Best of Summer: Juliette Binoche on Driving a Tough Road in “Paradise Highway”

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

For writer/director Anna Gutto’s feature debut Paradise Highway, a trucker named Sally will do whatever it takes to keep her brother Dennis (played by Frank Grillo) alive long enough so that he can get out of prison and restart his life. This means she’ll take on jobs that are hardly legal, but she believes victimless, in order to make a little extra money and placate the powers that be that hold his life, while behind bars, in their hands. The siblings were once the victims of abuse themselves, and their connection is of the “us against the world” variety. This is what makes life for Sally that much worse when the job at the heart of Paradise Highway is revealed—instead of moving some contraband across state lines, Sally’s being told she needs to help move a young girl, Leila (Hala Finley) in what turns out to be a child sex trafficking ring.

And who did Gutto manage to land for the role of the foul-mouthed, truck-driving Sally? Juliette Binoche, of course, one of the most beloved French actresses alive and possibly the last person you might imagine in the role. Still, it took about nine seconds to believe Binoche as Sally, the second you watch the way she moves, both out in physical space and within the confines of her beloved truck, you forget you’re watching a famous French actress and are entirely drawn into Sally’s world. Watching Binoche transform herself into a credible trucker plying the American highways is but one remarkable feature of Paradise Highway, a film that reveals how that American highway system is used to support one of the ugliest, most heinous crimes imaginable.

We spoke to Binoche about her preparation for playing a truck driver, what drew her to Gutto’s thriller, and what it was like performing with young Hala Finley.

What was it about the script for Paradise Highway that most connected with you?

Child sex trafficking is important to talk about it, to be aware of, so we can see with new eyes that it can happen in the western world, where people think we’re protected and it can’t happen here. We’re not protected. This film helps us to understand that. I didn’t know that sex trafficking happens with truck drivers, and that’s how they move from one state to another. It also touches on the topic of choosing a new family. Choosing your heart family over your blood family. This film shows how difficult it is to unplug an unhealthy blood family situation and how you take the risk when you choose your heart family, because it can be terrifying. So I liked that topic as well. And I was excited to work with Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo, and to help Anna Gutto. It was her first feature film, and I was very happy to be a part of it.

Paradise Highway‘s subject matter is difficult; how was the filming process itself? 

I could never imagine myself being a truck driver in America, first of all. That would be like, what? If someone told me that’s what I’d do in 2021! So it’s a small film that we made with very little money in a time period that was very condensed in Mississippi, where it was hot with a lot of mosquitos, and we had night shoot to day shoot to night shoot to day shoot, back and forth for or five times. We had a young actress in Hala Finley who could only work a few hours a day, so there were challenges. But we made it, and we made it with passion and a lot of belief in it.

Hala Finley as Leila and Juliette Binoche as Sally in Paradise Highway. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate
Hala Finley as Leila and Juliette Binoche as Sally in Paradise Highway. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate

You really carry yourself like a truck driver, to say nothing of how intimate with the truck you appear. What was that process like for you in becoming comfortable in the role of Sally?

Well, thank you. I ate in truck stops [laughs]. That’s the start. It’s such unhealthy food, being stuck on these highways where they drive nonstop. I was appalled to see the food, which is not good. I spent time with female truck drivers and observing what it felt like being in the heat. I studied maps, trying to understand where I was, and give the intensity the story needed because otherwise, you wouldn’t believe it.

L-r: Writer/director Anna Gutto and Juliette Binoche. Courtesy Lionsgate.
L-r: Writer/director Anna Gutto and Juliette Binoche. Courtesy Lionsgate.

The details you get in this movie about child sex trafficking are harrowing, and there’s an early sequence in the film in which you need to physically restrain Hala’s character. How did you approach that sequence?

The good news is that Hala is such a good actress that I just believed what I was seeing in front of me and feeling in front of me, so that made our journey easier. We could listen to each other and be with each other. Hala is so raw and truthful when you act with her, so that also helped. As an actress, you jump into what you need to do, so I don’t take things personally, I’m selling you what I’m doing. I remember several times with Hala, the scene when she kills the man and we’re struggling with that weapon, it was quite rough between us. I remember opening my arms so we’d cuddle and calm down the intensity. I think that’s when she probably trusted me, when I opened my arms to her. I think before we started shooting, she was a little distant because she’d had some experiences in the past where she felt the actors weren’t always generous. So when she felt like I was taking care of her, both physically and emotionally, that’s when we could laugh and cry together.

Hala Finley in "Paradise Highway." Courtesy Lionsgate.
Hala Finley in “Paradise Highway.” Courtesy Lionsgate.

There’s quite a bit left unsaid in Paradise Highway, which deepens the sense that Sally has created her life on the road to get away from an unspeakable past. We edge towards a specific horror when Dennis (Frank Grillo) puts Leila in a dress Sally once wore—did you and Anna speak about the specifics of her past, the stuff we only get hints of?

We talked about that dress. With Anna, we had lots of discussions about Sally, and what was the most beautiful thing is she trusted me, which gives you wings because it makes all the possibilities happen. 

Paradise Highway is available on demand now.

Featured image: Juliette Binoche as Sally in Paradise Highway. Photo Credit: Nick Burchell

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

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

Based on everything from the reviews to the overwhelmingly positive chatter online to the 5-minute standing ovation at Cannes, Top Gun: Maverick seems destined to become Tom Cruise’s biggest weekend opening in his career, which is saying something. For the sequel to the beloved 1986 film, Cruise, the film’s executive producer and star, waited until he had a great story and the right people in front of and behind the camera, which included producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski. It was also essential to Cruise and his team that the US Navy was willing to take part so that the production could be shot with practical effects, with the actors playing pilots filmed in real jets. For this incarnation, Cruise literally had a need for speed.  

In Top Gun: Maverick, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) is called to train former Top Gun pilots to fly a nearly impossible mission. Mav shares a complicated past with one of the aviators, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller). Rooster is the son of Mav’s former wingman Goose (Anthony Edwards), the best friend he lost in a training accident in the original film. Helping with guidance and support is his longtime friend Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer) and old flame Penny (Jennifer Connelly). 

All these pilots are the best of the best, but to ensure survival and success, Mav has to make them even better individually and as a team. Among the chosen are “Hangman” (Glen Powell), and “Coyote” (Greg Tarzan Davis). The Credits spoke to Powell and Davis about the rigorous training Cruise designed to prepare them for flying in F18s and pulling G-forces like real Top Gun pilots. 

TOM CRUISE PLAYS CAPT. PETE "MAVERICK" MITCHELL, MILES TELLER PLAYS LT. BRADLEY "ROOSTER" BRADSHAW, MONICA BARBARO PLAYS "PHOENIX" AND GLEN POWELL PLAYS "HANGMAN" IN TOP GUN: MAVERICK FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, SKYDANCE AND JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS.
TOM CRUISE PLAYS CAPT. PETE “MAVERICK” MITCHELL, MILES TELLER PLAYS LT. BRADLEY “ROOSTER” BRADSHAW, MONICA BARBARO PLAYS “PHOENIX” AND GLEN POWELL PLAYS “HANGMAN” IN TOP GUN: MAVERICK FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, SKYDANCE AND JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS.

The Navy committed to putting actors in the back of F16s to prepare you, Tom Cruise built individual flight training programs and checked the detailed forms you filled out each day as you went through it. What were some of the notes or hiccups you experienced, and how did Tom and his team adjust the program in response?

Powell: I was a sarcastic asshole in those things until I realized Tom Cruise was actually reading them. The whole preparation, his whole thing is ‘practice like you play.’ Make it harder before you have to actually go up there and act. For me, one of the hardest things to do was recover from the sustained G’s. I could pull 8 1/2 or 9 G’s when we would do those little pop-ups all day, but these sustained G’s, these death loops where you have to be doing them for as many as 30 to 45 seconds, they get harder and harder. You just get smaller, so that you’re trying to keep blood in your head over the course of almost a minute. Knowing that I didn’t recover as quickly mentally, that I had to take a second to breathe, he thought, ‘We should probably do more of those.’ 

Glen Powell plays “Hangman” in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films

How about you, Greg?

Davis: I wanted to make sure that I was actually capturing those moments and looking believable, and I didn’t want to pass out. So I would ask Tom, ‘How can I get better in this?’  The best way to get better is to do more of it, so I was doing it constantly, over and over, the high G pulls. You’re just trying to push yourself to feel what it’s like to blackout so that you won’t necessarily get to that point. You will know what it feels like and know how to counteract what’s going on. If we didn’t have that program, there is no way we would be able to do what we did in those jets and have that great footage. What it does to your body and your face and everything, if you’re untrained, it’s horrible. We had to look like we actually graduated from Top Gun. So with that preparation, it really helped make us look as though we’ve been doing this for years. 

 

Do you think it’s more a physical or a mental game when you’re up there?

