Page 102 – Motion Picture Association

Best of 2022: How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight

Posted on December 27, 2022December 21, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career, Weingarten’s mixed on Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic Dunkirk, traveled to another dimension in Interstellar, captured the spirit of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, and tracked the drama behind The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In director Joseph Kosinski’s world-beating Top Gun: Maverick, the hurdle was finding a way to usably record the actors’ dialogue inside fighter jet cockpits pulling up to 7Gs.

The journey for Weingarten began with a heavy dose of research and preparation. Since Kosinski sought to have all the inflight dialogue recorded, whether it was plane to plane communications, plane to ground, or an actor saying something to themselves, like when Tom Cruise whispers one of Maverick’s iconic lines, “Talk to me Goose,” the sound mixer needed a solution for every possibility. On top of that, production would be using the working flight masks worn by pilots which, at times, would be covering the actor’s faces while needed oxygen flowed through them.

Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Credit: Scott Garfield. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation.

“Initially in prep I thought about running a microphone into their masks but decided against it because the masks are fully functional, providing oxygen as well as enabling critical communications,” says Weingarten. “I didn’t want to do anything that could possibly interfere with any of that. I knew there already was a microphone built into the mask, I thought if there was a way I could tap into that existing microphone, I might be able to record the inflight dialogue, then listen to it during dailies and hear if the quality of the audio would be acceptable to use in the final film. I thought we should also put another lavalier microphone on their survival vests, which is their outermost garment, in case there were dialogue scenes among the actors with their masks hanging open.”

GREG TARZAN DAVIS PLAYS "COYOTE" IN TOP GUN: MAVERICK FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, SKYDANCE AND JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS. — GREG TARZAN DAVIS PLAYS “COYOTE” IN TOP GUN: MAVERICK FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, SKYDANCE AND JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS.

During an early tech scout, Weingarten pieced together some of the puzzle. “I was able to connect with the Navy’s internal plane communications department, which oversees all the internal communications in the planes, and they showed me all the places where I could possibly tap in to record the dialogue. The only problem was that every option was no good for one reason or another,” he says.

Diving into the matter further, the sound mixer learned that there is a connection on the inside of the survival vest that could allow him to record the dialogue. Weingarten touched base with the Navy’s Aircrew Survival Equipmentment (PR) department, which oversees the survival vests and oxygen masks. After the visit, he was able to confirm his idea of tapping into the vest to record the microphone audio from the mask.

The camera setup inside the F/A-18F cockpit was elaborate. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda (with the help of 1st AC Dan Ming and key grip Trevor Fulks, who sadly passed away from stage four metastatic esophageal cancer before the film’s theatrical release) configured six Sony Venice cameras, four looking back at the actor and two looking forward. Miranda opted to use the Sony Rialto Camera Extension System, which allows the sensor and lens to be separated from the camera body, for one of the cameras looking back at the actor and two looking forward over the pilot’s shoulder. Everything was wired so the actor could flip a single switch to start recording all six cameras along with the sound recorder. This was done for two different fighter jets in addition to the coverage captured jet to jet or helicopter to jet.

For sound, Weingarten originally recorded directly from the microphone from the pilot’s mask using a special adapter that he had custom-made, which connected the cable from the survival vest into a Lectrosonics SM wireless transmitter. The audio would then be transmitted to a Lectrosonics 411 receiver which was connected to a Sound Devices 744T recorder and mounted inside the cockpit. Similar to the camera setup, the audio could be triggered to start or stop recording via the remote. The sound team also placed a secondary wireless lavalier and Lectrosonics SM transmitter on the actors for dialogue without their masks.

“The first time we got to try out the setup was with Tom’s [Cruise] initial flight while he was acting. Everything through the mask microphone and the secondary lavalier sounded great,” says Weingarten. “But when we were watching dailies, Tom noticed something in the frame, just over his shoulder. It turned out to be the Sound Devices 744T and the 411 receivers. We had to figure out another solution.”

Back at the drawing board, Weingarten found a way to simplify the setup even further. “I ended up buying several Lectrosonics PDR recorders, which can record audio directly from a microphone source and sync timecode. They are about the same size as the Lectrosonics SM transmitters and could fit inside the survival vests. It meant we no longer needed the Lectrosonics 411 receivers or the Sound Devices recorder.”

The streamlined setup did however have one hiccup. The actors would no longer be able to trigger the start/stop recording through the remote setup which Cruise (who also served as producer) asked for specifically. Instead, the PDR recorders would start recording just before the actors put on their survival vests and would remain recording from takeoff until landing. “My boom operator Tom Caton and I talked directly to Cruise about the change and he could not have been cooler. Tom was incredibly nice and said it was a great solution,” says Weingarten.

With the new setup, the Lectrosonics PDR was connected directly into the microphone inside the mask via the survival vest where both picture and sound were synced via timecode. A second PDR and lavalier were initially used to record the “mask off” audio but during production, Weingarten found the audio from the mask microphone “was great even for the scenes when the masks were open.”

“Over time we scrapped the second lavalier and went down to one microphone,” says Weingarten. “The main reason is this thing the Navy calls Foreign Object Damage (FOD). It concerns any objects that can come loose during flights and potentially cause a crash. It’s a big concern, so the more minimal we went the better. In the end, all the inflight dialogue was recorded from the connections in the vest, and there wasn’t one line looped.”

Weingarten replicated the solution for each flight, of which there were hundreds, to capture the epic aerial sequences in the film. The audio was recorded onto a 16GB microSD card that slid into each PDR. “Before each flight, we would place a PDR inside the actor’s survival vest, start recording, and then retrieve it at the end of the day. The nice thing about the PDRs is you can split a mono input and reduce one channel of audio down -20dB, so if the audio starts to over modulate on one channel, the second channel will be fine.”

Looking back, the sound mixer recalls it was “one of the nicest, most collaborative movies” he’s been on. “Joe is one of the nicest director’s I have ever met. He’s super kind, respectful, smart, and well prepared. He really made it a delightful experience. Plus, everyone on the cast and crew was very helpful. We all had to navigate working with the Navy and their rules and everyone was there to help each other out.”

For more on Top Gun: Maverick, check out these stories:

Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” Makes History Again

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Tom Cruise’s Historic “Top Gun: Maverick” Opening Weekend

Going to Flight School With “Top Gun: Maverick” Stars Glen Powell & Greg Tarzan Davis

Featured image: Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

Best of 2022: “The Batman” Cinematographer Greig Fraser on Finding Light in the Darkness

Posted on December 26, 2022December 16, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

At a gripping three hours, The Batman isn’t so much an endurance test as it is a lengthy visual puzzle, one that takes place primarily after hours. Director Matt Reeves’s take on Batman (Robert Pattinson) may be the franchise’s most disaffected nocturnal not-so-superhero yet. Working, brooding, and convening with Alfred (Andy Serkis) from dusk ’til dawn, this Bruce Wayne is consumed by trying to undo a complex web of official corruption hidden by Gotham City’s entrenched crop of violent mafiosos.

Batman’s also working against the Riddler (Paul Dano), an incel type serial killer who, thinking himself more clever than his ploys would otherwise suggest, has deluded himself into believing he is simultaneously working with Batman to bring Gotham into the light while dragging Bruce Wayne’s late parents into the city’s eternal muck. But Batman works alone and besides, if ever he were to be tempted to take on an associate, it would be Selina (Zoë Kravitz), an employee at the Iceberg Lounge (which manages to be a credible techno club, mafioso-run den of iniquity, and crooked bureaucrat hangout zone in one.) Selina, a devoted Catwoman to both her feline and human friends, is working on what Gotham really needs: seeking clarity and vengeance for her missing colleague Annika, just one of many women harmed by Gotham’s politician-criminal partnership from hell.

Among the film’s many plaudits is the fact that you can actually see it: despite everyone’s favorite masked vigilante’s predilection for darkness, we can always tell where Batman is and what he’s doing. The Batman’s moody and effective low-light cinematography comes courtesy of Greig Fraser, of Dune, Rogue One, and Zero Dark Thirty. We had the chance to sit down with Fraser and talk about the 1970s films that influenced today’s Batman, where and how he scrupulously plugged in flashes of light, and the process behind orchestrating seamless action sequences.

Caption: (L-r) ZOË KRAVITZ as Selina Kyle and ROBERT PATTINSON as Batman and in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

You and Matt Reeves have worked together before. How did you get started on The Batman and develop a language for its distinct aesthetic?

I’ve known Matt for a long time now. We stayed very close after we finished Let Me In. We’re two peas in a pod when it comes to our visual language and our aesthetics. Even before Matt’s first meeting, we started talking. As a DP, it doesn’t always happen like that. You’re not always at the beginning of the journey. Often it’s that the director’s been through the meetings, they’ve got the job, they then have to look for a DP. Or, if it’s a director you’ve worked with in the past, they normally don’t engage with the DP until they’ve got the job. So to be engaged before the job was got was fantastic because it just meant that from that day, we were constantly riffing action sequences, set pieces, and coming up with what this Gotham should look and feel like.

Caption: (L-r) ROBERT PATTINSON and director MATT REEVES and on the set in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

What were some of the references you looked at together?

I can’t specify directly that there was this shot by this photographer. But there are a number of photographers that do some work in that dark environment, and there are a number of films. We’re both very big fans of noir 70s cinema — you know, Chinatown, All the Presidents Men, Heat, The Godfather. Obviously, some of those are set in downtown, some of them are not. We looked at a number of photographers — not necessarily name photographers, some hobbyists doing shots of urban landscapes. I can’t name who they were. If I was scrolling Instagram or researching urban landscapes, I might have come across something that had just the right amount of rain, just the right amount of mist, just that kind of feel that felt cinematic and didn’t feel like it was contrived or controlled.

Caption: ROBERT PATTINSON as Batman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

We have to talk about how on earth you did your job given that Batman is nocturnal to the extreme this time around.

You’re right, that was a talking point early on. Because the Batman is a dark guy, isn’t he? He comes out late at night. So one would assume he’s not walking around often in the morning, in the cold light of day. We were all very careful. We knew this could potentially be so dark it becomes unwatchable. So part of the job that I had, along with Matt, we went, ‘all right, it’s got to be bright enough that we can see but not dark enough that we lose the mood.’ So that was the biggest challenge that we had. We tried to walk that tight rope, where every scene we did had pockets of bright light. The diner scene, for example — a diner is what you would call bright. In our movie, it’s bright but not garishly bright. But Batman doesn’t ever come into the diner. Batman stays outside in the shadows, in the darkness. So that’s how we staged a scene like that, knowing that if Batman walked into that diner, that might not really be his character, that he wants to stay in the background. Whenever we were thinking about staging scenes, we had to think about what Batman was going to be seen in. For example, inside the Iceberg Lounge, we had to make sure it was suitably down in tone that he would not feel out of place in that environment.

Caption: COLIN FARRELL as Oswald Cobblepot/the Penguin in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

Caption: JOHN TURTURRO as Carmine Falcone in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

In addition, the club seemed to be going for real nightlife bona fides.

