through,
Breaking Down Rom-Com Master Richard Curtis’s About Time
Richard Curtis wrote three of the most beloved romantic comedies of the mid 90s and early 2000s—in a remarkable string, he penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary (which he co-wrote with Helen Fielding and Andrew Davies). His directorial debut in 2003, Love Actually, which he also wrote, was an international success and helped create cross-pond love for fantastic actors like Bill Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor (now poised for an Oscar nomination for his starring role in 12 Years a Slave),
Building the Perfect Engine: The Filmmakers Behind Universal’s Rush
Ron Howard’s Rush hits theaters September 20, and early reviews are hailing it as one of the greatest racing movies of all time. Centered on the intense, often brutal rivalry between Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) during the 1976 Formula 1 season, Rush itself was built with the scrutiny and care of a great race car team. Once Peter Morgan's script made the rounds, an incredible team of filmmakers was assembled to create one of the year's most exciting films,
From Return of the Jedi to Jack the Giant Slayer, the Worlds of Production Designer Gavin Bocquet
Starting out as a draftsman on Return of the Jedi (1983), Gavin Bocquet’s career as a production designer coincided with the development and implementation of CGI technology into all spheres of the movie business. Bocquet was at the forefront of that revolution, working regularly for George Lucas, honing his craft on the TV show The Young Indiana Jones Adventures and the trilogy of Star Wars prequels. His career reflects the developing integration between practical production design and ever evolving CGI technology.
He Builds It, Audiences Come: A Q&A With A Good Day to Die Hard Production Designer Daniel Dorrance
Production designer Daniel Dorrance’s career has been something of a monster movie carnival. That’s not to say he’s worked exclusively on movies about monsters, but rather almost exclusively on giant, sprawling epics. He’s been responsible for the creation of massive sets and managing huge departments while answering to some of the heaviest of heavy weight directors. Those directors include Steven Spielberg (Hook, Saving Private Ryan), Francis Ford Coppola (Dracula),
A Conversation With Broken City Director Allen Hughes
Allen Hughes has been making films with his twin brother, Albert, since they were 12-year- olds running around their house in Pomona, east of Los Angeles, with a video camera their mom had given them. The Hughes Brothers (as they are often credited) co-wrote and co-directed their first major feature, Menace II Society, when they were 20 years old.
Since then, the twins have made a number of gritty,
Building Beauty: A Conversation With Sarah Greenwood, Production Designer on Anna Karenina.
When thrice Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood signed on to Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, she had complete trust in her longtime collaborator—but both had a nagging yet unspoken concern about how they would turn Karenina into something more than a straightforward period adaptation like the two had done on Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. Coming fresh off of 2011’s Hanna,