Davis: Both. I do think it’s mental over physical because I had the battle of, ‘I don’t want to be the one to blackout. I don’t want to be the one to throw up. This person did this many G pulls, so I want to be able to do just as many or more.’ I think we had that camaraderie of competitiveness that kept us going. On the physical side, you don’t feel that until really after the fact. I mean, sometimes during filming, you have to shake off the G’s, like, ‘let me breathe, let me shake off the sickness,’ but it was really once you get to the ground. I would need to just lie down in my car for an hour after training because you can’t drive off; you’re just so exhausted. It’s like you got into a car wreck a few times, there are times when you’re cold and you just have to sleep, so I will go with mental first and then physical. 

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.

Powell: I think the one thing I learned from Tom is he’s maybe the most headstrong person I’ve ever met in terms of his ability to use mind over matter in every case. It’s actually unbelievable the things that you can will yourself to do, and what he does will himself to do is incredible. I would say that’s the interesting thing that I also learned about Top Gun pilots in general; with flying, they have to be athletes in the air, but they’ve also got these engineer brains. They’re doing math while blood has been drained from their heads. It’s unbelievably impressive. So I do find it to be a hybrid, but I also find the ability to take that consistently, to get into that plane every time, knowing it’s gonna hurt you a little bit. Miles [Teller] left one flight, and the capillaries in his whole back were burst. There was so many G’s that the blood was trying to be pulled through his back, and his whole back was a raspberry. That’s pretty consistent. It’s called G rash. That happens to a lot of people, and with Miles, his whole back looked like someone had beaten him. It was bad.

Davis: There were times when the next day you knew you had to fly, you were like, ‘Okay. Okay, yeah. Let’s go. Let’s go.’ Then you would get in, and you’re sitting on the tarmac or the taxiway for 30 minutes, and you’re trying to like tell yourself, ‘Okay, only an hour and a half or two hours. I got this. I got this.’ It was definitely mental warfare that you were playing with yourself.

This is all done live. You were operating your own cameras, considering the shots, the lighting, and remembering your lines. What did the practical experience and the challenges of the shoot teach you about film that, as an actor, you never expected to learn?

Powell: Tom is such a great film teacher. He loves this stuff, and he loves when he can impart knowledge and experience to other people. At least for me, when he was teaching us about film for up there, where we had to be our own directors, our own crew, he would tell me right before a flight, ‘Hey, there’s gonna be a look to Phoenix and Bob. I want you to get one that’s really slow. I want you to give one where you just do your eyes to the side. I saw this Lee Marvin movie. Lee Marvin has this one thing where he almost gives, like, a side-eye, and then he keeps going. Give them a little smirk.’  We’re shooting for X amount of time up there, and he’s like, ‘Just give me as much good stuff as you possibly can.’ What you realize is, this is how he crafts a movie. It’s all intentional, but he knows the movie is going to find itself as we make it. That was one of the big things I learned up there is putting yourself out there and trying as much stuff as possible because Tom is not afraid to look stupid. At the end of the day, we all look cool because we’re not afraid to look stupid.

Davis: Just learning everybody else’s job and understanding why this person is doing this to help make the film look the way it looks. For example, learning why we need the lighting done a certain way, as well as learning how to edit in your head, because you’re also editing the movie while you’re up there, like, ‘I think I got that part, and if I look here, then I know they can cut it here.’ It’s being aware of the full picture. When we say it was a masterclass from Tom, it was a literal masterclass of every element of filmmaking that we’re all taking on to our next jobs, and I feel like a much wiser storyteller.

Top Gun: Maverick is playing in theaters nationwide.

 

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

“Top Gun: Maverick” Gets Five-Minute Standing Ovation at Cannes

“Top Gun: Maverick” Soars as Critics Hail Riveting Sequel

How “Top Gun: Maverick” Goosed San Diego’s Economy

Featured image: GLEN POWELL PLAYS “HANGMAN” IN TOP GUN: MAVERICK FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, SKYDANCE AND JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS.

Best of Summer: “Nope” VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron on Creating That Spectacular Alien Creature

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

Jordan Peele’s extraterrestrial spectacle Nope has a secret you may not know about: the sky itself is a digital recreation. And among the roughly 700 effects shots in the film, VFX supervisor Guillaume Rocheron (1917, Life of Pi) admits it’s one of the most rewarding as “most people don’t realize they’re looking at a giant visual effect.” 

The Nope VFX team set out to make the blue ether a haunting character, one indicative of the dooming waters in Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws. “Jordan said if we do our job well, the audience, after seeing the movie, will look at the sky differently. You are going to look at the clouds and have to be scared,” Rocheron tells The Credits. “So the sky became a big subject where we had to design a whole playground for the events to happen.” 

Those events Rocheron hints at taking place at the Haywood family ranch, miles outside of Hollywood, where, after the loss of their father (Keith David), siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) discover a celestial creature hiding in the clouds, feeding on anything staring at it for too long.

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

The hurdle wasn’t a simple cosmetic sky replacement but months-long research and development project where innovative tech was created, which allowed them to design cloudscapes that seamlessly blended with the set photography from Dutch cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. The results gave VFX complete control over the look and feel of Earth’s atmosphere. Animators were able to lay out the sky and simulate each cloud (and their movements) based on actual altitudes and wind speeds. The digital creations were then infused to match the sunlight and lighting of the location imagery. “It had to be incredibly invisible to the audience, so no one said I’m looking at a digital sky,” says Rocheron. “The challenge was different because our whole movie was about the sky.”

Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures..
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures..
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.

For the entity, which OJ names Jean Jacket after a horse Emerald was promised as a child, its development tracks to when Peele was writing the script. “Jordan had in his head that he wanted a creature that looks like a classic UFO but evolves into something else,” says Rocheron. “Early on in the process, we connected on a minimalistic design. Very simple, very clean. We worked with Leandre Lagrange, our main concept artist, and he came back with some incredibly unique design proposals.” 

Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.

The extraterrestrial had influences from Japanese anime while grounding its movement from real-world animals. “We consulted with John Dabiri, a professor at CalTech who studies jellyfish. It’s one of the most efficient animals in the world as it uses very little energy to eat, move, to do whatever it needs to do because their whole body is designed to be functional,” explains Rocheron. “We started to think about that deeply for our creature.” 

Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.

Jean Jacket hides in the clouds shaped in a saucer form as a way not to be exposed. It stretches nearly 250 feet wide with a large hole on the bottom and a square, green eye deep within its shell. “Jordan never said exactly where Jean Jacket comes from but that it comes from a planet that has conditions similar to Earth. An environment where it’s able to ride the wind and air currents skillfully,” notes Rocheron. “Even as a UFO, it doesn’t have an engine. It’s using ion propulsion to propel itself and is perfectly aerodynamic, and is able to detect the wind current. You can see it when you get closer to Jean Jacket. Its shell is not solid but ripples in the wind. It’s incredibly light and is able to pick up the wind speed and be silent and be a perfect predator for this environment.” 

The more horrifying scenes in Peele’s film are when Jean Jacket turns into a hunter. Entire bodies of people are pulled through its digestive system where you can hear their screams until they are belched back out like a summer storm. But instead of water, it rains blood. To shoot the sequences, a horizontal semi-transparent set was constructed to look like the digestive tract. LEDs were placed behind to give a sense of movement before visual effects stepped in to create digital body doubles of the people being pushed through Jean Jacket. VFX further added texture to the membrane to give it depth and life. On set, the camera was rotated 90 degrees to aid in the illusion. 

Hoyte van Hoytema and Jordan Peele on the set of "Nope." Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures
Hoyte van Hoytema and Jordan Peele on the set of “Nope.” Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures

When Jean Jacket unfolds, its entire shape creates a sense of awe. Graceful, it rides the wind using a giant sail and skirt to control its floatation. It’s beautiful, mesmerizing yet haunting. And by the climactic finale, it’s equally indignant as it chases down OJ and Emerald. Visual effects sought to physically ground those waning moments through practical effects (very akin to the production design efforts of Ruth De Jong). 

So as Jean Jacket glides closer to the ground, heavy amounts of dust and debris kicks up. To create the swirl, a helicopter was flown mimicking the creature’s movements. “We really tried to drown everything in reality so the actors felt the elements and the danger and the camera could pick it up,” says Rocheron. “The entire film was a real collaboration between special effects, visual effects, and Hoyte about how do we make this [movie] feel grounded and real.”  

Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures..
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.
Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures..

For more on Nope, check out these stories:

“Nope” Composer Michael Abels on Scoring Jordan Peele’s Sci-Fi Epic

How “Nope” Production Designer Ruth De Jong Built & Bloodied the Haywood Ranch

“Nope” Editor Nicholas Monsour Dives Into the Macabre of Jordan Peele’s Sci-Fi epic

“Nope” Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on Capturing the Epic Scope of Jordan Peele’s Latest

Featured image: Courtesy MPC/Universal Pictures.

Best of Summer: How the “Stranger Things” Sound Team Creeps You Out

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

When Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven experiences a flashback a couple of hours into Stranger Things‘ fourth season, sound effects tell the mutant teenager’s nightmarish origins story in a nutshell: thunder, whooshing, whistles, choral voices, more thunder, pistol shots, birds screeching, rumbling, slithering sounds, squishes and thumps flood her head with 50 seconds worth of precision-orchestrated mayhem. In Matt and Ross Duffer’s supernatural thriller, sound effects, melded with Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein‘s throbbing synthesizer music, amplify the misadventures of terror-haunted teenagers from Hawkins, Indiana, including best friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin).