We set up a real club, effectively. In London there’s a place called Printworks, which, funny enough, I’d been there a few times when it was an event venue. We worked with an events company and our gaffer to light it. We wanted to make a really interesting lighting environment that we could control. As Batman comes down the stairs the lights flash brightly, and again, that goes back to making sure the whole thing wasn’t one tone of darkness. At the bottom of the stairs, as he lands or receives the first hit, we deliberately flashed the blinders in the back so that the whole place lights up. In that scene, even though it was dark up to that point, you get these flashes of brightness, so hopefully, your eyes don’t become exhausted by watching too much darkness.

That said, the action sequences don’t feel overly jumpy or flashy. We particularly liked the moment Selina confronts Carmine Falcone.

One of the things that we tried to make sure we did was that we didn’t cut too many times. Matt’s very economical when it comes to the shots he wants to get. He knows the shots he needs. He doesn’t shoot coverage for the sake of shooting coverage. He knows what her close-up is. He knows the shot where she’s going to fire the gun. We shoot coverage before and after that moment, obviously, but he knows that’s the moment he’s there to get. He’s very efficient when it comes to shot structure, and it means that we can work really hard at getting that shot right: getting the timing right, getting the flash right, getting the sync right. It’s quite fun doing those scenes because it involves a lot of timing and performance beats.

Caption: ZOË KRAVITZ as Selina Kyle in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics

The big car chase scene also seemed like it required intense planning.

The car chase was a pretty interesting process. Matt’s very involved with every frame of this film and the car chase was one of those. We luckily had a couple of units going at once at that time. So my second unit DP, Danny Vilar, took the reins on that. He did all the preliminary testing, mounting to motorbikes, mounting to cars, crash tests, and we took a bit of a different approach where, as you saw, we strapped cameras to the motor vehicles. It may seem easy to do but it was actually quite hard to get the angles we wanted. It took a lot of R&D, it took a lot of takes, and we bought ourselves some older Arri Alexas to use as crash cameras. It meant that we were able to bring cameras closer to the point of destruction, knowing that if we did break them, it would be a write-off anyway. We had lenses rehoused by a company called Iron Glass, and they made these smaller lenses that were a bit more nimble and could be easily mounted to these cars. Danny Vilar and Iron Glass and our grip, Guy Micheletti, put that together.

You stay aware of the characters in those moments — they don’t get lost in a blur of action.

Everything has a purpose in this film. Every shot, every pan, every motion, there’s very much a reason to exist and there’s no filler, in the sense that there are no shots that you could do without. This is very much a well-orchestrated machine. The way I see it, it’s like a Rolex watch. If you take the back off a Rolex watch, every single piece in that Rolex watch has a really important purpose. That’s the same with this film. It’s a very complicated machine that has lots of cogs, lots of turning wheels, lots of minuscule movement, and all of it is essential to each other. If you take out one of those cogs in that Rolex, for example, the whole thing doesn’t work. It’s the same with us. And I think with our movie, what was great was refining every single one of those cogs to help make the final piece come to life.

This film feels like a real departure from other Batman movies. What were some aspects you wanted to keep or leave behind?

Batman’s an iconic character. Most of the world knows what that symbol is. So from my perspective, we are batting with heavyweights of the industry. Some of those Batman films are some of the best films made, historically. What was honest about this was we didn’t tackle it and look at any other Batman film and go, okay, he does that, so we’ll do this, or we’ll be the same as what they do. We did not do that. We looked at other films to look at what we wanted to do. It just so happens instead of Marlon Brando onscreen we’ve got Robert Pattinson or the Penguin in all his glory. We didn’t look at the previous Batman films to reference, and that wasn’t out of disrespect for them. It was probably more out of respect for them that we didn’t feel set in those worlds. We didn’t want to make a part four. That wasn’t even a conversation. There was no ego involved, which is the thing that I love about Matt. It’s not about being better. Although I will say this: there wouldn’t have been a pressure to be better than any of the other Batman films, but if we do get a chance to do something else, of course there’s going to be a big pressure on ourselves to further explore this world, which is really rich. I think we touched upon some things in this film we can grow upon. Regardless of whether I’m involved in it or not, that’s something I’m really interested in seeing.

For more on The Batman, check out these stories:

“The Batman” Prepared to Join “Spider-Man: No Way Home” With an Epic Opening

How “The Batman” Writer/Director Matt Reeves Embraced Fear

The Best Batman Of Them All? “The Batman” vs “The Dark Knight”

“The Batman” Early Reactions: A Gripping, Glorious Street-Level Detective Story

Featured image: Caption: ROBERT PATTINSON as Batman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/ ™ & © DC Comics

Best of 2022: “Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series

Posted on December 26, 2022December 16, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in NBA history and features some of the game’s most notable figures — Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, and Pat Riley.

But Rodney Barnes, who shares scripting duties with Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, and serves as an Executive Producer on the 10-episode HBO series that debuted March 6, believes the show offers something for everyone.

“I’m old enough to have seen a lot of sports-themed movies and TV shows. And more often than not, the players are relegated to a one-dimensional idea,” says Barnes during a recent Zoom conversation. “That’s the funny one. That’s the bad one. That’s the surly one. And the narrative is about the coach, the owner, or a particular player. Here, we got an opportunity to really get into the nuance of the human part of being a professional athlete.”

Rodney Barnes

Based on Jeff Pearlman’s 2014 book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” Winning Time opens in the summer of 1979 during a period of upheaval for the Los Angeles Lakers. Dr. Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly), a flashy real estate mogul, is looking to shake up professional basketball by buying the team. He wants to make the game more exciting by making it more entertaining. One way he hopes to do that is by drafting Earvin Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), a Michigan State all-star whose moves on the court earned him the nickname “Magic.” Current coach Jerry West (Jason Clarke) is against the idea. He believes Johnson is too stocky to play point guard, Johnson’s position in college. Veteran center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) is also skeptical, reluctant to change his style of play for Johnson. And then there’s Norm Nixon (DeVaughn Nixon — Nixon’s real-life son), the team’s current point guard. He’s worried Johnson will take his job. Lurking in the background is Pat Riley (Adrien Brody), a former player so anxious to get back in the game, he’s willing to kowtow to Chick Hearn (Spencer Garrett) in hopes of landing a broadcast job as a color analyst.

L-r: John C. Reilly, Quincy Isaiah, Jason Clarke. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO

Barnes was brought onto Winning Time by Borenstein, his longtime writing partner, who serves as the series showrunner. A lifelong basketball fan, Barnes quickly said yes. ”Loving basketball the way that I do, having lived in the period where the show begins and, remembering it fondly, it checked a lot of boxes that made me want to be a part of it,” adds Barnes.

Calling Pearlman’s book “a foundation,” Barnes read anything and everything he could find about the Lakers — books, newspaper articles, magazine profiles. He scoured YouTube for clips of the players. Though he thought he was familiar with the story, Barnes quickly learned how much he didn’t know — a world of complex characters, warts and all.

John C. Reilly, Quincy Isaiah, Kirk Bovill. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO

Buss is a fast-talking wheeler-dealer, building his dream on a financial house of cards that is threatening to collapse at any minute. But he’s relentless in realizing a vision that could elevate pro basketball to new heights of popularity — and, more importantly, deliver him a championship team.

A hotshot hoopster, Johnson’s ego is as big as his talent. But going from collegiate superstar to lowly NBA rookie takes some getting used to and he struggles to inject his brand of basketball into the Lakers. One of his main roadblocks is Abdul-Jabbar. As introverted as Johnson is outgoing, the 7’2” center grapples with trying to balance professional fame with his Muslim faith. He’s haunted by the feeling that he should be doing something more important than putting a ball in a basket.

Solomon Hughes, Sarah Ramos. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO

Full of disenchantment, West is furious that he can’t channel his achievements on the court into coaching. Riley is a lost soul, searching for his place in a game that, at this point, considers him an afterthought.

Also in the mix are Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson), the boss’ daughter who, though just a lowly intern, is determined to help her dad transform the fan experience; Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts), an analytics-obsessed coach Buss reluctantly brings in to lead the Lakers; Claire Rothman (Gaby Hoffmann)), the club’s event coordinator tasked with figuring out how to elevate a night of basketball into a party; and Earvin Johnson Sr. (Rob Morgan), Magic’s sage father who guides his son on the path to realizing his full potential.

The roster was rich with potential. The challenge was keeping it real. “Any time you have facts as your boundaries, humanizing those facts in such a way so they support one another to create a moving narrative is never easy,” explains Barnes. “You’re already confined by reality. You can’t just go anywhere like in fiction.”

At the same time, the writers were careful not to do a disservice to some of basketball’s biggest stars. “We’re fans of these guys. We appreciate what they accomplished,” continues Barnes. “You’re trying to make this a love letter — a show of appreciation more so than anything else. So it’s a delicate balance of storytelling, while still being true to the times and respectful at all times.”

Barnes explains that he started by creating an outline together with Borenstein and Hecht. After each writer individually drafted his designated segments, Barnes and Borenstein would reunite and revise until they arrived at a shooting script. Each had his own story specialties.

“I dealt with the players, their lives, their ongoing narrative,” explains Barnes. “It’s like anything. Once you get to know these characters, start to live with them, you become attached to the rhythm of the dialogue, the way they communicate.”

Quincy Isaiah, Solomon Hughes. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO

YouTube came in handy to get the speech patterns just right. “We were able to go back and see interviews — Magic Johnson on Soul Train — just a lot of different things to get an idea beyond words,” he adds. “Going from the flatness that comes from books and articles to getting to hear the cadence of how a human being talks.”

And who was the most fun to write? Without hesitation, Barnes names Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar. “Those two guys stick out for me because they’re so different,” he explains. “One is introspective — sort of an introvert. The other is outgoing. So it’s two different ways to create dialogue. I just enjoyed it and I love both those guys.”

Barnes also takes pride in how Winning Time offers both a sports and cultural perspective of the era. At the time, the ABA was merging into the NBA. The series shows how this radically impacted the style of play. “A lot of what we see in modern basketball today started with the Lakers in the showtime offense,” he observes.

And then there is the societal impact. Before 1979, owners ruled and players kept their opinions to themselves. There were exceptions – Bill Russell, Spencer Haywood, Abdul-Jabbar — but, by and large, pros avoided discussing race and cultural issues. Citing today’s players’ strong support of the Black Lives Matter movement and their outrage when George Floyd was killed, Barnes believes Winning Time shows the seeds being planted. “Jerry Buss narrowed that boundary through a personal relationship with the players,” he says. “That was the beginning— the bridge to players being able to have a voice en masse and the way the NBA operates today.”

Winning Time airs on Sunday nights on HBO and HBO Max at 9pm.

For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:

Keanu Reeves is Batman in New “DC League of Super-Pets” Trailer

“The Batman” Soars to Epic Opening Weekend

The Batman” Prepared to Join “Spider-Man: No Way Home” With an Epic Opening

Featured image: L-r: Quincy Isaiah, Solomon Hughes. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO

Best of 2022: “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Actress Stephanie Hsu on Landing the Role of a Lifetime

Posted on December 26, 2022December 14, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

It’s very difficult to describe Everything Everywhere All At Once, the new genre-busting indie from writer/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels. It’s a multiverse sci-fi brain twister, an action movie with Hong Kong-style fighting, and a moving family drama about a mother and daughter. It’s about existential dread, love lost and found, and, of course, the importance of paying your taxes correctly and on time. Michelle Yeoh is at her career-best as matriarch Evelyn Wang, an Asian-American woman embroiled in an adventure across the multiverse trying to save humanity from supervillain Jobu Tupaki, who, it turns out, is an alternate version of her daughter Joy.

Stephanie Hsu, known for her work on Broadway and as Mei in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, brings depth and flamboyance to Joy and Jobu Tupaki. Rounding out the cast are veteran performer James Hong as Evelyn’s father, Ke Huy Quan, beloved for his roles as Data in The Goonies and Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as Evelyn’s husband, and Jamie Lee Curtis as IRS agent Dierdre Beaubeirdra.

It must have taken an incredible amount of focus, stamina, and collaboration for the cast and crew of Everything Everywhere All At Once to bring it to the screen. The Credits chatted with Stephanie Hsu about working with Daniels, and how the power of love and optimism plays an important part in this film destined to be a cult classic.

The movie has both authenticity and craziness, and it couldn’t exist without an incredible level of collaboration. You did daily warmups, and there were weekly awards for members of the crew. Can you talk a little bit more about how collaboration aided in the authenticity of this film?

The communal experience is very important to the Daniels, and a non-hierarchical way of working is really important. That’s why the PAs are listed in the credits first. It just makes everybody feel seen and cherished. Making films is crazy. It always gets stressful. Time is always running out, money is going out the window, but if you have a team or a film family that cares about one another and knows that they are valued, they will work harder. They will show up, and take care of one another when things get tough. It’s so funny because this was my first feature, and I feel so lucky because that is so much of what I want for the world of filmmaking and art-making in general—this kindness and collaboration. That’s just not how it is usually, it’s really rarely like that, and people feel very bad about themselves, feel very stressed, feel very left behind. So I think that the reason why this movie is reaching audiences the way that it is, other than the fact that personally, I think it’s brilliant, imaginative, and heartfelt, it’s also because of the story and the value systems of the film—kindness, love, cherishing one another—are actually how we made the film. There’s integrity there, and for some reason, that transference is happening, and audiences are feeling that. We all felt safe bringing anything and everything to the table, whatever our ideas were, and all of us wanted to give our all because we really believed in the project and in each other.

(L-R) Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan. Photo Credit:Allyson Riggs — (L-R) Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan. Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs

What kinds of warmups did you do?

We did something called a hug tackle, and I remember I led an exercise called the mind meld, where you would say a word, any word, with a partner at the same time, and keep going, to try to get to the same word. That warmup is just fun because you have to surrender. You cannot possibly know what the other person is going to say, but you’re listening and thinking at the same time. All the warmups were great, because it’s a chance for all of us to cross departments, and have really focused time with each other.

Everyone in the whole cast and crew took part?

Oh yeah. All the cast, all of the crew, all of the camera crew, all the PAs, sometimes the chefs and folks at craft services would come, too.

(L-R) Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, James HongPhotocredit: Allyson Riggs

There are so many aspects of the mother/daughter relationship that are represented both literally and metaphorically in the film. How much did the cast and the Daniels talk about that?

For me, the mother/daughter relationship, I knew it in my bones. I grew up with an immigrant mother. I was her only child, and it was mostly just me and her growing up. There’s just a way that strong women can love you so much and truly fail at showing it every step of the way. It’s not just Asian mothers, it’s not just immigrant mothers, it’s just mothers. And I think mother/daughter relationships are so much more heightened, because of beauty standards and because you want the best for your child, but you don’t realize that that’s actually not in your control whatsoever. But interestingly enough, I don’t think we talked about it that much, because we all just knew it. It was kind of an unspoken starting point for all of us.

Nihilism is based on the belief that nothing matters. This could easily be our approach to issues like global warming and war, but it gets, in one way, to showing that we’re both the problem and the solution. How did that play into how you approached your role?

I would say that what we talked about even more than the mother/daughter relationship was this concept of nihilism, and how an agent of chaos might make more chaos if nothing matters and nothing has any significance. I like to say that nihilism saved my life in some ways because it’s a very heavy time. It was a heavy time two years ago, when we were filming, it is a heavier time now. And I feel that myself and so many people, so many of my peers, so desperately want to fix it all. We can just feel so helpless, while also trying to figure out ways to help. Nihilism suggests the possibility that nothing we do matters, and so all we can do is try our very best. There’s no winning here. There’s no finish line. It’s just going to keep going like this, there are going to be more and more generations of suffering, but if we come here and know that we gave it our all, or gave it something, then we’re just making it a little bit better as much as we are able.

What part of making Everything Everywhere All At Once has been most integrated into you both personally and professionally?

I feel like I snuck in through the backdoor of Hollywood with this movie since this was my first feature. I could have never expected that this would be receiving the praise that it’s receiving, and that beyond praise, that people really get it, and are really moved by it, and inspired by it. That is my dream, to put things out in the world that shift people and move people. I feel that this journey is such an affirmation that it is possible to work with people you love and admire, and who are kind and follow the art, not follow the power. I just feel excited to keep moving in that direction, because it hasn’t proven me wrong at all, you know, and it has only brought me beautiful experiences.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is in theaters now across the country.

Featured image: tephanie Hsu. Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs

Best of 2022: MPA Creator Award Recipient Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu on her Stunning Debut Feature “Nanny”

Posted on December 26, 2022December 16, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

Deploying West African folklore to interrogate the myth of the American dream, writer/director Nikyatu Jusu‘s debut feature Nanny is a remarkably assured genre-melding experience. Nanny also gives viewers something that’s sadly still quite rare—it evocatively places us inside the head, heart, and aching soul of Aisha (Anna Diop), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant trying to navigate the mystifying codes of the United States to create a stable place to bring her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara). Jusu’s nimbly executed deployment of supernatural characters to critique the myth of the American dream would be a difficult feat for a veteran writer/director, let alone a young filmmaker making her very first feature. It’s for this reason that Jusu is the Motion Picture Association’s choice for their inaugural MPA Creator Award, which is part of our centennial celebration.

“I’m immensely grateful,” Jusu says. “I know it’s the first year of this award, but I was like what? (Laughs). I’m just drowning in gratitude.” Jusu isn’t just drowning in gratitude, she’s also dealing with the whiplash of the whirlwind execution of her stunning debut. She shot Nanny only last July in 27-days in New York City, powering through an intense post-production in August, submitting the film to the Sundance Film Festival, and then winning Sundance’s top award, the U.S. Grand Jury Prize, all in the span of 6 months. “I’m still a little breathless at everything that’s happening,” Jusu says.

Nikyatu Jusu on the set of "Nanny." Courtesy Nikyatu Jusu. — Nikyatu Jusu on the set of “Nanny.” Photo by Makeda Sandford.

Nanny teases out the pain and fear associated with leaving your home and your loved ones to create a new life abroad, as well as the relentless second-guessing of whether or not you’ve made the right decision. Aisha gets a job as a nanny with a family that initially seems sane, even ideal. There’s the liberal, hard-working mother Amy (Michelle Monaghan), her husband Adam (Morgan Spector), and their daughter Rose (Rose Decker). There’s the elegant Manhattan apartment. Yet it becomes clear that while Aisha is entrusted to take care of Rose and become a nominal part of the family, her life, her interiority, and her hopes and dreams for her own son back in Senegal are expected to be all but nonexistent. She’s a nanny, and her world is supposed to consist of being subservient to Amy, Morgan, and Rose.

“I remember going to class daily while at NYU and seeing these black and brown women pushing mostly white children in strollers in the city,” Jusu says. “It was like a visual manifestation of some of the domestic work my mom had done on and off in the south, growing up in Atlanta. It brought a tangible image to a story that had been percolating in my head about an African woman who’s a caregiver. I went down a rabbit hole of research about domestic workers in the city. I’ve always been curious about that exchange of labor, and what does it mean to inhabit somebody else’s home and raise their children, but still be undervalued. It’s such an important job with such high stakes, you’d think it would be treated with much reverence.”

Jusu began crafting the script over a period of roughly 8 years. “All of these themes were percolating, but I didn’t want to make a straightforward, preachy, pedantic 90-minute PSA,” she says. “I didn’t want to do a straightforward drama, either. I wanted to do something that felt a little more mainstream, a horror or a thriller. Those darker genres have always been intriguing to me. All of the filmmakers I admire—Lynne Ramsay, Boon Jong-Ho, Park Chan-work, Denis Villeneuve—utilize genre to get the audiences to feel empathy towards a character they wouldn’t normally pay attention to.”

Jusu’s crucial insight was incorporating supernatural characters from West African folklore to tease out Aisha’s growing desperation as she works for the increasingly demanding Amy. “Please, make this space yours,” Amy says to her nanny, a moment before handing her a binder full of rules and guidelines. Aisha’s visions—or visitations, depending upon your take—from Anansi the spider, a diminutive trickster whose quick wits help it best bigger rivals, and more terrifyingly, Mami Wata, a water spirit whose motives seem, on first blush, to be murderous, begin to pull at the threads of her sanity. The constant threat of deportment, let alone of never seeing her son again, create and nurture these nightmares.

The melding of genres—horror, psychological thriller, domestic drama—comes naturally to Jusu, who looks to the frequency with which her favorite foreign filmmakers deploy multiple genres to tell a single tale. “The goal was always a slow burn,” she says of the pacing for Nanny. “I had to almost hold my mom hostage to watch Parasite because so many people are conditioned to a barrage of stimuli, but what I loved about Parasite and Bong Joon H’s work, in general, is you get oriented to who these people are and their relationships. If you help me care about these people, I’ll go with you wherever you want to take me by the third act.”

Jusu was also aided by her work in Sundance’s screenwriting and directing labs, where she was paired with filmmakers who understood what she was driving at.

“I had mentors like director Karyn Kusama and screenwriter Michael Arndt, and their feedback was just so smart,” Jusu says. “I’m a voracious note-taker because I know I’m not processing in real-time. I had a color-coded system, I organized it all in Google Drive, and I kept getting the same notes in my early draft…my mythology and supernatural elements weren’t melding with my storyline, so I was challenged to make them cohesive. I dug into what those supernatural elements meant—like grief and depression—and I was able to cement that folklore in Aisha’s character arc. These mentors helped me ask myself what was activating these creatures and how did they impact the way Aisha acted.”

Creating the creatures was a major feat. Without a massive budget to spend on VFX, Jusu had to find ways to get the visions she had in her head, and on the page, onto the screen. That required scaling back some ambitions, but in that process she found that less was often more. She also turned to one of the absolute masters of creature features for inspiration.

“Guillermo del Toro is someone I studied deeply,” she says. “I went down a rabbit hole with his interviews and the way he approaches creature creation. Do I think what we ended up with is 100% translated from what I envisioned? No, but do I think it came out great? Absolutely? For example, I originally had this massive spider taking over the condo, but then I had to creatively pivot around this, and I realized it’s easy to make a large spider shadow if a small spider walks in front of a light source. Little concessions like that are part of the learning process. Then our mermaid figure was the most ambitious and hardest, both with CGI and practical effects, but everyone just came together to pull off these visual elements.”

Rigging the underwater scene for the Mami Wata sequence in "Nanny." Courtesy Nikyatu Jusu — Rigging the underwater scene for the Mami Wata sequence in “Nanny.” Photo by Makeda Sandford.