Stranger Things’ Anywhere USA setting co-exists with The Upside Down, a hellish realm where sinister scientific research has unleashed monstrous predators. The man in charge of the show’s sonic bedlam is sound supervisor Craig Henighan. Oscar-nominated for Roma, he’s previously won three Emmy awards for overseeing Stranger Things audio and continues to lead a sound team that includes Angelo Palazzo, a former musician who now works as the series’ Emmy-winning lead sound effects editor. Henighan, inspired as a kid by Pink Floyd’s immersive record albums, says, “I was always the kid with the tape recorder, same with Angelo. Most of the world is visually oriented. We’re some of the people out there who are aurally oriented.”

Taking a break from Stranger Things’ July episodes, Henighan and Palazzo explain how they re-jigger cappuccino makers, squeaky closet doors, and industrial drills to construct the eerie soundscape of The Upside Down and beyond.

 

Taking Eleven’s flashback as an example, how do you go about designing Stranger Things’ sound-intensive sequences?

Craig Henighan: With Eleven this season, a lot of her flashbacks are from seasons one and two, so I’ll go back and take what we did before and tweak it to make it work within the sequence. While I’m doing that, Angelo is looking at season three, where we had a lot of mud, a lot of squishy blood — Matt and Ross refer to that as the gore season — so we have this library stacked with stuff that Angelo recorded over the years and well look there for hooks that have a strong sonic identity.

STRANGER THINGS. Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
STRANGER THINGS. Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

One of those hooks is the sickening sound made by the tentacle-like vines that wrap around this year’s monster, Vecna.

Craig: The vines squirming around Vecna are almost a direct descendent of the vines that crept around the Mind Flayer in the mall from season three and just got augmented a little bit. When the big tentacles thrust onto Vecna, you could have made that a regular sound of vines attaching or whatever, but this is Stranger Things — you need to make it larger than life. Angelo wound up putting explosion-y gunshots underneath those vine sounds.

STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Vecna in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Vecna in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Lots of layers?

Craig: Sometimes fifty sounds go into one thing! Then the trick becomes, how to make the effects clear and concise so it’s not just a giant roar with a big low end. It’s a lot of work to find frequencies for these peaks and valleys. And you can’t have sounds lingering for too long. The way human hearing works, the more you hear something the more you tune it out so you also need to create negative space. We try to get in and out, make the sounds staccato and punchy, match the cut with sounds we know are going to pop, and give the audience a certain flavor.

A new evil thing this season is the shrieking demobats. How did you make them sound so frightening?

Angelo Palazzo: One of the cool things we did is that Craig has a closet door that makes this high-pitched chittering sound when you open or close it. That inspired me because I also have this super squeaky wooden closet. I recorded my closet door, then tweaked it, so what you hear is this organic, high-pitched wood that chitters at a high frequency and sounds fluttery. That works great when you set it to these ferocious berserk piranha bats moving in a swarm.

Craig: Angelo and I always approach sounds from the non-literal side of things. Would you agree, Angelo?

Angelo: Yeah, our whole job is messing around with sound. It’s never “see a dog, hear a dog.” You might go: “What else makes a screaming sound? Oh, Craig’s cappuccino maker has this ungodly sound, so let’s record that!” Then it becomes part of the library.

The third episode of this season opens inside a small house that starts shaking to the sound of an enormous earthquake-like rumble. It turns out to be a nearby helicopter landing, but the sound is so deep it transforms what could have been a routine helicopter landing into something much more dramatic. How’d you guys create that earth-shattering rumble?

Craig: We have these microphones called geo-phones that are used for seismic work that you can bury in the ground. Our friend Jacob said some company was boring through a hydrofield in Burbank [California] with a giant drill, and he’s like, “I want to record this thing,” so he borrowed our geo-phones to get this ultra-sonic low stuff. The reality is that ultra-sonic and television are two worlds that don’t really meet but we were able to find frequencies in these recordings that work on a streaming platform. Then you throw in the rattles and the dishes and the light pouring through the windows.

Angelo: The whole idea was what would give it a Close Encounters feeling, where something’s going down, shaking the house, people inside are freaking out, but we don’t know it’s a helicopter until we cut to the outside. It’s a moment of tension where you don’t know what’s about to come around the corner, and it’s all sound design telling the story.

How do you know when a sequence is done?

Angelo: When I hand it over to Craig, I’m done. “Okay, your turn!”

Craig: Experience. If it’s 99 percent there, I might walk away and then come back to get that final one percent. Or sometimes you go back and decide, “It’s rad; I’m not going to touch it.”

Given the density of these sounds you’ve been describing, it must be tricky to organize all that audio?

Craig: We have probably around 400 odd tracks of sound effects. We have four buckets of regular effects, and within each bucket, there are sixteen tracks: eight mono and eight stereo. Then there are four sets of sound design, which is where all the vines stuff goes. And we have a pre-dub that’s called Entity, which is how they referred to the Demogorgon back in 2015 and being superstitious, I haven’t changed it. Then there are 24 tracks of Foley — footsteps and stuff. We’re constantly building our Stranger Things library, and there’s still a ton we haven’t even used yet. Like that closet sound, I had that idea like two seasons ago, but it just didn’t formulate until we realized the bats need to be a little squeakier, a little sharper sounding.

 

You frequently manipulate audio so it sounds like something else. Which tools do you use?

Angelo: I use Radium, a sampler that’s similar to the Synclavier keyboard from the nineties that allows you to perform and manipulate sounds almost like you would with a piano. Over the past few years, Radium’s re-ignited the fun level for me.

Craig: We both have microphones and recorders. Workstation-wise, we’re pretty much based in ProTools. And we’re always looking for new toys. This season I did a lot of feedback.

STRANGER THINGS. Grace Van Dien as Chrissy in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
STRANGER THINGS. Grace Van Dien as Chrissy in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

In Season Four, there’s a grandfather clock that plays a pretty big role, and it has a spooky personality all its own. What went into the “tick-tock” sound?

Craig: That’s a Westminster clock, but I added a cello thrum across every pendulum swing, We also used a gong and a chime the Duffer brothers sent me layered with a couple of chimes I had, and there’s a ripping sound undulating underneath it all.

Angelo: When Craig did the scraping cello thing, it really brought the “tick-tock” to life and gave it a creepy quality.

Craig: That was the goal. I made a really crazy version of the tick-tock clock, which I loved, but it’s one of the few times the guys said, “Ahh, can we just make the clock sound a little more normal?”

 

To be clear, there’s no human voice in the mix whispering “tick-tock”?

Craig: No. It just has a certain frequency that gives you this psychological feeling. That often happens in sound, where you think it’s something, but it’s not. The clock was one of two big things I had to deal with this season. What are we going to do with this clock? And the number one thing was Vecna.

Vecna, being this season’s slimy monster, needs to sound scary when he speaks. Did you model his speech around the actor’s voice?

Craig: I don’t have the plug-in chain in front of me, but the guys sent me dailies with Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor who plays Vecna and for whatever reason, Jamie’s voice and the plug-in chain I hit on worked really well.

STRANGER THINGS. Vecna in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
STRANGER THINGS. Vecna in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

If we could nerd out on the technology for a minute, how did you process Bower’s voice to make him sound like a monster?

Craig: I compressed the heck out of it. I added a lot of low-end EQ. Then it goes to my Infected Mushroom plug-in called Manipulator, and I used a pitch shifter or a pitch program from Waves. Then we added some reverb and delay. Our dialogue and music mixer editor, Mark Patterson, added his own special sauce and panned it left center right, so Vecna’s voice has more width when it needs to.

How did Vecna go over with Matt and Ross?

Craig: The brothers loved it. Vecna was one of those situations where we got it pretty quickly. Bang! I knew enough to back away and not overdo it, which I’ve been super guilty of doing. I go down these rabbit holes…

Angelo: Sometimes you throw all this stuff at an effect and then you wind up pulling things out because you realize it’s just two or three things that make the moment punch, and that’s all you need.

 

For more on Stranger Things, check out these stories:

“Stranger Things” Casting Director Carmen Cuba on Finding Season 4’s New Faces

“Stranger Things” Season 4 Smashes Netflix Record With 287 Million Hours Viewed

“Stranger Things” Season 4 Will Have Two Feature-Length Episodes

Featured image: STRANGER THINGS. Vecna Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Best of Summer: “Thor: Love and Thunder ” Costume Designer Mayes C. Rubeo on Dressing Gods & Goddesses

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

Thor: Love and Thunder has scored the biggest Thor opening yet, proving MCU fans are loving writer/director Taika Waititi’s romantic comedy space adventure. The film reunites Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who has become the Mighty Thor. They fight to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from killing all the gods and goddesses of the universe. 