While Anansi the spider and Mami Wata the water spirit give terrifying life to Aisha’s internal struggles, the relationship between Aisha and her employer Amy is both highly believable and deliciously specific. Jusu says one of the ways she was able to get inside their dynamic was that she could relate to both characters.

“I think this whole girl boss/mom boss is tricky because patriarchy and feminism and the capitalist paradigm are complicated,” she says. “For a lot of women who are high achieving and want the perfect house and life, it’s very hard to balance all that, and something is going to crack. This system we’re all maneuvering in is not quite conducive to raising a family within a community. We’re all in these individual spaces hiding away, hiding our dysfunctions, in our little family. I know so many Amys, women who have this beautiful veneer on the outside but who are falling apart internally. Michelle [Monaghan] gave so much fat and tendon and texture to who Amy was because Amy could have easily been a caricature. All of these characters have pieces of me, from Amy to Aisha to Rose, so it was easy for me to try and write this woman. She and Aisha have a lot in common, actually. Everyone is suffering in different ways, and there’s no ideal to be reached. I just needed the right actors. “

The most important actor was, of course, Anna Diop, and Jusu fought hard to get her in the title role. Diop currently co-stars in Greg Berlanti and Akiva Goldsman’s superhero series Titans, so finding a way to get her to work on an ambitious indie film wasn’t easy, but both writer/director and star were committed to making it work.

“She possessed everything I could have imagined,” Jusu says. “I was worried about casting, this is the type of film that could easily fall apart in casting and execution, but Anna is so graceful and smart, and I think she’s been underutilized in this industry and I’m excited for people to see her depth and ability. She’s also Senagalese-American, she even has this distinct vaccination mark that West Africans have, including my mom and dad have it. And she was so passionate about getting the accent right.”

Jusu’s achievement in Nanny is such that the film and its many thematic, visual, and genre elements feel exquisitely balanced as the story churns towards its climax. Yet she’s happy to concede that she’s still learning a lot about her craft. The fact that she made her feature debut in the midst of a pandemic also added an extra degree of difficulty—and mortal dread—that she’ll hopefully never have to duplicate.

“We filmed this really intricate opening shot,” Jusu says, describing a single, flowing scene without any cuts, where the camera floats down a hallway and turns upside down. Her vision was to marry that opening to an equally intricate ending shot. “We ended up chopping it up and not even using that opening or ending,” she says. “That was something we figured out in the edit. This is what you learn as a feature director—don’t be too married to your style, and remember that the most important thing you have to do is to serve the story.”

Nanny is a riveting story you won’t soon forget, while Nikyatu Jusu’s story is only just beginning.

Featured image: Anna Diop in “Nanny.” Photo by Ian S. Takahashi.

Best of 2022: “The Woman King” DP Polly Morgan on Lensing Viola Davis in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Thrilling Epic

Posted on December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

A sweeping historical epic that blends intimacy and adventure is the kind of movie that The Woman King cinematographer Polly Morgan dreamed about making while growing up in West Sussex, England.

“My earliest memories were Close Encounters and Empire of the Sun. Spielberg captured my imagination like many of my generation,” said Morgan over the phone from the Toronto International Film Festival, where The Woman King had its world premiere. “I knew I wanted to go to Hollywood. I didn’t even know what that meant; I just knew I wanted to go to the place where they make movies.”

That’s just what Morgan has done. She’s worked nonstop for two decades in television and movies; earned an MFA from the American Film Institute; became the only woman member of both the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) and the American Society of Cinematographers. Over the past two years, she shot A Quiet Place: Part II, Where the Crawdads Sing, and now The Woman King, director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic set in 1823 in the real West African kingdom of Dahomey with Viola Davis as Nanisca, the leader of an army of women warriors called the Agojie, and John Boyega and King Ghezo who allows his own people and those of neighboring countries to be trafficked as slaves.

Viola Davis and John Boyega star in THE WOMAN KING.

Morgan says although her recent films spam different genres, they share commonalities. “Even though A Quiet Place: Part II is a thriller-horror movie, it’s an intimate story of this family and their relationships with each other and dealing with the loss of their father. The Crawdads movie is really about a young woman abandoned by her family and the resilience she needed to survive. And [The Woman King] is a story of sisterhood and a mother and daughter. I’m drawn to something when I can feel a deep emotional core to a story. I like things to have some depth to them.”

Polly Morgan and Gina Prince Bythewood on the set of THE WOMAN KING

She cites Nope cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema as an inspiration. “When he came on the scene, I was amazed at what a chameleon he was, how he could float between genres and be a storyteller in films like Let The Right One In, The Fighter and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and it didn’t matter what types of movies he was doing. He was a storyteller.”

When she and Prince-Bythewood discussed the visual language for The Woman King, the director used the term “intimately epic,” recalled Morgan. “How can we show this West African nation in a way that’s going to surprise people who think that Africa is just a dry and dusty continent? This country was rich and lush and gorgeous and full of color. It was an incredible environment. Also, how can we show the beauty of these women, their vulnerability, and how to capture the gloriousness that is black skin?

(First row L-R) Lashana Lynch, Viola Davis,Shelia Atim (Second row L-R ) Sisipho Mbopa , Lone Motsomi ,Chioma Umeala — (First row L-R) Lashana Lynch, Viola Davis,Shelia Atim
(Second row L-R )
Sisipho Mbopa , Lone Motsomi ,Chioma Umeala

We wanted [the film] to look gorgeous but authentic and real and not overly commercial and glossy. We wanted to be true to the genre of historical epics like Braveheart and Gladiator — visceral and with textures — but also true to the [time] period.”

Shooting in North and South Africa was difficult for many reasons, Morgan said. “It was challenging logistically with the weather, either rainy and muddy in the North or hot and windy in the South.” Then “a couple of weeks into production, suddenly sixty-five percent of the crew tested positive for Covid. We shut down for a couple of weeks, and some of us were terrified it would never get back up and running. But we did get back and finished in March 2022.”

Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch with young recruits in THE WOMAN KING.

Morgan admits she was concerned about shooting “huge sequences outside in the African sun. How was I going to control the light; how was I going to take care of these women and highlight the beauty of their skin and make them look good, especially with such a tight schedule? I had to be clever and lucky. And Gina supported what I needed.”

Besides epic adventure movies, Morgan studied classical paintings for inspiration. “I looked at artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio who used firelight, and I looked at how the light plays on the faces and [creates] shadows. I also studied Flemish painters like van Dyck whose images show natural light through a window,” she said. Morgan and Prince-Bythewood wanted to use light to show the contrast of a beautiful place rendered ugly by the slave trade. “We wanted the audience to feel a difference between that environment and the beauty of Dahomey,” Morgan said.

The creative team, led by production designer Akin McKenzie, did “massive amounts of research,” said Morgan. “Our phenomenal production head Akin McKenzie dug deep to find documents written by European traders who had actually visited the place at that time. They’d come home and write accounts about seeing the Agojie women, about meeting Ghezo, and how Dahomey was a kingdom full of riches like gold. There’s photographic evidence as well, [such as] King Ghezo wearing a top hat and shiny black shoes that had been a gift to him as a trade for human life. We wanted the movie to be authentic, so we soaked up this information. Everything is based on real research.”

Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu star in THE WOMAN KING

Throughout the production, Morgan was motivated to combine historical epic with rousing entertainment and “set a relatable story within those moments to educate about what life was like. It’s refreshing these days to have a movie like this in contrast to the superhero movies being made,” she said. “This is a true, authentic environment and an amazing cinematic story, but what makes it memorable and so strong is that we all get to learn a little history that we didn’t know before. It’s a story that needed to be told.”

The Woman King hits theaters on theaters September 16.

Featured image: Viola Davis in “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

Best of 2022: Getting Sea Sick With “Triangle of Sadness” Production Designer Josefin Åsberg

Posted on December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

Satirical black comedy Triangle of Sadness, writer/director Ruben Östlund’s first English-language feature, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. The Swedish auteur is known for 2014’s Force Majeure and The Square, which in 2017 also won the Palme d’Or and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Triangle of Sadness, like Östlund’s previous films, examines classism and the decadence of the famous and the ultra-rich. It is broken into three segments. The first centers on high fashion models Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), and how their relationship is impacted by Carl’s dimming value as a male model and Yaya’s greater financial success. The second follows Carl and Yaya’s travels on a super yacht helmed by a Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson). The night of the captain’s haute cuisine dinner, a dangerous storm wreaks havoc on the stomachs of the yacht guests and the yacht itself. The third and last segment takes place on a remote island, where survivors from the yacht find themselves in a new class hierarchy, in which the yacht’s domestic manager Abigail (Dolly de Leon), the only one among them who knows how to fish or start a fire, reigns supreme.

Production designer Josefin Åsberg, Östlund’s longtime collaborator, had a lot to consider in her job of designing the look and feel of the film. Not least was how to realistically present a yacht with environments befitting the elite and ultra-rich. She also had to make the copious amount of vomit and sewage flowing at the crescendo of the yacht scenes as believable as they were gross. Of course, The Credits, just like you, wanted to know all about that.

There are three distinct sections to the film. The first one has stark contrasts in parts, which seems to be very intentional. It’s very white, but at one point the characters are splashed with bright paint, so it’s a bit of an introduction and preparing you for the second segment.

It partly took place in the fashion world. It’s quite limited in the sense that it’s a hotel, a catwalk, and auditions. We wanted to make it visually of a piece with the rest of the film. We didn’t want it to look totally different from the rest. Other than the bright splashes, it’s very discreet, color-wise. It’s very subdued.

In terms of the yacht in section two, Ruben Östlund is quoted as saying that you had incredible detail in your production design. What considerations did you have, both in terms of how super yachts look and how their opulence relates to the story?

We knew we were looking for a quite classic yacht. I took the measurements for the windows from the actual yacht for the set in the studio, but then I was quite free to design the interiors. We made the dining room with the area outside, the corridors with the cabins with the toilets and bathrooms. We also wanted to control the movement because the bad weather increases during the captain’s dinner, so it was also a lot of fun to plan and think about ideas. We tested different angles on a small gimbal. When does it start to get difficult to walk? When do things start to slide? We build the set two meters up on a hydraulic platform; then, we could control having slight movement in the beginning, and then as the chaos comes closer and closer, we can make it more and more intense.

Dining room set – courtesy Tobias Henriksson.

Let’s talk about the captain’s dinner. How did you decide what kind of foods to use and how that would relate to the seasickness that takes over the diners?

Regarding the food, we knew it should, at first, not look disgusting. For example, with oysters, if you’re not seasick, they’re great. Then we wanted to add some green syrup or something that looked a little bit odd. If you’re seasick, you’re so sensitive. We also had this huge octopus arm with big suckers.

That’s when it starts going off the rails.

Yeah. That octopus looks almost like a burnt arm. Octopus is tasty if you’re on land, but when you’re seasick, it’s the worst food you could have. At the same time, we didn’t want to make it too much like a joke. We had a fine dining chef. We discussed with him how food might look in a very high-caliber restaurant. Maybe put some flowers on it so it looks elegant and tasty. Actually, we originally planned for three dishes, but on the morning of the shoot, I met with Ruben, we stayed in the same hotel and had breakfast, and he said it would be fun if we could add five more dishes.