Essential to capturing the essence of Waititi’s aesthetic is the bright explosion of color represented in every aspect of the project, and that extends to the costumes created by designer Mayes C. Rubeo. An Emmy winner for her costume designs on WandaVision and well-versed in the world of Thor from her work on Ragnarok, Rubeo is no stranger to the Marvel Universe. She is also a frequent collaborator with Waititi, garnering an Oscar nom for her inspired costumes in his Jojo Rabbit. For Thor: Love and Thunder, Rubeo found inspiration from Waititi’s endless energy and joyful approach to filmmaking, finding ways of creating looks lesser artists would find impossible. We spoke to Rubeo about some of the more challenging costumes audiences see in Love and Thunder, and how she sees herself as a facilitator in collaborating with the actors to help them build their characters. 

 

Chris Hemsworth has 25 costumes in Love and Thunder. The 80s biker look is especially wonderful and full of color. 

That 80s costume was based on Big Trouble in Little China, which is a movie that we all loved. There’s no better person on the planet to rock that kind of look than Chris. He worked so much on his physique to really be the strongest, the biggest Thor ever. That demanded an incredible amount of discipline, but he’s a wonderful artist and takes all aspects of his job seriously. Taika is a person of color, and he loves his life to be full of color. 

Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

All those costumes have to be inspiring in terms of getting into character. 

Yes, but a costume designer is only an accessory to help actors find their character. We are just like a lantern on the way for them to help find their complete character. It’s complex and it is an integral collaboration. 

Speaking of collaboration, the Mighty Thor costume looks so powerful, it seems like it would give Jane strength. How did you work with Natalie Portman, and what were some of the considerations for that costume?

If you notice, every time that Jane is the Mighty Thor, even her muscles are bigger, and she stands taller and has a different posture and is stronger. That is Natalie’s work as an actor, and also that wonderful costume. In Marvel visual development there is a group of fantastic artists that is led by visual development supervisor Andy Park, a wonderful illustrator. There were very smart lines that I had to follow in order to build this costume. That was great, because in reality Natalie is very slight and is not a tall woman, and she has a stuntwoman also working in the action scenes. To do her superhero costume we needed 10 sets because we had all the principal costumes and then those for the stuntwoman, who was much bigger than her, for the long shots. It had to not only look good but also be good for the action, including wire work or being catapulted or fighting, that’s all the technical issues that have to be considered. 

Natalie Portman as The Mighty Thor in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

All her costumes were vegan, as well, right?

That was very important, but not a problem. There are so many articles that you can find in vegan material. She is vegan and good for her, but there are also so many other people in the world that are, so there are more and more textiles and brands available. There is leather that comes from cactus. Imagine that! It’s from agave, and it’s amazing because it looks just like leather. It was also good and challenging for me to exercise that, to get to know so many sources for vegan clothing and textiles.

The draping on Christian Bale’s costume as Gorr the God Butcher is modeled after statues and is actually quite complicated as a design. It’s white, which is a color used in mourning in ancient times. It also looks like a funeral shroud, which is powerful symbol around his lack of joy and his bleak hopelessness. 

There were many conversations about Gorr, especially with me and Taika. We did so many sketches, but also Taika decided he wanted him in white. He wanted to portray Gorr in an archaic and ancient way, and how ancient people mourned. He had lost his daughter, so all the color had gone out of his life. This is a metamorphosis that happens to many people who are in great pain in their lives, a sort of in-between place where none of the colors of life exists. Christian embraced it all. 

Christian Bale as Gorr in Marvel Studios' THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Christian Bale as Gorr in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

The costumes in Omnipotence City are so extravagant and opulent and just an orgy of color. They must have been a huge challenge. 

I love to talk about Omnipotence City! I gave Taika some ideas about what gods could be there. My pitch was ‘why don’t we represent every god by how it is represented in every religion?’ You may have an alabaster or terra cotta god, or an Aztec warrior made of turquoise inlay. We had a Mayan god, and got the smallest man in Australia and created a costume that was made all of clay like it was a Mayan idol, but then Taika extrapolated that and made him a giant. I also made sure everything was balanced in this world, with an equal number of male and female gods. Anytime I can, I’ll do that, put things in balance. We had a Lady of Elche, which is an anthropological find in the Iberian Peninsula, and we made an orange costume with wheels at the ears. So many very original costumes and even some that didn’t make the cut, and we made them all. 

Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Marvel Studios' THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

What is one challenging costume you’re very proud of that viewers can seek out in the film? 

For the Omnipotence City scene, I did a god costume that had to be all in turquoise, in broken pieces like a mosaic. We actually made a digital print of the inlaid turquoise, with all the nuances in colors, and made a body suit for this actor, and then the makeup artists matched it for his face. His headpiece was a 3D piece with elements to look like solid gold, and then I personally put all the feathers in that. It is seen onscreen for about 2 seconds, but I was very proud of it. It was challenging, but I just loved it. Everything about this project was fun. 

 Thor: Love and Thunder is in theaters now.

For more on Thor: Love and Thunder, check out these stories:

“Thor: Love and Thunder” Hammers Out Franchise-Best Opening Weekend

The Simple Solution to Making Natalie Portman 6 Feet Tall in “Thor: Love and Thunder”

Critics Call “Thor: Love and Thunder” a Heartfelt Epic With a Marvelous Villain

 

 Featured image: Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

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

Posted on by babrams

As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season. 

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.

Credit: Scott Garfield. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation.
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 puzzles. “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 directors 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

“Top Gun: Maverick” is the Highest Grossing Movie of the Year

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.

“House of the Dragon” Renewed For Season 2

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Well, this comes as no surprise. After becoming the most-watched HBO premiere in history, House of the Dragon has be renewed for a second season. The series premiere has now been seen by more than 20 million viewers across all HBO platforms.

“We are beyond proud of what the entire House of the Dragon team has accomplished with season one,” says Francesca Orsi, Executive VP of HBO programming, in a statement. “Our phenomenal cast and crew undertook a massive challenge and exceeded all expectations, delivering a show that has already established itself as must-see-TV. A huge thank you [to co-creator and executive producer George R.R. Martin and co-creator and showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik] for leading us on this journey. We couldn’t be more excited to continue bringing to life the epic saga of House Targaryen with season two.”

House of the Dragon‘s success means it’s even more likely that at least some of HBO’s other Game of Thrones spinoffs—there are currently seven of them—will make it to a series order. Of those seven projects in development, four are scripted series, and three are animated.

Yet getting one of these series to air is a Herculean effort. House of the Dragon is a lavishly produced epic that required nearly a year’s worth of filming and postproduction work—those dragons don’t come easily or cheaply—and its second season will likely not arrive until the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024. The ensemble cast is made up of top-notch performers, led by Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Emma D’Arcy and Milly Alcock as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (the adult and younger version, respectively), and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen.

The massive interest in House of the Dragon is not surprising considering the phenomenon that was Game of Thrones, that rare modern series that was a conversation topic all across the United States and the world. The new series is set 200 years before the events in GoT and is centered on the powerful dragonlords of House Targaryen, a clan that could have ruled the Seven Kingdoms in perpetuity were it not for the internecine battles that the series will explore.

A House divided against itself cannot stand, after all. House of the Dragon will reveal how the powerful Targaryens’ once flourishing rule came crashing down.

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

Inside The Fiery First Episode of “House of the Dragon”

“House of the Dragon” Torches Previous Records & Becomes HBO’s Biggest Premiere Ever

Dragons Reign Supreme in New “House of the Dragon” Teaser

New “House of the Dragon” Images Tease a Westeros Filled With Dragons

Featured image: Milly Alcock, Paddy Considine. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO.

How “Where the Crawdads Sing” VFX Team Elevated the Mystery and Wonder of the Marsh

Posted on by babrams

Deep in the forgotten marsh of North Carolina, a magical world quietly flourishes for those who seek it. Where the Crawdads Sing has plenty of romance, but the true love story blooms between Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and the wildlife that shares her home. The untouched nature of Kya’s world is rarer now than in 1965, but VFX Supervisor Kolby Kember and VFX Producer Sarah McCulley of Crafty Apes VFX were on hand to subtly restore the rich environment. 

Filmed on location in Louisiana, the stunning landscapes shot by cinematographer Polly Morgan provided inspiration and critical reference for Kember and McCulley’s work. Even with Kya’s keen sense of observation, you may never be able to spot the seamless work they did to amplify the story’s atmosphere unless you know where to look. 

“That was great that we were just able to have this gorgeous, verdant source material that we could reference and match for a lot of those scenes when they’re out in the marsh, out in the woods,” McCulley noted. “We needed to make this background look really lush and green and gorgeous. Even though they were able to get out into some very remote, gorgeous locations, we still had overpasses and traffic in the background and modern structures and things like that we obviously got rid of. A lot of little tweaks like that that were able to just maintain that magic of being in that really rural, isolated location in the marsh.”

 

Kya’s passion and eventually livelihood springs from her fellow inhabitants in the marsh. Wildlife is obviously difficult to control and capture on screen, so Crafty Apes gave the atmosphere a boost. They added fog to make sequences more dense and eerie as well as supplemented with fireflies, moths, and other insects.

“We’ll pull reference on how these certain bugs move and the timing of everything so we can mimic that,” Kember explained. “Of course, you do tons of texture references and shoot photos to make sure we’re matching color and look. How to time them properly and how to make them look realistic. That’s a key part of any CG or creating anything in this realm is making sure that we do our research, we match it, and it looks real, and is believable.”

Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Columbia Pictures’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

The great mystery at the heart of the film centers on a faulty fire tower that is tall enough to kill a man in a fall. An existing tower on the southern coast of Louisiana was initially shot, then Kember and McCulley stepped in to intensify the danger and dramatics of the pivotal location.

“They had a practical fire tower there, so we went out and shot drone plates and made this big 360 dome that we could then use to orient our fire tower so that way we keep continuity from every direction we’re looking,” Kember said. “We almost recreated the space in our 3D scene so that anytime we put a camera in it any direction, it was always oriented the right way.” 

Not only was it essential to maintain fidelity to the marsh surroundings during the fire tower scenes, but the tower itself required digital augmentation to underscore the deadly toll inflicted on its victim. Hazards of the tower were emphasized to Kya’s jury throughout the film, which meant all the evidence presented had to be believable to viewers.   

“They actually built 20 feet of the bottom half [of the tower] on location that we could then extend into the trees,” Kember explained. “For all the stuff where they’re on top, they built the gantry tower bit on a big green screen set so that we could then extend down and make it feel like they’re a couple of hundred feet in the air. It was pretty cool.”

While the murder mystery is a tense conflict throughout the film, the movie’s most memorable sequence is sure to be a romantic moment between Kya and Tate (Taylor John Smith). When the two first kiss, the marsh itself seems to rejoice in the love Kya has found with a swirl of glittering leaves.

Daisy Edgar Jones and Taylor John Smith in “Where the Crawdads Sing.” Photo by Michele K. Short.

“That was a big moment for the story. It’s just such a beautiful scene. The lighting is stunning,” McCulley shared. “That was kind of a tall order to make sure that we could add something to the scene that was going to add to that beautiful, big, romantic moment and not feel like it was taking away from the story or being really distracting. That was a really big main point for the story and for us to make sure that was seamless.” 

“The leaf sequence was a really fun one,” Kember agreed. “I think it felt natural and not too whimsical, which is one thing we were worried about was this feeling too over the top. But it felt natural, and it felt good for the space.”

Of course, no great love develops without conflict, which erupts in violent ways for Kya and Tate. They both have physical moments with romantic rival Chase (Harris Dickinson). One of the most unexpected VFX demands for the film was enhancing the performances and fight sequences. 

“One of the things that I think was most impactful was hearing the reactions from it, all the different violent moments that we either did speed work on or splitting or warping things to make it feel like more of a direct hit or faster contact,” McCulley recalled. “You can just see how incredibly impactful that was in the film. One or two hits that Kaya gets in against Chase got audible gasps in the theater when we were watching it because it just helped that performance and the story to make it that much more shocking. A lot of little things like that that you wouldn’t necessarily clock or see has become a big part of what a lot of editors are doing in their films.”

Those digital alterations may be undetectable to the audience, but they give filmmakers more latitude to achieve their goals in postproduction. 

“Especially in this day and age, safety is number one, top of everybody’s mind on set for stunt sequences,” McCulley said. “So, for people to know that they have the freedom to add more safety on set and to understand what we’re able to do to make it look realistic is really beneficial to everyone.”

 

Where the Crawdads Sing is playing in theaters now.

For more on Where the Crawdads Sing, check out these stories:

How “Where the Crawdads Sing” Production Designer & Cinematographer Captured Nature’s Challenging Splendor

“Where the Crawdads Sing” Director Olivia Newman on Capturing the Haunting Beauty of a Beloved Novel

Featured image: Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Columbia Pictures’ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING. Photo by Photo by Michele K Short.

“Godzilla vs Kong 2” Synopsis Reveals Epic Continuation of Monster Fight

Posted on by babrams

We’re inching closer to round two of the most epic monster brawl ever. Warner Bros. has revealed the synopsis for their Godzilla vs. Kong sequel (still untitled), which will find our two colossal competitors partnering up to fight against an even greater threat than each other.

The end of the original Godzilla vs. Kong gave us a glimpse of what such a partnership might look like when Godzilla and Kong had to unite to take on the fearsome metallic city-stomper MechaGodzilla. The brief, potent team they created gave us a pretty big hint that the sequel would likely focus on the two Titans facing down an even greater threat, and the synopsis for the sequel proves it. Here it is:

This latest entry follows up the explosive showdown of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new cinematic adventure, pitting the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence – and our own. The epic new film will delve further into the histories of these Titans, their origins, and the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond while uncovering the mythic battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and tied them to humankind forever.

This “colossal undiscovered threat” will take up plenty of their attention and energies, but it’s not like Godzilla and Kong are buddies. In the first film, after putting up a ferocious fight, Kong was just about bested by Godzilla, with the King of Monsters beating him into submission and, had he wanted, moments away from ending Kong’s reign. Yet Godzilla didn’t go for the kill, as he sensed the real threat wasn’t Kong but the metallic monstrosity coming their way. So our question is, even with this new threat, might Godzilla and Kong require a rematch themselves?

Godzilla vs. Kong also hinted at a time when humans and Titans coexisted in Hollow Earth, and the mysteries of that hidden kingdom, and the connection between the Titans and humanity, will be further explored in the sequel. Adam Wingard returns to direct the sequel, working off a script from his Godzilla vs. Kong writer Terry Rossio, Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), and Simon Barret (You’re Next.) Returning cast members include Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kayle Hottle. Newcomers include Dan Stevens, Fala Chen, Alex Ferns, and Rachel House.

For more on Godzilla vs. Kong, check out these stories:

“Godzilla vs. Kong” Sequel Coming 2024, “Dune: Part Two” Moves to Thanksgiving 2023

“Godzilla vs. Kong” VFX Supervisor on Creating Titan Title Match of the Ages

“Godzilla vs. Kong” Smashes Pandemic-Era Box Office Record

Early Reactions to “Godzilla vs. Kong” Revel in the Monster Melee

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) GODZILLA battles KONG in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GOZILLA VS. KONG,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures

How “Bullet Train” Editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir Shaped a Thrill Ride

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Bullet Train has already punched through $100 million worldwide at the box office and isn’t slowing down. The thrill ride from director David Leitch roars with laughter and delivers a bounty of ass-kicking action sequences that may have you consider taking classes at your local dojo.

The Brad Pitt vehicle has him playing Ladybug, a down-on-his-luck assassin struggling to retrieve a suitcase on a Kyoto-bound train while trying to avoid a gritty group of killers with their own motives. Navigating the story in the cutting room, which was adapted from a novel by Kōtarō Isaka via screenwriter Zak Olkewicz, was Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir. The film marks her fourth project with the director, and the two are about to start their fifth – a feature version of the beloved 1980s television series The Fall Guy.

“What David has taught me in the past nine years working with him is to allow the audience to enjoy the action, especially when you have a comedy. You need to allow the people to laugh,” the Iceland-born editor tells The Credits.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt star in Bullet Train.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt star in Bullet Train.

Her approach to action scenes is to “respect the choreography and images.” “I watch the footage again and again and again and try to figure out all the hooks and punches,” she says. “I watch it to find the inner rhythm of the scene but also to time it with the pace of the rest of the movie.”

In one of those action sequences, Ladybug comes face to face with another assassin, Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), where it turns into fisticuffs in the “Quiet Car.” The hook Ronaldsdóttir had to navigate was the hysterical juxtaposition of two grown men trying to quietly kill each other.  “When you’re working with it [the footage] initially, it’s a dance. So you work with the movement and choreography and try to make it as streamlined as you possibly can,” she notes. “If you have great choreography and if it’s shot beautifully and dynamically, it’s a delight to work with. And it doesn’t get violent until we put in the visual effects and bone-crushing sound.”

Aiding in the cut was the fight-vis that Leitch and his stunt team planned prior to shooting. The previs process allows the cast and crew to understand the scope of the scene. “The team will go through the whole choreography of the action. They know it’s on a train, so they make it in a confined space, and they’ll put music and sound effects to it. It’s an entire production,” says Ronaldsdóttir. “Then it’s shot on location with the actors, and things can change on the fly once you get to the location or the set. Then it lands on my table.”

Another scene that landed on her table was between Pitt and The Wolf (played by musical artist Bad Bunny). It’s a flash of unbridled revenge rolled into mistaken identity. To pull it off, the editor went over the top with it. “You’re telling people to just have fun with it. The tricky thing with The Wolf is you have to fall in love with him,” Ronaldsdóttir says. “But Bad Bunny is such an energetic person. He has raw appeal and is very used to being in front of the camera, and even though that’s not usually as an actor, he did it so well. I think it’s so smooth and beautiful, and he looks so cool. We needed people to like this character when he met Ladybug.”

Outside the fight scenes, plotting the backstories of the ensemble cast was its own hurdle. Ronaldsdóttir cleverly managed screen time for each of the seven assassins while keeping an eye on the central story between The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his son Kimura (Andrew Koji).  Not to mention the antagonist of it all, White Death (Michael Shannon). “It’s a bit like carving wood. You have to do it slowly,” she says. “All of the backstories were shot much longer, and we just had to find the correct pace for them. All of them went through renditions, and we found a pace that was much tighter.”