When things are about to go off the rails in "Triangle of Sadness." Courtesy of Neon. — When things are about to go off the rails in “Triangle of Sadness.” Courtesy of Neon.

Did you have to consider, as a production designer, what food would create the most interesting or artistic vomit?

You could see the looks whenever the next dish is arriving. They’re presenting them, like, “da da da dah!” taking away the cloche, and the diners can’t stand it. We made a lot of tests of the puke, depending on the character. This is a character that loves red wine, which would make the puke a little bit pink. With another who loves champagne, it’s more frothy. Then maybe we put some pieces of an octopus or some shrimp or something. There were some fun discussions regarding this whole scene. When we made a test, at first, we didn’t have any carpet in the dining room, but then all the furniture came sliding when the rocking was starting to get really bad and crescendo. We decided it would be too much. It’s intense as it is, with the food and the puke. If everyone is also sliding, then it would be too much. I said, “Let’s have a white carpet.” That’s much more painful if someone pukes on a white carpet. We also looked at the different colors for the sh*t when the toilets explode.

When things go off the rails in "Triangle of Sadness." Courtesy of Neon. — When things go off the rails in “Triangle of Sadness.” Courtesy of Neon.

It’s certainly a very particular look, where there can be no question of what is covering the floors of the yacht.

We did a test with a toilet in the studio. At first, they made it a little bit too orange, so it looked a little bit too much like the puke. Then it was a little bit too dark brown, so we had to work on it a while. It also was like whole systems are in collapse, so then it needs to have water mixing in because it’s raw sewage and ocean water. At first, somebody scheduled that scene on the second shooting week. I said, “That’s not possible; of course, an exploding toilet system needs to be the last day of the shoot.”

The bathroom set in "The Triangle of Sadness." Courtesy Neon. — The bathroom set in “The Triangle of Sadness.” Courtesy Neon.

What’s great about that scene is the metaphor about everything breaking down. It has to be that intense and over the top.

It was like the end of the human being. Everything is breaking down. At the same time as all the puking and sewage, the captain is repeating, “The ship is going under. The ship is going under.” Everything visually and in the script is combined into a catastrophe.

The third segment is on an island with the elite as castaways. How did you approach that?

We found this beach in Greece. It was a nudist beach at the end of a small beach town. We were there after all the tourists had left. We cleaned the beach and added a lot of greenery. W discussed how clean the beach needed to be and how many big tree branches we needed. We wanted to have plastic chairs or things that look like they came on the yacht and floated onto the beach. It’s never clear where they are. Are they in Europe? Are they on a Pacific coast island? We wanted it to be unspecific. We didn’t need to add tropical greenery. It was not a jungle, but we needed to make it feel like it was someplace a luxury yacht would go, like a quite nice island.

As the production designer on the film, what are you most proud of that viewers might not notice but you know really works?

I’d say the fact that a lot of the scenes on the yacht are filmed in a studio. The goal is for audiences not to notice and just feel it is part of the story, not set apart. There’s the platform two meters up that allows for the rocking in the storm at sea, all in the studio, and when I tell people, they can’t imagine that. That makes me very proud.

The yacht set with blue screen. Courtesy Neon.

Triangle of Sadness is in select theaters and available for rent or purchase on Vudu and Prime Video.

Featured image: L-r: Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in “Triangle of Sadness.” Courtesy Neon.

Best of 2022: How “Nope” Production Designer Ruth De Jong Built & Bloodied the Haywood Ranch

Posted on December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by babrams

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

There was a moment when writer/director Jordan Peele and production designer Ruth De Jong realized they were going to shoot Nope practically. Tucked in the Agua Dulce area of California’s Santa Clarita Valley is the Firestone Ranch, which would become the setting for the Haywood home where OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) discover an unexpected visitor living in the sky above them.

“The property is this huge basin surrounded by these hills, which makes it even scarier because there’s no way out,” says De Jong, who reunites with Peele after their work on Us (2019). “When we found this ranch, we knew it was epic and decided to shoot everything practically.”

Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in Nope, written, produced and directed by Jordan Peele. — Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood in Nope, written, produced, and directed by Jordan Peele.

De Jong designed the ranch from the ground up, researching mid-1800s to 1900s farm houses up and down the California coast and central valley. The end result is a mash-up of different homes that influenced her and set designer Jim Hewitt. “It has a bit of an East Coast vibe, but it’s very true to ranches in California,” she notes. “I wanted it to melt into the landscape but be iconic.”

(from left) OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) in Nope, written, produced and directed by Jordan Peele.

Every detail of the home was grounded in authenticity. De Jong also designed livable places for all the horses within existing arenas and stalls found on the property. “I came up under Jack Fisk (The Revenant, There Will Be Blood) as his art director for ten years, and he is so enthralled about his approach to making things real and true to life. I think that’s now ingrained in my DNA. When I was building the house, the first person I went to was our cinematographer Hoyte [van Hoytema], and I asked if there are any constraints I needed to consider. He was like, ‘Ruth, you design the house you want, and I will shoot the house you design.’ That was really freeing and incredible because it allowed the house to be completely real. We went six feet into the ground and made everything completely structurally sound for the crew to bring dollies up to the second and third floor.”

(from left) Daniel Kaluuya and writer/producer/director Jordan Peele on the set of Nope.

De Jong also dove into the background of the characters to develop the design. “Because a ranch like this would be pretty pricey in this day in age, we thought about how the Haywood’s could have afforded this on a horse wrangler salary,” she says. “We said that their father [played by Keith David] bought the house but didn’t fix it up. It has the same vintage wallpaper from the owner’s back 50-60 years ago. The furniture is kind of schlubby and the kitchen has a vintage stove and standard appliances.” Set decorator Gene Serdena filled the home with minimal pieces that had come with them through life – a not too little, not too much approach.

Another key aspect of the ranch was giving Peele and van Hoytema the opportunity to shoot 360-degrees interior and exterior. “I get involved in all aspects of filming, not just how to build the house, but how the crew is going to use it,” says De Jong. “I didn’t want any bogies or base camp to be seen from any angle. To make your movie, every minute of everyday matters. Jordan is such a great proponent of that and said everything on the entire ranch is a hot set.”

The approach paid off, especially for a climactic scene near the end of the movie where the house becomes covered in blood because of the entity in the sky attacking them. To pull off the sequence, a vast rain bar system was created along with gallons of food-grade blood that would be dumped onto the house. Over the course of several days, production shot all the interior house shots where Emerald and Fry’s electronics guru Angel (Brandon Perea) are stuck inside as the entity circles above OJ, who is hiding out in a van. Then working with special effects and visual effects, they saturated the earth and house with blood to show the aftermath of the following morning. “All of that was practical,” notes the production designer. “Even the stuff we strapped on the roof. We were throwing everything up there, a wheelchair, and an ice cream machine. It was a lot of fun to shoot.”

Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood in Nope, written, produced and directed by Jordan Peele.

Looking back, De Jong is proud that they never skimped out on doing things practically. Even all the Sky Dancers that were placed in the field to alert the characters of the entity were practical. The electrical department came up with a way to control each one through an iPad. “It’s so satisfying to do a movie as practically as possible,” she says. “It’s an achievement.”

For more on Nope, check out these stories:

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The Adam Driver Versus Dinosaurs Film “65” Gets New Release Date

Posted on December 22, 2022 by babrams

What happens when you pit Adam Driver and some high-tech weaponry against…some dinosaurs? This conceit alone is enough of a draw for us, but there’s a lot more to his upcoming thriller 65, which finds Driver playing Mills, a spaceship pilot who crash lands on a mysterious planet while ferrying thirty-five sleeping passengers. Once on the planet, and now saddled with only one survivor (a young girl named Koa, played by Arianna Greenblatt), Mills makes a shocking discovery—the mysterious planet? Yeah, it’s Earth, only it’s Earth 65 million years ago. This is why Mills and Koa end up having to face dinosaurs.

65 will now be heading to theaters on March 17, 2023 (moved back a week), and it looks like the type of early-year adventure that could draw in an audience and provide a much-needed shot of adrenaline. The film comes from directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who previously co-wrote, along with John Krasinski, A Quiet Place, so these two know how to set up a tense, pared-down thriller. In this case, they trade those sound-hunting aliens for prehistoric carnivores, but there’s no doubt they’ve deployed what they learned from their critically acclaimed work in A Quiet Place into their new feature.

For a taste of what you’ll be getting with 65, check out the trailer below.

And here’s the official synopsis:

After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth…65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive. From the writers of A Quiet Place and producer Sam Raimi comes 65, a sci-fi thriller starring Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, and Chloe Coleman. Written and directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods and produced by Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling and Zainab Azizi. Also produced by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:

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Featured image: Adam Driver stars in 65. Courtesy Sony Pictures.

New HBO Max Trailer Reveals New Looks at “The Last Of Us” & More

Posted on December 22, 2022 by babrams

HBO Max has dropped a new trailer teasing their 2023 slate, and it’s a heady mix of drama, comedy, dramedy (we’re looking at you, Barry), and more. Arguably the most hotly anticipated new series coming to the streamer is The Last of Us, the hugely ambitious video game adaptation from Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. The Last Of Us is set 20 years after the fall of modern civilization and stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie, two survivors setting out from the quarantine zone on a journey that will be both brutal and heartbreaking.

The new spot also teases upcoming limited series coming to HBO Max, including White House Plumbers, starring Woody Harrelson as E. Howard Hunt and Justin Theroux as Gordon Liddy, two political saboteurs who did President Nixon’s bidding in an attempt to save his presidency and ended up helping destroy it. The new spot also gives you a peek at the fourth installment of True Detective, subtitled Night Country, which is set in Ennis, Alaska and concerns the disappearance of men operating a research station.

Other limited series coming to HBO Max in 2023 include the glitzy drama The Idol, starring The Weekend and Lily-Rose Depp, and the adult animated series Velma (which made headlines this year when it was finally confirmed that Velma is a lesbian), which focuses on the legendary sleuth’s origin story. There’s also Love & Death, Full Circle, and the return of Warrior.

The teaser also reminds us of some of the series that are returning to the streamer, including season four of Succession and the second seasons of Perry Mason, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, and The Gilded Age.

On the comedy side, 2023 will see new seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Barry, Somebody Somewhere, Hacks, Our Flag Means Death, The Other Two, Julia, and The Righteous Gemstones.

Check out the trailer below:

For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:

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Featured image: Anna Torv and Pedro Pascal in “The Last of Us.” Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO

How “Avatar: The Way of Water” Visual Effects Wizards Conjured Underwater Magic

Posted on December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by babrams

How long can you hold your breath underwater? One minute? Two? Maybe three? For James Cameron’s highly-anticipated Avatar: The Way of Water, now in theaters, the cast had to take lessons from free diving expert Kirk Krack in order to fluidly capture the transcendent water scenes. Why so? Bubbles.

The sequel picks up from the 2009 blockbuster exploring the enchanting oceans of Pandora, in particular, the lush island reef village of the Metkayina clan, led by Ronal (Kate Winslet, who could comfortably hold her breath for 7 minutes and 20 seconds) and her husband Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). Physically, these Na’vi are different from their mainland counterparts. Their skin is more green than blue with larger hands, bigger chests, and wider tails, allowing them to effortlessly live an aquatic lifestyle. Characters swim beneath the surface or ride creatures like the long-necked ilu, the flying skimwing, and bond with whale-like tulkun.