A favorite backstory of the editor’s was The Wolf, which plays out like a tragic fairy-tale novella (and could easily become its own prequel film in a franchise). “His whole life was exceptionally written. I love that we could tell his story and never lose sight of the bigger picture,” Ronaldsdóttir says. Without giving too much away, the scene flashes back to Wolf’s wedding day. And let’s just say it gives the “Red Wedding” episode of Game of Thrones a run for its money.

 Bullet Train is in theaters now. 

 

For more on Bullet Train, check out these stories:

“Bullet Train” Director David Leitch on His Breathless Brad Pitt-Led Action-Comedy

New “Bullet Train” Clip & First Reactions Hype Hilarious, Hardcore Action-Comedy Led by Brad Pitt

Official “Bullet Train” Trailer Takes Brad Pitt on a Wild Ride

Featured image: Brad Pitt and Bad Bunny star in Bullet Train. Courtesy Sony Pictures.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Early Reactions Call it a Beautiful, Joyous Return to Middle-earth

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The early reactions to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are in, and it sounds as if the return quest to Middle-earth has been worth the wait. The much discussed, hugely ambitious, massively expensive new series from Prime Video will be airing its first two episodes on the big screen in select theaters for some fans, but for most of us, the 8-episode epic will be playing out on our screens. So what are people saying about this sweeping series, set in Middle-earth’s Second Age and chronicling the return of the Sauron and the early lives of some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most beloved characters, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elron (Robert Aramayo)?

Bold. Beautiful. Powerhouse storytelling. Magnetic characters. Folks? We might have not one but two must-see fantasy epics on our hands now, with The Rings of Power joining HBO’s House of the Dragon. We’re not complaining.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is unlike Peter Jackson’s two trilogies (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) in some major ways, the most crucial of all being the new series does not come from a specific Tolkien novel. The thrust of the action comes from the rich mythology Tolkien created around his stories to give them weight, history, and texture. With the young Galadriel at the series center, The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the events in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” and will follow the young heroine on a quest to wake the slumbering realms up to the fact that a great evil has returned.

Without further ado, let’s take a quick peek at what the early reactions to the series have been thus far. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on Prime Video on September 2.

For more on Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, check out these stories:

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Official Trailer Announces TV’s Most Epic Production

“Lord of the Rings: The Power of the Rings” Will Screen First Two Episodes in Theaters

A Sweeping Look Behind-the-Scenes of “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

Roam the Elven Realms in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Second Trailer

Watch a Sneak Peek of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

Featured image: Morfydd Clark is Galadriel in “Lord of the Rings of Power.” Courtesy Ben Rothstein/Amazon Prime Video.

“Thor: Love and Thunder” Casting Director Sarah Finn on Picking Stars for the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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She’s arguably the most powerful casting director in Hollywood, working alongside Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and his team along with numerous directors to populate 28 superhero movies that have so far earned more than $25 billion at the box office. Her name is Sarah Finn. She majored in Theater Studies at Yale, moved to Los Angeles and cast the Oscar-winning Crash. Then, in 2006, Finn got a call to meet with Feige about a little thing called Iron Man. Finn says, “Had I known at the time the path I was about to be walking down, I would have been a lot more nervous!”

Finn, speaking from Los Angeles, described her most recent collaboration with filmmaker Taika Waititi on Thor: Love and Thunder, explained how Oscar winner Christian Bale wound up playing the film’s villainous Gorr, pondered the pros and cons of top-secret casting, and talked about diversifying Marvel’s ever-expanding cinematic universe. 

 

Thor: Love and Thunder is such a fun ride; I have to imagine it must have also been fun to cast the picture with writer/director Taika Waititi.

Yes. I also worked with Taika on Thor: Ragnarok, and it’s always fun, sometimes too much fun. If your biggest challenge of the day is to get through meetings and actually accomplish something and not just laugh all the time, that’s a good situation to be in. Taika’s a force of nature where there’s always a whirlwind of ideas, and he’s so open to playing around, visualizing things, and working with actors. Often, he’ll jump in and just start reading with them. Everybody just has to try and keep it together.

(L-R): Director Taika Waititi as Korg and Chris Hemsworth as Thor on the set of Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Getting Christian Bale on board to play Gorr in Love and Thunder was a huge “get.” How did that happen? 

Getting Christian was a coup, and it speaks to one of Taika’s strengths as a filmmaker: he has this hilarious sensibility, but underneath, there’s also something much deeper and heartfelt in his work. With a villain like Gorr, you want to understand the trauma, the pain from which the evil is born, so to have someone of Christian Bale’s caliber embrace that was a dream come true. 

So you arranged for Christian Bale to meet with Taika? 

At that level, it’s really about putting artists with artists, so Christian coming on board was really about his connection with Taika and coming at this [role] with spirit and passion. And of course, Kevin Feig and Louis [D’Esposito], Victoria [Alonso] at Marvel were very involved too when it comes to the vision, so they’d also be creatively on board when we’re setting those meetings. 

Christian Bale as Gorr in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Natalie Portman returns as Jane Foster after skipping Thor: Ragnarok. How did you guys get her back into the fold? 

I think with Natalie, there was always a desire to have her back, but we needed something special, something meaningful for her to do. It became about Taika going to Natalie and basically saying, “Here’s what I’m thinking. How does that sound?”

Natalie Portman as The Mighty Thor in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo by Jasin Boland. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

You first joined forces with Marvel in 2006 to cast Iron Man, which set the whole MCU juggernaut in motion. Do you remember your first encounter with Marvel Studio’s defacto mastermind Kevin Feige?

I remember it all! I was kind of a geek, I have kids and we’d watched Fantastic Four. When I walked into my first meeting with Kevin, I saw a Dr. Doom [statue] in the conference room. “Oh, I’ve seen that movie thirty times!” From there, we just kind of connected. Our tastes were similar, and the ideas I had seemed to resonate, like when I’d bring up actors who were kind of different. Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t an obvious action star, but being in that room with Kevin and Jon [Favreau] in that conversation, we had the idea that Robert could be great. And Jeff Bridges [as villain Obadiah Stane]. I remember going to the Marvel offices early on, and someone sort of ribbing me, saying, “Are we only looking at Academy Award-winning actors for these movies?” 

Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man. Courtesy Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios.
Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man. Courtesy Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios.

You have so many film and TV projects in various stages of progression at any given time. How do organize all your casting ideas?

I’m very visual, so it always helps me to go to the art department to look at character design and wardrobe, as well as the words of the script. Because we’re rarely in the same room anymore, we do virtual corkboards, which are good indicators of where the whole ensemble might be headed. For a while, I had a screen in my office that I could pull down over my [corkboard] if anybody came into the office because everything was so confidential. [laughing] My poor staff got tired of taking all the push pins out all the time and cleaning off my wall.

Because those casting options were considered top-secret?

And often, the people we cast are not announced for a year. Like Brie Larson was cast as Captain Marvel well before she was announced at Comic-Con. 

Marvel Studios' CAPTAIN MARVEL..Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson)..Photo: Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2019
Marvel Studios’ CAPTAIN MARVEL..Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson)..Photo: Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2019

That level of secrecy extends to scripts, which are generally not shared with actors when they’re being considered for a Marvel role. Does that kind of secrecy hinder or inspire your work?

Both: It hinders in that many actors are material driven. It’s often a real courtship to bring an actor to a place where they’re comfortable making that leap of faith. The flip side is that there’s also a lot of freedom. Often — and this is where my background in theater is helpful — we come up with a piece of material that encapsulates the essence of a character or emotional beats we’re looking to represent. I’m not saying it’s Clifford Odets, but we try to find something that allows actors the freedom of just being expressive and creative.

But not a scene from the actual script. Can you give an example?

Casting the new Peter Parker for Spider-Man, we wanted to see as many people as possible, which ended up being in the thousands. So the piece of material we had them read was from [1985 comedy] Weird Science. 

Weird Science! 

On the initial rounds.

How do you go from there to narrow down the choices? 

At a certain point, we get into in-person auditions and interviews with the director. We went through seven auditions with Tom Holland. In the final rounds, we had a much smaller group of actors who had the actual script pages, but that was not something I could have shared with 2000 people a year earlier. 

Tom Holland is Spider-Man in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Tom Holland is Spider-Man in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

Compared to the first few Marvel movies, it’s interesting to see how the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most spectacularly with Black Panther, has gained momentum on the diversity front by including more people of color, more women, and more culturally specific points of view. Has that been an intentional effort on your part?

You’re absolutely right in calling it momentum. It is momentum. Ten years ago, when we cast the first Thor, there was a bit of a reaction to casting Idris Elba as Heimdall. We really pushed and made an active effort to increase representation and diversity by willfully changing some of the characters and casting the best actors, like Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie [in Thor] and on and on. By the time Spider-Man came around, nobody batted an eye when we cast Zendaya or when we cast Jacob Batalon as Ned. Now the wind is at our back, and the material is coming from diverse writers and different perspectives. We looked for a Pakistani Muslim female teenage superhero in Ms. Marvel. Ironheart stars the Black character Riri Williams. There’s America Chavez [in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness]. And let’s not forget Alaqua Cox. She’s playing Echo, the next comic book character we’re doing, who’s native American and deaf. 