A scene from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

It’s here the Sully family – Jake (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their children Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted teenage daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) – seek refuge and must adapt to ocean life as “The Sky People” have returned to relentlessly hunt them down.

With Avatar, Cameron and the award-winning visual effect team, overseen by Joe Letteri, created motion capture technology that instantly recorded the actors’ performance while simultaneously displaying them as their Na’vi character for the director to see. But that system was designed for dry land. This time around, the hurdle was designing a water-friendly mo-cap system.

“We created two ‘volumes’,” Letteri says, who again served as senior visual effects supervisor. “There was a ‘water volume’ and an ‘air volume’ because a lot of the action happens at the surface of the water. We needed to capture above and below the surface of the water at the same time, so we created two systems and found a way to lock the two together in real-time so Jim could see the performances.”

At Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment facility in Manhattan Beach, two tanks were built, one for training and smaller scenes and a second that stood 120 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep, holding more than 250,000 gallons of water. This was their “Swiss army system,” where they could simulate large waves, have characters surface, creature interactions, and create other eye-popping action sequences.

The two capture volumes, one using infrared to capture performances above the water and the other using ultraviolet light to capture everything below, were positioned one inch from each other so the data could be computed in real-time to a Virtual Camera that displayed the actors’ Na’vi counterpart. To control light reflection, hundreds of small polymer balls were placed on the surface. “This allows the surface of the water to move naturally, the actors to breathe safely and to play on the surface of the water unimpeded and uninhibited in their performance,” notes Lightstorm visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham.

(L-R, Front to Back): Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Kate Winslet, and Cliff Curtis on the set of 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

For the performance capture system to work unscathed, the water had to be clear. It meant there couldn’t be any air bubbles, not only from the actors but from anyone entering the tank. Camera operators, lighting, and safety crew all had to hold their breath. Along with additional safety procedures, safety cameras were placed to monitor those in the water.

Over 18 months, the actors’ performances were captured not only for Way of Water but for the three pending sequels, Avatar 3, 4, and 5, as all of the sequels were written prior to the start of production, allowing Cameron to shoot stories simultaneously. In capturing the water performances, Letteri says, “It really gave us the movement that you could not get any other way. There’s a shot of Tsireya [Bailey Bass] where she dives down, showing the Sully children how to swim, and they go back to the surface, and she rolls on her back and smiles at them. That’s pure performance in the water. There is no other way you could get that kind of gracefulness other than keyframing, which would take you a long time just for that one shot. This allowed the actors to express themselves in the water.”

“There is a lot of spectacle, scope, and emotion in the movie,” Baneham adds. “We really pushed the motion vocabulary bringing these characters to life. We really wanted to give the audience a sense of place.”

For more on Avatar: The Way of Water, check out these stories:

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“Kindred” Costume Designer Jaclyn Banner on Dressing the First Octavia E. Butler Adaptation

Posted on December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by babrams

Although Hugo and Nebula-winning novelist Octavia E. Butler was the first science fiction writer to ever receive a MacArthur Fellowship and the first Black woman to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer, many are unaware of her genius and influence on the genre. That is about to change because now, finally, a number of her works are being adapted for the screen. The first is an FX series based on her 1979 novel Kindred created by showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who executive produces the series with Darren Aronofsky and his partners at Protozoa Pictures.

Kindred is centered on aspiring writer Dana James (Mallori Johnson), who finds herself inexplicably pulled back and forth in time. Her two anchor points are present-day Los Angeles and antebellum Maryland in the early 1800s, which, as a Black woman, puts her at enormous risk.

To complicate things, Dana’s white boyfriend, Kevin (Micah Stock), accidentally travels back in time with her to a plantation owned by Thomas Weylin (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife Margaret (Gayle Rankin). Dana has deep familial connections with members of the enslaved who toil on the Weylin plantation.

As part of this project, Kindred costume designer Jaclyn Banner was tasked with creating hundreds of authentic Regency Era costumes, including over a hundred indigo muslin dresses for the enslaved women on the show. In a chat with The Credits, Banner discussed her process and her part in bringing Butler’s landmark sci-fi novel to life.

Jaclyn Banner. courtesy of Jaclyn Banner

What was your process in creating the indigo muslin costumes for the enslaved female characters on the show?

In the book, they are in blue dresses, so of course, that’s something that we wanted to do for the series. I actually did two versions of the dress because, at the beginning of this series, it’s winter. As we go on from episode five through eight, we’re in summer, so I did two different versions, a winter dress and a summer dress. The summer dress is actually more of a teal kind of blue, having a bit more green tones in it, versus the winter dress. It sounds like it’s an easy thing, but no. During this time, the enslaved were given cloth to make their clothes from, and it wasn’t always the most comfortable or the softest of fabrics. It’s muslin, it’s linen, and linen during those days was really rough, so we tried to find the right fabric that would still give that appearance, but our cast and our background actors would have to be in these dresses, day in, day out, working in the heat of Atlanta in the summer, so it was important to make it as comfortable as possible for them. Also, with the climate of the show, and its sensitive nature, it was essential to make people as comfortable as they could be but still give the appearance of clothing from the period.

Fabrics and illustrations for enslaved costumes. Courtesy of Jaclyn Banner

How did you go about sourcing what you needed?

I found the right fabric from Siam Costumes in Thailand. They sent me boxes of various fabric samples that ranged from cotton and linen and muslin to silks and satins, because those are the things that I used for most of Margaret’s costumes. I found the right one for the blue dresses, and they ended up having probably over 100 yards of this indigo fabric, and it was great. Even though it was already dyed, we still had to do our process to it, just to make sure that we got the color right and to get all the excess dye out, so people aren’t sweating and winding up with blue dye all over their bodies.

Enslaved winter dresses and cook house dresses. Courtesy of Jaclyn Banner

What was the difference between the summer dresses?

For the summer version, we used the same fabric, but at that point, they had run out of indigo, so we had to dye it ourselves. We did various samples, and then the color we ended up using was by accident. With aging and dying, it’s kind of like trial and error. You add a little bit of this color and you see what it does. We wanted to do the same color as the winter dresses, but we got this great sample, and I showed it to Brandon [Jacobs-Jenkins], and he said, “Oh yeah, I love this.” It gave a different feel. It still worked within the realm of the show and with the production design because that was one of the biggest things in finding the right blue. Jerry Fleming, who was our production designer, did a fantastic job of designing the Weylin house, with all the colors in the wallpaper and the flooring and all of that. I was definitely in constant communication with him about each room, Rufus’s room, Margaret’s room, Tom’s room, the library, the office, the foyer, all of these different places, in addition to all of the other sets that we used. So we fine-tuned it, we got it down, and it just worked great. Blue is a universal color and looks good on just about everybody, but in addition to working within the realm of the show and the production design, it was important to find a color that would work well on our various complexions, and both of those colors did that.

Dana (Mallori Johnson) and Kevin (Micah Stock), shown. (Photo credit: Tina Rowden/FX) - — Dana (Mallori Johnson) and Kevin (Micah Stock), shown. (Photo credit: Tina Rowden/FX)

You were very thoughtful about the costumes for the enslaved and made a lot of different little changes depending on the jobs they did.

Yes. We made a conscious effort not to really show the enslaved how we have seen them before. In Roots, we’ve seen them in clothes that were ragged and haggard, and we’ve seen other shows where they are in really dirty clothing with lots of holes. With this project, we knew it was definitely of a very sensitive nature and could trigger a lot of different things for a lot of different people, so we tried to be conscious of that. We also wanted to show that the enslaved are still human beings. They’re in this situation; some of them think it’s temporary, some believe it’s for life, but some are actually working towards their freedom and trying to get away from that situation. For example, if they worked in the field, of course, they’d be e a little bit dirtier than those working in the cook house. For the people in the cook house, we might put burn marks on their aprons, and a little burn mark on their sleeve, and maybe some food stains and things like that. If there were someone who was forced to be on the floor doing a lot of cleaning, the knees would be a little bit more worn than other characters.

Sophina Brown and Lindsey Blackwell as Sarah and Carrie in Kindred (2022) Photo by Tina Rowden:FX - © 2022, FX Networks — Sophina Brown and Lindsey Blackwell as Sarah and Carrie in Kindred (2022) Photo by Tina Rowden:FX – © 2022, FX Networks

You create elements on costumes that speak to character. Can you give an example viewers can look for?

Sure. So for Carrie specifically, she’s Sarah’s daughter, and she’s a child, but she’s also one of Rufus’s friends, her and Nigel. Being that she’s Margaret’s dresser, and she is skilled at making clothes, one of the things that we thought would be cool for her, just to set her apart from the other enslaved, was that in her free time, she doodles or embroiders flowers and little things like that on her clothes. The camera may not pick up on this, and it may not be something that anybody else picks up on, but with the younger version of her, during winter, the embroidery on her dress wasn’t that great because she’s working on her craft. Then three years later, when we come back in episode five, and we’re in the summer version, you can see a little bit more of the detail and how she’s been honing her craft. That was something different we did for her to express her character.

This is the first of Octavia E. Butler’s works to be shown onscreen, which is surprising given how many awards she won as an author while she was alive.

Absolutely. It’s unfortunate that artists a lot of times get their just recognition when they’re no longer with us. Kindred was written in 1979, decades ago, and finally, her work is coming to light onscreen. There are a number of her books being made into films and series now, but I’m happy that we were the first ones out the gate. I’m proud I could be a part of that.

Kindred is streaming now on Hulu.

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Hugh Jackman Dropped a Big Clue About How Wolverine Returns for “Deadpool 3”

Posted on December 20, 2022 by babrams

When the news broke that Hugh Jackman was reprising his role as Wolverine in Deadpool 3, the first question was, understandably, but how? Jackman’s iconic embodiment of the adamantium-clawed mutant came to a brutal, beautiful close in James Mangold’s Logan, dying a very definitive, very noble death. Mangold’s Oscar-nominated film gave Jackman’s Wolverine a hero’s death, as he sacrificed himself to save his young, unasked for protegé Laura (Dafne Keen), a little Wolverine, so to speak, created from Logan’s DNA.

Well, Jackman himself has dropped a major clue on how it’s possible Wolverine returns for Deadpool 3 and joins Ryan Reynold’s Merc with the Mouth—and the answer is the multiverse. But of course! Considering that Marvel has gone all-in on the multiverse, with characters increasingly moving across timelines, from Spider-Man: No Way Home to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it sounds as if this device is how Reynolds’ foul-mouthed, beloved Deadpool will encounter Wolverine.

Jackon revealed this during a conversation with SiriusXM. He says that he wasn’t actively pursuing a return to the role and joked that Reynolds was trying to cajole him for years, “annoyingly,” to come back. But then, when he saw Deadpool, he was struck by an idea of Deadpool and Logan in a kind of Eddie Murphy/Nick Nolte dynamic (from 48 Hours for those of you not hip to 1980s movie references). It wasn’t until, however, the notion of the multiverse came up that Jackman saw a way to finally give in to Reynolds and make a Wolverine/Deadpool movie without messing with Logan. Here’s what he said:

“It’s all because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines. Now we can go back because, you know, it’s science. So I don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline, which was important to me. And I think probably to the fans too.”