How do you go about finding next-generation talent like the folks you’ve just mentioned?

That’s the million-dollar question. My work ethic is to start with the widest possible talent pool, so we spend a lot of time watching tapes. A lot, a lot of time watching tapes. And doing research. And really listening and digging deep, going to cultural organizations and film festivals, speaking to directors, looking at everything we can think of because you never know where you’re going to find your next discovery.

What’s a favorite audition tape from an actor you’d never heard of before?

Let’s talk about Iman Vellani, whom we cast as Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel. Her first audition tape was joyous, delightful, fresh, original, intelligent, and full of life. That audition instantly lodged in my brain: “She could be our Kamala.”

 

Many Marvel projects, including the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises, draw their power from the strength of an ensemble. How do you know which actors will work well together and generate chemistry on screen? 

The interesting thing about casting is that you’re talking about intangibles – – the sensibility, the life force, the wit, the connection an actor might have with the director, their history with the comics – – or not! We’ve encountered actors who have never seen a Marvel movie! 

Do you organize in-person “chemistry reads?”

We’ve had many situations where we bring actors together in a room and let them do a scene so we can see how they connect. I’m trying to think of something that’s not spoiler-y. Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista as Star-Lord and Drax. 

Do any others come to mind?

And we had Tom Holland do a chemistry read with Robert Downey Jr. because that was going to be a really important relationship. We needed a young actor who wouldn’t be intimidated by Downey and could toss it back and forth. In both of those cases, it was very helpful to see the actors in the room. We don’t always have that luxury, so then it becomes about finding common ground: does the actor have a curiosity and willingness to come into the sandbox and play in this world? 

For more on Thor: Love and Thunder, check out these stories:

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Featured image: (L-R): Christian Bale as Gorr in Marvel Studios’ THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Jason Momoa Teases his Androgynous “Fast & Furious 10” Villain

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In the first season of Game of Thrones, Jason Momoa wasn’t the bad guy, but his character, Khal Drogo, was certainly okay with being feared. Now, Momoa gets to go full villain in his upcoming role in Fast X, the tenth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise, and it sounds like he’s making the most of it.

Momoa offered some intriguing updates about his character during the third season premiere of his Apple TV+ series See. 

“Time of my life. I get to be the bad guy finally. I’ve been the good guy for a while,” Momoa told Variety’s Marc Malkin. “He’s very sadistic and androgynous and he’s a bit of a peacock. He’s got a lot of issues, this guy. He’s definitely got some daddy issues.”

Momoa has a lot going on, per usual, and he’s hardly done playing the hero. Before Fast X zooms into theaters, he’ll be reprising his role as Arthur Curry in director James Wan’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which is due in theaters on March 17, 2023. For that film, Momoa has promised a funnier sequel, and it’s already been revealed that Aquaman will be re-teaming with Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne.

“It’s just hugs and kisses. I love that guy,” Momoa said about Affleck to Variety. “We get along too well. It’s very good to see him again.”

Once Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom clears the decks, Momoa will get to realize his villain dreams when Fast X hits theaters on May 19, 2023.

For more on Universal Pictures and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:

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Featured image: LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 18: Jason Momoa attends the UK Special Screening of “Dune” at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on October 18, 2021 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Warner Bros)

“King Kong” Live-Action Series Being Developed at Disney+

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Disney+ is looking at taking on one of cinema’s most beloved creations and exploring its origins. The streaming platform is currently in the beginning stages of developing a live-action King Kong series based on the 1933 film created by director/producer Merian C. Cooper, as well as the later novelizations by artist Joe DeVito.

This means this is not the Kong you’ve become accustomed to in Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse series, most recently pitted against the King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla, in Godzilla vs. Kong, and before that, Kong: Skull Island. Legendary has its own show in the works at Apple TV+, as well as an animated Netflix series. You can never have too much of Kong.

The Disney+ Kong series will be a serialized adventure story that will explore the colossal ape’s origins and his mysterious home, Skull Island. The script will be penned by Paper Girls‘ Stephany Folsom, with Aquaman director James Wan executive producing, alongside Michael Clear, Rob Hackett, and Dannie Festa.

The 1933 King Kong was a critical and commercial hit, augering a new era of special effects in the movies. It’s the film that inspired two remakes, starting with John Guillermin’s 1976 film and Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake.

We’ll share more details on the project when we get them.

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Featured image: Caption: Promotional material from “King Kong,” the 1933 film. COURTESY OF THE EVERETT COLLECTION

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Official Trailer Announces TV’s Most Epic Production

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The official trailer for Amazon’s massively ambitious The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is here at last. And what timing, coming on the heels of that other fantasy epic, the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, which just became HBO’s biggest premiere ever.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power comes from showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, and they’ve taken on quite the heavy lift. Their sprawling series, which features both known characters from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, and new characters (to the screen) from J.R.R. Tolkien’s vast trove of source material, will take us back to the time of the Second Age, thousands of years before Bilbo or Frodo went on their iconic quests.

The trailer re-introduces us to one of those characters we met in Jackson’s films (and, of course, before them in Tolkien’s work), a young Galadriel, played in the films by Cate Blanchett and here by Morfyyd Clark. The Rings of Power will show us the world that the evil sorcerer Sauron first descended upon, long before he was the widely known, widely feared tormentor of Middle-earth. The young Galadriel will assemble a fellowship if you will (and you must) to confront the coming terror. The trailer is yet more proof that The Rings of Power is going to be Amazon’s most ambitious series ever.

There’s a massive cast surrounding Clark, as you’d expect in a story that will sweep across realms and involve all sorts of people, from dwarves to elves to orcs and more. The cast includes Robert Aramayo as Elrond, Owain Arthur as Prince Durin, Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, Lenny Henry as Sadoc Burrows, Markella Kavenagh as Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot, Sara Zwangobani as Marigold Brandyfoot, Megan Richards as Poppy Proudfellow, Daniel Weyman as “The Stranger,” and Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor.

Check out the official trailer below. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on September 2.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:

Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

For more on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, check out these stories:

“Lord of the Rings: The Power of the Rings” Will Screen First Two Episodes in Theaters

A Sweeping Look Behind-the-Scenes of “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

Roam the Elven Realms in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Second Trailer

Watch a Sneak Peek of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

Featured image: Morfydd Clark is Galadriel in “Lord of the Rings of Power.” Courtesy Ben Rothstein/Amazon Prime Video.

Emmy-Nominated “Dopesick” Cinematographer Checco Varese on Layering in Subliminal Clues

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Cinematographer Checco Varese is no stranger when it comes to photographing pilots, having created alluring visual palettes for over twenty projects, including David Elliot’s Four Brothers, Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain, and HBO’s True Blood. He reconnected with Empire creator Danny Strong to shoot Hulu’s Dopesick, a poignant narrative about the opioid crisis starring Michael Keaton as a doctor in a small mining town affected by the addictive drug.

Varese grounded the debut episode “First Bottle” in rich, bespoke colors, which subliminally infuse the unfolding drama that plays out through three overlapping perspectives: the victims, the civil servants investigating the crisis, and the pharmaceutical company behind manufacturing OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, and its owners, the Sackler family. The work landed the cinematographer his first Emmy nomination while the series was honored with thirteen other nods in acting, directing, writing, picture editing, sound mixing, and casting. So to answer the question: Is it a show worth watching? Absolutely. 

 

In planning the visual tone, Varese collaborated with director Barry Levinson (Rain Main, Bugsy), who helmed the first two episodes. Varese brought up films like The Deer Hunter (1978) and Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999), and talked about a version of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) but without the masks and stilettos. “I fell in love with the material immediately,” Varese tells The Credits. “Danny [Strong] had a specific mandate to make it look real. Not to embellish it or make it a movie.” 

The Peru-born cinematographer attributes his success to surrounding himself with people who are better than him, which he admits, he does happily. Gaffer David Lee, key grip Rick Stribling, DIT [direct imaging technician] Daniele Colombera, and colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld were all part of the creative team, but it was the work of production designer Neil Spisak who kicked off the palette. “Neil and his set dressing team did an amazing job, so it was easy to walk into a space and understand it. But at the same time, I wanted to give it a dramatic twist and add an arc to each storyline,” says Varese. 

“First Bottle” - Episode 101 -- Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu) - Episodic Stills
Dopesick — “First Bottle” – Episode 101 — Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)

Those dramatic twists are where the cinematographer was able to add subliminal punch. The town’s miners, and more specifically, Besty (Kaitlyn Dever), who becomes addicted to Oxy after Keaton’s character Dr. Samuel Finnix prescribes it to her, were painted with cooler hues for exteriors from the start. A mix of cyans, blues, and grays loom the outside world. On the opposite end, where the Sackler family sits, warmer reds, browns, and gold fill the screen. 