There’s also the fact that Logan is set in 2029, and Deadpool 3 is presumably set before that, so, as Reynolds has stated previously, Deadpool 3 won’t interfere with the Logan timeline.

Whatever it takes to get these two together works for us.

Check out the interview clip here:

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Featured image: Featured image: Hugh Jackman in ‘Logan.’ Courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Disney+ Trailer Teases Look at Marvel’s “Secret Invasion,” “Loki” Season 2 And More

Posted on December 20, 2022 by babrams

Disney+ dropped a bite-sized yet satisfying morsel yesterday—a sneak peek at what’s coming to the streamer in 2023. It’s going to be a big year on Disney+, with original new series, Marvel superheroes, Pixar animation, new Disney movies and series, and fresh Star Wars sagas all gathering in one place.

The teaser gives us a glimpse at a few upcoming series from everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away, which is growing more populated by the season, with both animated series and live-action Star Wars series headed to Disney+ in 2023. Season two of the animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch arrives at the very beginning of 2023, while on the live-action side, we get a glimpse of the first season of the Rosario Dawson-led Star Wars: Ahsoka and season three of The Mandalorian.

Meanwhile, we get fresh footage from two of Marvel Studios’ upcoming live-action series, starting with the brand new Secret Invasion, starring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as his alien partner Talos. Season two of Loki also arrives, with Tom Hiddleston returning as the titular trickster god for some multiversal mayhem, with his new, complicated love interest Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and his good buddy Mobius (Owen Wilson). The teaser also hypes the biggest new MCU film to land on the streamer early next year—Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

The teaser also includes looks at Pixar’s Win or Lose and Dug Days, the new Disney series American Born Chinese (directed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings helmer Destin Daniel Cretton), the new Disney movie Peter Pan & Wendy, and more.

Check out the sneak peek at 2023 below.

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Featured image: Tom Hiddleston is Loki and Owen Wilson is Mobius M. Mobius in ‘LOKI.’ Photo Courtesy Marvel Studios.

“George & Tammy” Creator Abe Sylvia on Crafting a Complicated Love Story

Posted on December 20, 2022December 20, 2022 by babrams

It’s a story that’s been on Abe Sylvia’s mind for a while. The screenwriter of The Eyes of Tammy Faye and writer/producer of such television series as Dead to Me and Nurse Jackie has always had a soft spot for country music. Blame it on his Oklahoma upbringing. And that’s why Sylvia found the story of George Jones and Tammy Wynette too good to resist.

George & Tammy, the six-episode series he created and wrote, is currently unfolding on Showtime. Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain star as the couple whose love of music and each other made them country legends as it brought turmoil to their personal lives. In a recent interview, Sylvia reflects on the decade-long journey to bring George & Tammy to life.

Tell me about the inception of George & Tammy?

I had an idea about a fictional country singer. I probably shouldn’t say this because I still want to do it. I was doing research, and I came across a photo of George Jones and Tammy Wynette in an embrace. The picture really struck me. And it dawned on me—why am I trying to make up a story? No one’s done George and Tammy yet. That was probably 11 years ago. That same weekend, I saw The Tree of Life, and I thought, ‘“Gosh, Jessica Chastain would be an amazing Tammy Wynette.” It was originally conceived as a feature. We were close to going three times. During that time, television came to be the place for grown-up content about complicated adults. And my personal stock in television was on the rise. So I approached Jess and said, “You want to do it on TV?” And she said, “Yeah, we should do it.”

Jessica Chastain is Tammy Wynette. Courtesy Showtime Networks.

How did you arrive at six episodes?

I’ve probably written this story 42 times backward and forwards. The TV pitch consisted of the feature script and a plotline for the season. At first, it was ten episodes, then eight. Things fell away as we honed in on the love story and stopped trying to get every fabulous anecdote in. Even though so many of our narrative darlings were never shot, I think the show is better for it. Six episodes just seemed the natural end to that decision.

What was behind the decision to name each episode after a song?

Tammy and George did us the great favor of always singing about what was happening at that moment in their lives. We didn’t add songs just to get the hits in. It always came from a place of where the two were emotionally. We went to the natural beginning, middle, and end of their love story. And the songs revealed themselves. For a while, Episode two was called A Girl I Used to Know, which is a George Jones song. Much of Episode two is about how Virginia Pugh reinvents herself and becomes Tammy Wynette and the Grammy winner who sings Stand By Your Man. We were thinking of using Stand By Your Man later. But Tammy takes a big emotional turn in Episode two. She really sees George as the three-dimensional complicated man that he is and not just a big star and chooses to stand by him anyway. That made us change the title.

Michael Shannon is George Jones and Jessica Chastain is Tammy Wynette. Courtesy Showtime Networks.

George & Tammy is based on their daughter Georgette’s The Three of Us: Growing Up with Tammy and George. What kind of interaction was there with her?

We spoke a great deal. She really didn’t note the scripts, but she asked that we do two things. The first was not to make her mother’s life a tragedy. It ended sadly, and terrible things happened to her, but she was a force of nature. That really changed how we looked at Tammy. She had twenty number-one hits in her lifetime. That is not a tragedy. We talk about Elvis and all his accomplishments. He died of a drug overdose, but his life is not considered a tragedy. Tammy’s is. I thought that was a really interesting distinction. We include some sad things that happen along the way, but we couldn’t lead with the tragedy. It’s unfair. That’s why Tammy enters the show running with a big smile. She was always trying to reach a destination… even with her drug use. One thing she won’t do is stop. It’s what George says. You can’t stop her. That’s her beauty.

And the other thing?

The other thing pertained to George’s sobriety. I think Georgette said, “You know, there are a lot of people in the world who want to take credit for getting my dad clean. My dad got himself clean. Certainly, there were people who checked him into rehab or picked him up and dusted him off many times. But his sobriety belongs to him.” That was a very important aspect of dealing with it.

What else did you learn from Georgette?

She also introduced us to a lot of people that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to speak to — her sister Jackie and her brothers Jeff and Bryan. Jan Smith (Tammy’s makeup artist, played by Katy Mixon) is still with us. We had multiple conversations with her. She gave us real insight into Tammy. And then Peanutt (songwriter/ session musician played by Walton Groggins) and Charlene (Kate Arrington) Montgomery — they became good friends of the show. We gave them roles. In Episode four, Charlene is the woman who picks up George when he’s hitchhiking. Peanutt is the street busker in Episode six. He’s singing one of his songs, and George gives him money. That’s the real Peanutt Montgomery. In fact, that was the first musical number we filmed. We were in production for a good deal of the show before we got to the musical numbers. That felt like a really nice segue into the performances.

How did Michael Shannon come to the project?

Michael Shannon was Jessica’s idea. She was very vocal about it. And she was right. He’s just so phenomenal. ln fact, I was on a plane to LA to pitch the show, and across the aisle from me is Michael Shannon. He wasn’t cast yet, but I thought that was a real sign.

Michael Shannon is George Jones. Courtesy Showtime Networks.

Did you talk to him?

I didn’t. But I told him the story later, and he thought it was hilarious.

Did their casting have any impact on the script?

I had to get my George and Tammy down on paper first. Then the three of us read through the scripts, and it was quite a natural fit. We didn’t change a lot of dialogue. If anything, we lost some. Those two play a moment better than I can write it. As we tailored it to Michael and Jessica’s profound instruments, it was, “We don’t need words. We’ll tell this in a look.” That was probably the biggest thing in terms of writing it to them.

What would you like the takeaway from George & Tammy to be?

That people experience the show not as a biopic but as an exploration of love…conflicted love. I hope that people see themselves for better and for worse. That’s where great love stories capture us. I hope people come away having had a cathartic experience. It’s like one of those good cries that make you feel better about yourself. You feel wrung out by the end, but you still believe in love.

New episodes of George & Tammy air on Fridays on Showtime.

Featured image: Michael Shannon is George Jones and Jessica Chastain is Tammy Wynette. Courtesy Showtime Networks.

Watch Tom Cruise Perform the Most Insane Stunt in “Mission: Impossible” History

Posted on December 19, 2022 by babrams

Paramount has released a look at what might be one of the most insane stunts in the history of cinema. Tom Cruise, legendary (among other reasons) for upping the ante with his stunts for each and every Mission: Impossible installment, can be seen in this new featurette pushing the envelope presumably as far as one would think it’s possible to go. The new stunt is for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One. It’s been years in the making, requiring Cruise to ride a motorcycle off a cliff and launch himself into a BASE jump. But of course.

This kind of lunacy is all in a day’s work for Cruise and the Mission: Impossible creative team, especially for Cruise and stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Eastwood is featured in the video, explaining that a year of BASE training, advanced skydive training, canopy control, and a slew of other skills were required to pull off the feat. While Cruise is the center of attention, the video shows how it takes a team of experts to deliver a stunt like this while keeping everyone safe.

“This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise says.

It wasn’t just the aerial work Cruise had to master, but also motocross riding. The Mission: Impossible team built a motocross track for Cruise to practice, learning how to get comfortable riding the bike and jumping far distances. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie explains that the cameras required to capture all this in the most thrilling way possible didn’t even exist when they were filming the last installment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

The years-in-the-making stunt was filmed in Norway and has to be seen to be believed. Check it out here:

Separately, Cruise also jumped out of a plane to thank Top Gun: Maverick fans for coming out to the theater in such massive numbers. This type of thing for him probably doesn’t even get his heart rate up that much anymore, but it’s still worth a watch.

Cruise thanked the fans in the most Cruise-ian of ways, by very casually leaning back and out of a plane over the coast of South Africa. The beauty? He continued his tribute to the fans while in mid-air, taking his very sweet time before pulling the ripcord to release the parachute. In fact, we never see the parachute itself, but we do get to watch Cruise finish his thanks and start spinning crazily towards the beach below.

Cruise made this special announcement while filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which will be released in two parts, a year apart, and represents Cruise’s last mission as Ethan Hunt.

Check out the Top Gun: Maverick special announcement here:

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Featured image: Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance. Courtesy Paramount.

Donald Glover to Produce & Star In “Spider-Man” Movie Based on Villain Hypno-Hustler

Posted on December 19, 2022 by babrams

Donald Glover will have a meaty role on and offscreen in an upcoming, recently revealed Spider-Man movie for Sony Pictures.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Glover is attached to star in and produce a film set within Sony’s Spider-Man Universe of Marvel characters. The film will be written by Myles Murphy, son of Eddie Murphy, and is said to focus on the Hypno-Hustler, an obscure Spider-Man villain.

The Hypno-Hustler comes from Bill Mantlo, the same writer who brought Rocket Raccoon into the world—now a Marvel Cinematic Universe staple—along with artist Frank Springer. As THR writes, the Hypno-Hustler came out of the disco era, appearing in “Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man No. 24” in 1978. The Hypno-Hustler, real name Antoine Delsoin, leads a band called the Mercy Killers and uses hypnosis technology in his instruments to hypnotize and rob his audience members.