Dopesick — “First Bottle” – Episode 101 — Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Betsy Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever) and Grace Pell (Cleopatra Coleman), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)
Dopesick — “Breakthrough Pain” – Episode 102 — OxyContin is on the market but faces a potential threat, Purdue’s vast influence reaches the town of Finch Creek, Bridget steps outside her DEA authority, and the criminal investigation of OxyContin begins. Arthur Sackler (Kenneth Tigar) and Mortimer Sackler (Walter Bobbie), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)

“One of the things that Danny and Barry hammered was this story is almost like a horror thriller. That the enemy is at the gate, and this monster [being Oxy] is coming into your life without you knowing,” notes Varese. “If you notice every time we’re outside or establishing outside of Betsy’s house and the door opens, we push in real subtle. It’s this idea that there’s an enemy at the gate, and it’s coming to invade you.” As characters become more addicted, instead of home interiors being warm and inviting, those exterior cooler hues invade the interiors to suggest Oxy is now inside.  

In framing the visceral story, the large format sensor of the Sony VENICE was paired with several ZEISS lens lines that included the Supreme Prime and Cinema Zooms. “Barry is very minimalistic with the camera language,” says Varese. “He wanted to have a camera that started on a wide shot to explain to the audience where we are and then possibly end up on another person in the room. Almost like the answer is within the same shot.” The cinematographer admits it’s a challenging way to shoot because every move is a dolly, crane, or Steadicam shot that starts wide and ends up close, making each lighting source placed in the scene critical. 

Even with the visuals grounded in realism, Varese did give nods to the artistry of filmmaking. Like when we are in the office of the prosecutors, a character may be half-lit in a dramatic moment before leaning into the full light. “It’s things like that, the little details that enhance the audience’s experience and help transmit the feeling of the piece,” Varese states. “This show is about individuals, so we were constantly working in a shallow depth of field to isolate a character. It was so much about the soul of these characters and what was inside them. All our decisions were made mostly through a deep knowledge of the script and the characters.” 

Dopesick -- “First Bottle” - Episode 101 -- Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Randy Ramseye (John Hoogenakker), Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and John Brownlee (Jake McDorman), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)
Dopesick — “First Bottle” – Episode 101 — Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Randy Ramseye (John Hoogenakker), Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and John Brownlee (Jake McDorman), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)

 

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Featured image: Dopesick — “First Bottle” – Episode 101 — Richard Sackler begins to launch a powerful new painkiller, a rural doctor is introduced to the drug, a coal miner plans her future, a DEA Agent learns of blackmarket pills, and federal prosecutors decide to open a case into OxyContin. Betsy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton), shown. (Photo by: Antony Platt/Hulu)

“House of the Dragon” Torches Previous Records & Becomes HBO’s Biggest Premiere Ever

Posted on by babrams

It should surprise no one that viewers were ready to return to Westeros.

House of the Dragon pulled in 9.986 million viewers across all platforms to become HBO’s biggest premiere ever. It also now stands as the largest launch on HBO Max. And, as these things tend to go, House of the Dragon didn’t just dominate viewers attention on TV—it was also the longest trending topic on Twitter, ranking #1 for 14 straight hours, and was the #1 trending item on Google Trends.

“It was wonderful to see millions of Game of Thrones fans return with us to Westeros last night,” said Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer, HBO & HBO Max, in a statement. “House of the Dragon features an incredibly talented cast and crew who poured their heart and soul into the production, and we’re ecstatic with viewers’ positive response. We look forward to sharing with audiences what else George, Ryan, and Miguel have in store for them this season.”

George, Ryan, and Miguel are George R. R. Martin, executive producer and the brainchild behind the entire world through his novels, co-creator and co-showrunner Ryan Condal, and co-creator, co-showrunner, and director Miguel Sapochnik. Condal and Sapochnik are also executive producers on the series.

This return to Westeros took us back to a time some 200 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones, centering on House Targaryen, the family of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, dragon-riding rulers who once had the entire seven kingdoms under their command. (They are also, of course, the clan that gave us Daenerys Targaryen.) In fact, House of the Dragon swallowed the original Game of Thrones premiere viewership total with ease—when GoT bowed in 2011, it drew in 2.22 million same-day viewers. This was before Game of Thrones became a global phenomenon and made the existence of House of the Dragon an inevitability.

The interest in House of the Dragon also lured viewers back to Game of Thrones, with the original series capping off its strongest week ever on HBO Max after a seven-week stretch of growth in the lead-up to the House of the Dragon premiere.

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

Inside The Fiery First Episode of “House of the Dragon”

Dragons Reign Supreme in New “House of the Dragon” Teaser

New “House of the Dragon” Images Tease a Westeros Filled With Dragons

First “House of the Dragon” Reactions Hail “Game of Thrones” Prequel as Worthy Successor

“House of the Dragon” Trailer Promises a GoT Prequel Worthy of Westeros

“House of the Dragon” Video Reveals New Dragons & a New Reign

Featured image: “House of the Dragon.” Photograph by Courtesy HBO

“Knives Out 2” Sequel “Glass Onion” Reveals Photos, Release Date

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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has an official release date and a few juicy images. The sequel to Rian Johnson’s wildly successful, deliciously enjoyable Knives Out will see the return of Daniel Craig’s gentleman detective Benoit Blanc this holiday season.

Glass Onion will arrive on Netflix on December 23 (and will play in select theaters at a soon-to-be-announced date), following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. That theater release, however, is a big deal—it means that Netflix is positioning Johnson’s sequel for awards season, as the theatrical release allows it to vie for Oscars.

Considering Glass Onion will be another mystery, you can expect that Netflix will be keeping details of the plots under wraps. What we do know is that Craig is joined by another incredible ensemble cast, including Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, and Ethan Hawke. Who among this talented group is our killer? Who is our victim? And how much fun will be had with the film’s setting, which is Greece?

Netflix revealed the two new images via tweet. One show’s the lion’s share of the cast, and the second reveals a behind-the-scenes shot of Johnson and star Janelle Monáe.

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Featured image: GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY. Courtesy Netflix.

HBO Reveals First Look at “The Last of Us”

Posted on by babrams

It was a major night for HBO. You might have been one of the millions of people who watched the hotly-anticipated premiere of House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones prequel to make it to air. Then there was this little nugget, the first footage from HBO’s upcoming The Last of Us, one of the premium channel’s most intriguing projects.

This glimpse of The Last of Us came packaged in a teaser for a bunch of upcoming HBO Originals, including The White Lotus, His Dark Materials, Avenue 5, and Doom Patrol. HBO revealed the glimpse in a tweet, which ends with footage from The Last of Us that shows the series leads Pedro Pascal, as Joel, and Bella Ramsey, as Ellie, as they journey across a devastated America. The pair trundle across a snow-covered bridge, hide out in shadowy corners, flee, fight, and do a bit of forensic inspection of some decidedly unhealthy-looking walls. There’s been a plague, you see, and if those walls could talk, they’d probably cough up blood and scream run! We also see Nick Offerman’s character, Bill, who reveals himself when he takes off his gas mask. The entire look is a mere 20-seconds long, but that’s 20-seconds more than we’ve seen previously. The overarching feeling here is one of unease, which is precisely what The Last of Us should inspire, considering it’s set in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Check it out for yourself:

The Last of Us is another big swing for HBO, which clearly believes it has something special here. The series, based on a popular video game series, tracks Joel and Ellie’s journey across the U.S. after a plague has transformed most of the population into monsters. The infected are vicious and dangerous, but so, too, are the survivors, meaning that Joel and Ellie’s path will be extremely dangerous.

One big reason HBO has high hopes for the series, aside from the stellar pairing of Pascal and Ramsey, is that the show comes from Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and the creator of the original video game, Neil Druckmann.

We’re still waiting on an exact release date for The Last of Us, but we know it arrives sometime in 2023 and will have 10 episodes.

For more on HBO, check out these stories:

Inside The Fiery First Episode of “House of the Dragon”

Dragons Reign Supreme in New “House of the Dragon” Teaser

“Westworld” Costume Designer Debra Beebe on Living in Charlotte Hale’s World

New “House of the Dragon” Images Tease a Westeros Filled With Dragons

Featured image: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey. Photo courtesy HBO. 

“Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Will Screen First Two Episodes in Theaters

Posted on by babrams

Amazon’s epic Middle-earth saga will appear on the big screen before it heads home.

It feels appropriate that the first work set in Middle-earth since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies will appear on the big screen before it heads to television. Amazon’s hugely ambitious The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will play in theaters in special fan events across the world on August 31, two days before its streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video on September 2. Once The Rings of Power appears on Amazon, you’ll be able to watch it in a one-episode-per-week format for its remaining six episodes every Friday.

You can check out Cinemark’s landing page for the event—tickets will become available today, August 22, at 9 am PT. You’ll need to be a Cinemark Movie Reward member to sign up. The first two episodes of the series will play on big screens in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Argentina, Colombia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Amazon is pulling out all the stops for The Rings of Power, the largest series they’ve ever produced and, quite possibly, the largest series ever made. That’s how New Zealand’s minister for economic development, Stuart Nash, described The Rings of Power, which was filmed in New Zealand and carried a production price tag of over $400 million. (That price tag is even higher, according to Time.)

Here’s the official synopsis for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:

Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

For more on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, check out these stories:

A Sweeping Look Behind-the-Scenes of “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

Roam the Elven Realms in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Second Trailer

Watch a Sneak Peek of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Trailer Reveals a True Epic

Featured image: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Credit: Prime Video