How obscure is the Hypno-Hustler? So obscure he’s often mentioned as one of Spider-Man’s worst supervillains, yet this lack of pedigree is precisely why Glover was interested in the character in the first place. Without a legion of Hypno-Hustler fans, Glover and Murphy will be free to imagine the villain in any number of ways. What’s more, given Glover’s musical abilities, embodying a Marvel character who is also a musician has plenty of appeal. THR writes that the “project could be anything from a disco period piece to a re-imagined modern hip-hop version or even a cyberpunk future play.” We’d honestly see Glover leading a film in any one of those genres.

Glover’s connection to Spider-Man goes back years, when fans were hoping he’d land the role of Peter Parker in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. That role ultimately went to Andrew Garfield, but Glover did voice Spider-Man/Miles Morales in the Disney XD series Ultimate Spider-Man in 2015. He also had a small role that never made it to the final cut in Spider-Man: Homecoming (he played Miles’ Morales’ uncle).

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is expanding, with Kraven the Hunter set to join the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films, Venom, and Morbius in the growing cinematic family. Madame Web and Spider-Woman are both in development, and Glover’s Hypno-Hustler could be a great addition to this budding universe.

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Featured image: AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 19: Donald Glover attends the premiere of “Atlanta” during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at The Paramount Theatre on March 19, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for SXSW)

First “Oppenheimer” Trailer Unveils Christoper Nolan’s Atomic Bomb Drama

Posted on December 19, 2022 by babrams

The first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer dropped last night, revealing the auteur’s upcoming period epic. Oppenheimer boasts yet another stellar A-list cast as the writer/director now turns his attention to a turning point in world history, focusing on the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man who risked creating something that could destroy the entire planet in order to save it.

Nolan’s film will explore Oppenheimer’s life and role in Manhattan Project, a government research effort that was created to build and test nuclear weapons that went on from 1942 to 1946. Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory at the time, where the bombs were assembled. He is widely considered to be the key architect of the bomb and a morally and ethically conflicted genius who quoted Hindu scripture while witnessing the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945; “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This is not Murphy’s first time working with Nolan, of course. He has had important roles in Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk. However, this is the first time that he’s the star, and he heads up a sensational cast that includes Emily Blunt as his wife, botanist and biologist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer; Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves. Jr., director of the Manhattan Project; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Commission; Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock; Benny Safdie as theoretical physicist Edward Teller; Josh Hartnett as pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence; Michael Angarano as Robert Serber; Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman; and Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh in undisclosed roles.

Nolan adapted his script from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Check out the first trailer below. Oppenheimer drops into theaters on July 21, 2023.

Here’s the official synopsis for Oppenheimer:

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX^®-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.

The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Oscar^® winner Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

Academy Award^®nominee Florence Pugh plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence.

Oppenheimer also stars Oscar^® winner Rami Malek and reunites Nolan with eight-time Oscar^® nominated actor, writer and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh.

The cast includes Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Dylan Arnold (Halloween franchise), David Krumholtz (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises).

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Featured image: OPPENHEIMER, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

How The “Babylon” Sound Team Built a Sonic Bacchanal

Posted on December 16, 2022December 16, 2022 by babrams

The opening sequence to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (in theaters today) hits you like one of the many lines of powder its characters will ingest. It’s eye-opening, choreographed chaos, leaving you with an intensely euphoric feeling – quite fitting for a story that revisits Hollywood’s infancy of the 1920s and ‘30s when La La Land was a sandbox of drugs, sex, and all night partying.

It’s here we meet Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a low-level “yes man” with aspirations to make it in the biz, putting together the finishing touches on an elephant-sized bash for the who’s who, including silent movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) and Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a party-crasher looking to make a name for herself on the silver screen. Bedlam arrives at nightfall when tux-clad half-naked men, topless women, and hundreds of drunkards and coke fiends descend on the mansion of studio boss Don Wallach (Jeff Garlin), drinking and snorting anything and everything until sunrise. The mash-up has serious FOMO vibes and is glued together by the music from a live orchestra playing in the ballroom. That orchestra is led by trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), and galvanizing the moment is a tantalizing dance by Nellie, which catches the eye of a producer who needs to replace an actress who happened to die of a drug overdose in a nearby room. It’s her chance at stardom.

Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

Beautifully shot on anamorphic 35mm push-processed film by cinematographer Linus Sandgren (La La Land, First Man) and exquisitely alluring production design from Florencia Martin (Licorice Pizza), the visual tapestry of Babylon invites you into the world with open arms, though it’s the sonic creativity that subliminally keeps you moving to the beat of Chazelle’s narrative drum.

“His films are very motivated by music,” says production sound mixer Steven Morrow (La La Land). “There’s a lot of discussion in preproduction about certain music hits and cues as well as the feel he [Chazelle] wants. We work heavily with the music department to make sure Damien has all the tools he needs.” Composer Justin Hurwitz returns for his fourth film with the director, and his up-tempo score helps drive the opulent soundscape.

“Damien wanted the sound to be visceral and real, to be a little larger than life,” says the multi-hyphenated supervising sound editor Ai-Ling Lee (La La Land, First Man), who collaborated alongside the likes of supervising sound editor Mildred Iatrou (La La Land, First Man) and re-recording mixer Andy Nelson (La La Land). “Because there’s a lot of action in the frame, he wanted the sound to be as immersive, in a sense, as much as the visuals.”

In filming the epic party, production sound fitted each actor with a wireless transmitter and lavalier to record their dialog. Boom operator Craig Dollinger placed an additional microphone overhead when viable, though the set walls of the Wallach location were lined with mirrors, limiting opportunities. The bigger hurdle for sound though was finding a solution to the music from the orchestra, so it didn’t trample on the dialog throughout the scene. Morrow decided to give each band member an earwig that the music would be played through, allowing them to mimic playing their instruments. The problem: there were dozens of dancers who also needed to hear the music, plus Robbie’s character. Sound utility Bryan Mendoza organized a system to give each one of them their own earwig to hear the songs and dance to the lavish choreography created by Mandy Moore (La La Land).

For Robbie’s dance number, Morrow devised another solution. “Mandy and Margot came up with the song Firestarter [by Prodigy] that she’s dancing to. Everyone else is dancing to what you hear on screen, but Margot had a separate earwig and transmitter so she could hear that specific song,” Morrow notes. “It may not look like it, but that party scene became a technical challenge where we had 42 earwigs going out on two different channels.”

Lee admits the opening party sequence is heavily driven by music. For sonic clarity, post had to craft a visceral sound effects track that heightened the scene without overwhelming the audience. “Andy Nelson started the mix by setting what’s the loudest he can play the music for the sound effects, like the party crowd, fights, elephant, etc. I made sure not to play them too loud and be specific when we play them, rather than a bed of sounds. This way, if a small sound doesn’t overpower the music, that helps create an illusion that the music is always big, except for certain moments like the crowd cheers taking over the music on the last half of Nellie’s dance sequence,” explains Lee.

Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

The mantra for production sound throughout filming was to find creative ways to protect the dialogue and not let the music play over entire sequences. Another such instance was a massive battlefield scene that has multiple storylines taking place at once, including Nellie’s first day on set, where she’s asked to repeatedly shed a tear and Jack Conrad climbing a hill to kiss a princess at sunset.

Lukas Haas plays George Munn, Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad and Spike Jonze plays Otto Von Strassberger in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

Supervising location manager Chris Baugh found an empty field in Simi Valley where Martin designed a number of open-air sets to represent Kinsocope studio owned by Wallach. “Kinoscope is what you’d call a Poverty Row studio,” Martin says in the production notes, “so we wanted to show how ramshackle and seat-of-your-pants the approach in those days could be. It’s really these pockets of fantasy sprouting out of the desert, where only months or weeks before nothing existed.” Every individual movie set, every painted backdrop – all were created from scratch.”

The colossal sequence had over 700 extras fighting, explosions, horse stunts, and a full orchestra. “On a traditional movie, you would blast the music and the orchestra would play along as the battle takes place. We thought since we had a large earwig count already, why not just give everyone in the orchestra an earwig, including the conductor [cameo by composer Justin Hurwitz]. This way, they can play along to the silent music, and then good sound effects of the battle and everything that’s going on could be recorded.”

Director of Photography Linus Sandgren and Olivia Hamilton as Ruth Adler on the set of Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

Lee sent two sound effects recordists to capture the aural palette during the multi-day shoot. “They were able to set up a bunch of mics around the set to record a wider perspective of the extras yelling, attacking, and the different prop sounds,” mentions Lee. “We thought it might be kind of cool to capture the sound of 1,000 extras with props weapons and hear what it sounds like.” Morrow adds, “It may seem odd to say [to Chazelle] we don’t want to play this orchestra out loud, but in the end, it helps the authenticity of the scene. It lent all that extra sound that would be very difficult to recreate where you have all these extras on the field running at each other.”

In post, the team further pushed the battle sequence, finding moments to aurally heighten the drama of the unfolding storylines. “Justin’s score is driving a lot of the scene forward,” says Lee. “For sound to play it up, we would hit the cut to play in rhythm and pitch to his score.” Mixing in Dolby Atmos created more of an immersive soundscape where they pulled sound effects from the center speaker placing them in different perspectives for viewers to hear and feel.

Morrow admits none of it would be possible without the collaborative nature of Chazelle. “Damien really cares about every aspect of a movie, and you can tell that in the small details. He has storyboards he sends out to everybody to understand what his goals are for the shoot, but he’s collaborative in the sense that he’s not locked into a specific vision. It’s a very rewarding experience working on his movies.”

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Featured image: Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

First “Barbie” Trailer Reveals Margot Robbie as the Iconic Mattel Doll Come to Life

Posted on December 16, 2022December 16, 2022 by babrams

“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been…dolls.”

This is how the first teaser trailer for writer/director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie opens, with little girls playing with dolls in a beautiful but barren landscape that is meant to evoke, both in sound and image, the iconic prehistoric “Dawn of Man” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyessy, where a band of apes are ejected from their watering hole.

“But the dolls are always and forever baby dolls,” our narrator continues. “Until…”

Until Barbie (Margot Robbie) appears, larger than life in a striped bathing suit and standing as tall as the monolith behind her. Then, just as the apes in 2001 began to evolve after stumbling upon a monolith and realizing they can use bones as a weapon, the little girls begin smashing their baby dolls after beholding the majestic colossus that is Barbie.

It’s a cheeky, delightfully weird teaser. Gerwig has become a rising star as a writer/director for a reason, and she’s working with a stacked deck here, so hopes are high that Barbie is going to be something special.

The teaser ends with a peek at the world Barbie inhabits, heavy on pinks, with a glimpse of Ken (Ryan Gosling), as well as Issa Rae and Simu Liu’s characters. They’re joined by America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Ariana Greenblatt, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Michael Cera, and Will Ferrell.

“We like the things that feel a little left of center,” Robbie told The Hollywood Reporter about Barbie. “Something like Barbie where the IP, the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, ‘Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is,’ but our goal is to be like, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t know you wanted’…can we truly honor the IP and the fan base and also surprise people? Because if we can do all that and provoke a thoughtful conversation, then we’re really firing on all cylinders.”

If this first teaser is any indication, Barbie is definitely going to subvert expectations.

Check out the teaser trailer below. Barbie hits theaters on July 21, 2023.

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Featured image: Caption: MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures