“Silo” Director/Executive Producer Morten Tyldum on Helming Rebecca Ferguson’s Sci-Fi Mystery

Posted on by babrams

Apple TV+’s Silo, created by Graham Yost, is an ingeniously constructed sci-fi series that nevertheless opens with a shot worthy of any classic western—a Sheriff’s badge—and goes on to meld elements of that genre, along with police procedural and conspiracy thriller, in 10 satisfying episodes. The series’ claustrophobic setting, the titular Silo, serves as a character almost every bit important as Rebecca Ferguson’s resourceful, remorseful Juliet, an engineer plucked from the obscurity of the Silo’s lowest levels to take over for the last lawman, David Oyelowo’s Sheriff Holston, after he makes the fateful decision to follow his wife (Rashida Jones’ Allison) out of the Silo’s relentlessly rulebound safety for the toxic, ruined wastelands outside.

Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Helping shepherd the cast and crew through the first three episodes of the series was director and executive producer Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Passengers), a director with plenty of experience crafting realistic sci-fi worlds, thrillers, and more. Tyldum and his talented crew built out the world of the Silo and its baffling retrofuturistic details—why are there no elevators, why do the computers look like first-generation Ataris, and what, on Earth, is up with those banished to “clean”?—with rigorous attention to detail and the rules of their world. Once Sheriff Holston makes his fateful decision to leave the Silo, and Juliet is called up from running the massive, spinning source of the bunker’s power to lead an investigation into a string of unusual deaths, the show confidently moves towards its satisfyingly surprising conclusion.

We spoke to Tyldum about the retrofuturistic design, the melding of genres, and why Rebecca Ferguson is sci-fi’s undisputed queen.

You directed episodes 1, 2, and 3—can you talk about establishing the world of Silo.

One of the things that drew me to Silo is I really loved Graham’s pilot, which is one of the best I’ve read. Apple reached out because they wanted a director to help with world-building, and it’s such a rare opportunity where we spent 10 months before we shot anything just figuring out how this world worked. We looked at everything from brutalist architecture to the old city of Barcelona. It was so fun to make the design based on practicality. If you’re going to make many silos and they’re this huge, you want building blocks that fit. Everything should be rounded, including doors and windows. The aesthetics are based on functionality. We wanted it to be a lived-in world. An old city, several hundred years old, so everything’s been used, reused, and repaired. There are limited resources. It’s a sci-fi show that looks back. You should watch Silo and in a few seconds recognize it.

 

There’s a similar aesthetic to the Mad Max world, where everything is beaten up, repurposed, taped or welded together. Even the computers in Silo are big and blocky. It brought me back to my Atari days…

Why is it like that? The watchers’ room has flat screens; why do they get high-tech stuff and no one else does? There’s a clear idea behind it, and it’s very linked to the purpose of the Silo. Why is there no elevator? Yes, it’s on purpose. The functionality of the Silo, the purpose of it, will be revealed later. Then you’ve got the giant digger, this giant machine that looks almost like a big dead iron spider. This obviously belongs to the future, yet at the same time, it’s so old. Computers are one by one, there’s no video or graphic art, they don’t have photographs, everything on the walls is like drawings or paintings. It was so fun—everything has a purpose; it’s coming from the book or how the silo would be created.

Tim Robbins in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Can you walk me through the idea of people having to go clean when they’re banished from the silo and that view of the outside of the silo.

For them, it’s almost a religion. If you look at the cell, it’s more like a chapel, in a way. This is a society that has no history or knowledge of why they’re there. All they have is this one book called The Pact, which is the Laws of the Silo. It’s become cult-like, this idea of cleaning. For example, nothing in the silo can be white because the resources to make something white is too much except for the cleaning; that’s the one thing they have. They’re read the verdict, asked the clean, sent out, and you’re going to die, but you do this last sacrifice for the community. We wanted it to stand out. The only people dressed in white in the show are those who have to go clean.

I’ll admit I didn’t even notice the lack of white, but now it’s so obvious.

It’s every color you have there—how would you Mae blue? Brown? Red? So either it has to be stuff they had before they went down into the silo, or they have to make it there. This is why you hardly see any zippers; zippers are hard to make, you make buttons instead. All the textures, the wardrobe, and everything else have to be either things they had before or something they can create. I had such great department heads, and everybody was really drilling down on it. Does this feel Silo? This color green feels wrong, but this feels Silo.

Rebecca Ferguson and David Oyelowo in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Let’s talk about this great cast, including Rebecca Ferguson, who is becoming a sci-fi legend given her incredible role in the Dune franchise.

She brings so much to the character. She’s so expressive. I had these ideas to have the camera be really close to her. I said this is something we should do more of, because first of all, it’s her story, and second, she’s so expressive, she’s so good at showing a lot while doing very little. She’s also great at action. She’s very physical; she embodies Juliet as someone who has all this strength and aggressiveness but simultaneously is scared, hurt, and a loner. She’s withdrawing and aggressive. I couldn’t be happier with Rebecca as Juliet.

Rebecca Ferguson in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

There’s also a bit of genre-melding, combining sci-fi and Western as David Oyelowo’s Sheriff Holston taps Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliet to replace him.

Very much. The show starts with the sheriff badge, which is very Western. That’s the first shot. It’s a western, a little bit of a noir mystery. It’s a meld of things. And the Silo is a character. When we shot this, I always wanted to remember the silo is always present. No long lens; the background should be sharp so you always see the silo. Sometimes you’re not following the actors, you’re just showing the silo. This is the true main character that you’re fighting against.

Rebecca Ferguson in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Tell me about building the set.

Gavin Boucquet, our production designer, built some of the biggest sets I’ve ever seen. You can literally get lost. There are alleyways and a giant stairway and floors; sometimes, it was a challenge to shoot it because you’re communicating with hundreds of extras. I was in one place, and you could barely see people because so much was happening so far away. When we were building it, we had a problem; there wasn’t enough steel in England. We took all the steel we could because we needed a foundation to hold so many people.

Common in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Where was the set created?

In Hoddesdon, an industrial area north of London. We built eight soundstages, and we had about 75 sets. Which is a lot for a TV show. The logistics are hard; you start out in one scene on one set with people walking out, and it’s supposed to continue, but the next set they’re walking into will be built in three months. It was a challenging shoot in many ways for everybody. We had one day outside. We shot David going out, Rashida going out, and Rebecca going out. The rest of the time, we were in the Silo.

Talk about putting your cast and crew into the world you were building.

This is why we didn’t want it to be a blue or green screen set. It was so easy for them to immerse themselves as actors because the set was so big and there were so many details. The set dressers and the prop people created so many details. The market stalls, the books, the posters, the maps, there are so many things the camera didn’t even pick up.

Oscar Coleman and Alexandria Riley in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

How much time was your crew given to create these sets?

Several hundred people, and it’s hard. A set might take four weeks to build, then three weeks to take down, and you shoot for two days. You have to make sure there’s always a set ready. The production people were amazing. The logistics of all this to keep it moving, it’s very complicated, it’s a huge machine to make this. If you want something done, get a film crew to do it. It just has to happen. There’s a deadline, we’re coming in a shooting that day. It’s part of the stress but also part of the fun. So many people are working to achieve the same thing. Everybody wants the show to be great.

Any favorite sequence you shot?

Shooting Rashida going out and the reactions to her. We played her on the big screen, a real screen, and we had all the footage of her going out and all these hundreds of extras there. I told them what was happening, the tradition of someone having to go out and clean. The extras were like people living in the silo, reacting to her, being emotional, then she stumbles and can’t get up. It was like, Jesus, this doesn’t look like 200 extras; it looks like people who actually live in the silo. You’d never get that with a giant blue screen. We shot that on day one, and it really felt like watching citizens of the silo reacting to Rashida going out and dying.

Silo season 1 is streaming on Apple TV.

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Featured image: Rebecca Ferguson and Chinaza Uche in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

How the Latest VFX Techniques Immersed the “Masters of the Air” Actors in Battle

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Masters of the Air, starring Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, is the latest celebrated WWII epic from Band of Brothers and The Pacific executive producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman. The intense drama inspired by the 100th Bomb Group is the most detailed on-screen depiction of B-17 planes ever. The visual effects teams from DNEG studios, led by VVFX Supervisor Xavier Bernasconi and VFX Producer Abigal Everard were provided with thousands of hours of research materials about the aircrafts and battles they flew from the Production Designer Chris Seagers and his show researcher Jessica Bradbury.

“The Production Art and VFX departments provided us with mission books that each pilot flew,” Virtual Production Executive Steve Jelley explained. “The actual altitudes and the logbooks. They plotted everything to be consistent with the actual historical records. There’s very little material.”

Barry Keoghan in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Every detail they uncovered was utilized to increase the series’ accuracy. An early episode depicts the bombing of the Norwegian city of Trondheim. On that day, German forces employed a smokescreen technique to occlude their location from the air. VFX artists duplicated the exact way the smoke hung in the air.

“We went as far as to research the wind direction of that time and that day in that particular geographical location that was annotated in the log files,” Bernasconi revealed. “There’s still notes about that. We found it, and we actually simulated our smoke in the visual effects to match the wind direction of that day and that time exactly.”

Creating realistic VFX requires a keen observation of the world. In addition to historical accuracy, the team had to consider physics and meteorology. Aerodynamics, cloud formations, and weather patterns all played heavily into their designs.

 

“We had to simulate all of these missions and make sure that the clouds were the same clouds that you would encounter at 10,000 feet vs 30,000 feet,” Jelley noted. “Xavier had to build a cloud atlas twice. Once for [3D graphics software] Unreal Engine with us. Another one in [3D animation software] Houdini with true weather simulation for the visual effects process. I don’t think you necessarily want to see another cloud again.”

“It’s funny because then I went on to do Furiosa, so I went from clouds to dry desert,” Bernasconi laughed.

Nearly every episode of the nine-hour series features an aerial battle. The complex flight patterns, plane formations, and combat were all created or enhanced by the VFX teams. They offer several visual clues to help the audience keep up with the fast-paced action across the flight units and strive to keep the shots steady.

 

“The mandate from [visual effects supervisor] Stephen [Rosenbaum] was very much, ‘Keep all the cameras grounded to a plane,’” Bernasconi said. “Adding a challenge to it because suddenly you can’t go from this plane to the other plane. You need to find cinematography choices that allow you to hand over to a different plane but within the rules of the lenses and the camera moves we established. If there was a camera outside a plane, we were thinking of it as if it was locked on a witness plane that would travel together with the rest of the group.”

For decades, the green screen was king among visual effects. New worlds, monsters, dangerous heights, or crashing waves could be painted digitally after a performance had been recorded. Anywhere characters found themselves that crews couldn’t feasibly go relied on the technology. Actors, however, are left performing to a blank space with only a rudimentary eyeline to interact with. Virtual Production LED walls, like those used on Masters of the Air, are changing how VFX scenes are filmed by immersing the performers in simulated environments.

“The crucial thing about the on-set process is that it allowed us to prioritize the actors, the performances, and the shot-making,” Jelley explained. “And to make sure that there were digital proxies and realistic lighting to allow the visual effects process to complete the shot later. So, we call it a full end-to-end production.”

 

Anyone who has ever gripped the armrests during a bout of turbulence knows that flying can feel perilous even in the safest conditions. These young pilots were speeding across Nazi-occupied airspace at the risk of being gunned down. BIG Supplies Stuart Heath and FX Supervisor Neil Corbould built life-size animatronic cockpits for the actors to perform in, allowing them to see nearby planes projected on LED walls outside their windows.

 

“They were 18 years old, 19 years old, 20 years old, that never flew before, and suddenly they were 20,000 feet in the air surrounded by a fuselage that was as thick as a can of Coca-Cola with literal shrapnel exploding around them and piercing the fuselage,” Bernasconi reflected. “There is a difference between being on a static seat in front of a green screen and then having a full B-17 motion-based cockpit that would react to explosions that you visually see in front of you or German fighters blasting past them. So, they really feel like their performances were enhanced because of this technology.”

Acting in a more visceral space translates on screen. The performances are more authentic in channeling the emotions of the young, inexperienced soldiers who faced death each time they flew.

“Virtual Production Supervisor Phil Galler could trigger the flash at the director’s call,” Jelley detailed. “That would rock the motion base, which would create the force of the explosion. Then, in many cases, the amazing special effects department would do things like shatter glass, and then, of course, the lighting is affecting the glass, which is affecting the action, which is affecting the performance, and that’s kind of what you’re looking for. That brought that realism that I think you really feel in the show.”

 

The scenes were tightly choreographed and coordinated in advance by the previz team The Third Floor, led by Matt Smart. Most of what was created for filming was for the actors’ benefit. If something could be captured in camera, all the better, but the majority went through a process after filming of increasing the resolution and replacing temporary images. One of the most involved elements was mapping Europe and eliminating any modern landmarks.

“We literally remodeled the entirety of Europe. That’s how we did it,” Bernasconi said. “Each grid had the texture of the ground with some low resolution, broad stroke elevation models, so we would have some hills and stuff. Then, the logbooks would tell us exactly the flight path. We overlayed this flight path on our broad-stroke representation of Europe, extracted the grids, and modeled them at high resolution. Not only that, but the fact is that any satellite image that we have now obviously includes modern features. Highways and modern buildings. So, we have to go in there and remove all of those throughout thousands of kilometers and recreate the look of Berlin during the 1940s and so on.”

The series ended with detailed, cutting-edge technology, but Jelley and Bernasconi laughed recalling that they also used rudimentary tools in preparation phases.

“It was a massive piece of planning right from the very start by VFX Supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum and his team,” Jelley recalled. “There were those little models on sticks in the production office. There was a big chart on a big table of us positioning various things. We thought that this was a bit of fun, but it actually became totally necessary because it’s a really complex bit of action to figure out.”

Over the course of the two-and-a-half-year production, the DNEG team members working on Masters of the Air numbered in the hundreds. Bernasconi emphasized that the show was truly a group effort.

“Of course, a big shoutout to the team,” he praised. “All of the team was huge. Some of the technologies, especially on the DP side with Steve’s team and motion capture that was going at the same time as the virtual production for capturing the movement of the B-17, it was incredible.”

Masters of the Air is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Featured image: Nate Mann and Josh Bolt in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“Baby Reindeer” Cinematographer Krzysztof Trojnar on Lensing Loneliness

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Amidst an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, audiences united in crowning Baby Reindeer the breakout hit TV series of the year. Series creator and star Richard Gadd mined his real-life trauma to create Donny Dunn, who yearns for adoration to catastrophic results. The aspiring comedian discovers that meaning well doesn’t always end well. In a time when there’s immense societal pressure for everyone to have rigid, binary opinions on every issue, and mistakes are often condemned while ignoring intention, Baby Reindeer spreads a message of compassion and mercy.

The most likely cause for the show’s spectacular success is a phenomenal collision of talent on screen and off. Gadd leads a stellar cast, including unforgettable performances by Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott and Nava Mau as Teri. As for that chilling feeling you experience as the harrowing tale unfolds from inside Donny’s mind, you can thank cinematographer Krzysztof Trojnar for setting that claustrophobic, immersive tone. Trojnar worked on the first four episodes of Baby Reindeer, which was, in fact, his first TV series. 

“It was just an amazing experience to do it,” he reflected. “It was quite a lucky situation where it was my first TV show. Getting such a good script, it all really came from the script, to be honest. It was fantastic being able to read Richard’s words, which were very visual. It’s probably one of the best scripts I’ve read so far.”

The production team seemed to benefit from being free from scrutiny before they became international sensations. Trojnar made bold choices that paid off big time. Donny’s paranoia and isolation are evident in the camera’s perspective. As Donny seeks affirmation, he receives it in unsavory ways.

Richard Gadd as Donny, Jessica Gunning as Martha. Ed Miller/Netflix

“We definitely wanted to put Donny in the center of the frame as he talks about it almost in the spotlight – something he is searching for in his life – and obviously also being sort of entrapped sometimes in compositions,” Trojnar noted. “That was one idea. It kind of puts Martha as a visual intruder in the sense of how close people are to Donny or how close the eyeline is to the camera. You almost feel their presence, and the camera is sort of between Donny and Martha.”

Baby Reindeer – Behind The Scenes Photo. Ed Miller/Netflix © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Jessica Gunning as Martha and Richard Gadd as Donny. Ed Miller/Netflix

Jessica Gunning beautifully captures Donny’s lonely yet unstable stalker, Martha. Her explosive laugh became a hallmark of the character revealing her cheerful, yet dangerous fixation on the comedian. Trojnar framed Martha in those moments to be uncomfortably invasive.

“We definitely wanted to portray Martha and her mad laugh and intrude it in a way,” he explained. “We used wide angle lenses so we could get close that’s abrasive in a way. It’s not something you would maybe do in a normal dialogue scene where you’re that close, but that gave this effect of intensity and intrusion that you almost can’t escape.”

Baby Reindeer – Behind The Scenes Photo. Ed Miller/Netflix © 2022 Netflix, Inc.

While many viewers were hooked by the stalking drama, the emotional crux of the series takes place in episode 4. Donny is groomed and assaulted by an influential screenwriter, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill). The foreboding scene of the crime is Darrien’s apartment, which seems to devour Donny every visit.

“We actually used the widest range of lenses on the show in that apartment,” Trojnar revealed. “It’s not like he’s in front of the camera. He’s not almost touching the lens. He’s more sort of portrayed in the cold abyss of his apartment. The wider end of the spectrum of lenses gave us this feeling. It’s sort of entrapping but in this vacuous space. There’s something unsettling about the atmosphere as soon as Donny enters the apartment.”

Baby Reindeer. Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien in Baby Reindeer. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

As Darrien increases his manipulative tactics and drugs Donny, the room turns more sinister and hallucinogenic. It may look like postproduction manipulation, but most of the effect was actually created on set. Trojnar’s team specially choreographed the scene’s color shift.

“The light changes in the apartment in episode four. We wanted to make the transition as subtle as possible,” he recalled. “You almost don’t notice the change, and then suddenly they’re in this world that they haven’t been before, and it’s all happening during one take. That’s when Donny was sitting on the sofa and watching Darrien doing the phoenix dance. We installed these special lights that had this transition lighting cue over a minute and a half, where it changed from a domestic light into this red, pulsing light. So, it was all done in camera.”

Baby Reindeer. Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien in Baby Reindeer. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

When Donny staggers to his desperate and delirious escape, the walls seem to stretch on discouragingly. The idea was conceived between Trojnar and the production design team. After specially modifying the set, Gadd himself was equipped with a RED KOMODO camera. 

“We talked to Debbie Burton, the production designer, and we made the corridor double length to what it usually was,” Trojnar explained. “We installed a camera on Richard’s head so when he was running down the corridor looking down at his hands, that was actually filmed without me operating the camera. That was installed like a micro camera. He is trying to escape, and we get that tunnel vision kind of effect.”

In the difficult aftermath of the assault, Donny breaks down in the shower, where Trojnar, again, specially installed a camera on set for a very specific shot. The shot captures Donny’s face from inside the cascading water.

“We just wanted to change perspective because it’s such a drastic moment in the story,” Trojnar said. “You can’t get worse than that, but it’s also a point of realization. You have to get close to Donny. It’s also like he’s suddenly in a different environment, and he realizes what happened. So, we used this special lens that we installed inside the shower head. We asked the special effects department to make a special shower head that was hollow inside, then through the hole, we could put this special, very long, thin lens that is like a periscope lens. It’s called Optex Excellence. We used that so you almost have the perspective of the water falling down on Donny.”

Gadd is fearless about sharing Donny’s triumphs and failures, including painfully awkward reactions to his floundering standup sets. One gig gets off on the wrong foot, and Donny is left to anxiously wait in the wings for his cue.

“Our idea was always to be with Donny,” Trojnar told us. “That scene is the longest take we’ve done uninterrupted. He waits to be announced onto the stage, and we don’t really want to interrupt it. We hear the lady announcing him in some kind of mental act, and we’re with him, then go on the stage. When it becomes awkward, we go to the very back of the stage and show in an objective way where he’s the most stripped of his comedy hour. It gets very awkward.”

Richard Gad as Donny. Ed Miller/Netflix

Gadd has referenced the catharsis of sharing his suffering in interviews, and audiences have related in a big way. In turning his darkest moments into art, fellow victims have found strength in reporting their own abusers. Trojnar admits the reaction has been more powerful than the team ever anticipated.

“It’s not something we were expecting at all,” he confesses. “I’ve been saying it was meant to be a little niche show that maybe some people will watch, but then suddenly, it’s a complete surprise. I mean, we loved the script. I think everyone who read it was very excited about it, but we didn’t expect what happened for sure.”

 

Baby Reindeer is now streaming on Netflix.

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How the “Bridgerton” Costume Designers Dialed up the Romantic Fantasy in Season 3

First “Knives Out 3” Image Finds Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc With Long Locks

Richard Linklater on the Killer Chemistry in his Romantic Comedy “Hit Man”

Featured image: Richard Gadd as Donny, Jessica Gunning as Martha. Ed Miller/Netflix

 

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” Editors on Mixing Comedy, Action, Tender Moments—and Barry White

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Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back as Miami buddy cops Mike and Marcus, respectively, in Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth installation of the franchise and the second directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. In 2020’s Bad Boys for Life, Mike and Marcus dealt with the murder of their friend and mentor, Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano). In Ride or Die, the pair are out to clear his good name. Working with a cartel to launder money, former Army Ranger and DEA agent James McGrath (Eric Dane) transfers millions into an account owned by the late Captain Howard, leading Mike and Marcus’s colleagues at the Miami Police Department to believe the captain was the source of a corruption scandal they were already investigating.

The search for the real culprit reunites Mike with his incarcerated son, Armando (Jacob Scipio), the only person alive who knows the face, if not the name, of the turncoat mercenary. The trio’s efforts end with Mike, Armando, and Marcus on the run, sheltering in, fleeing from, and engaging in gunfights in locations ranging from a neon-art-filled warehouse, a Chinook helicopter, and an abandoned amusement park where alligators were once and as it turns out, still are the main attraction.

Ride or Die’s action moves at a rapid, assured pace, intercut with funny and tender moments. After making them both late by stopping for snacks, Marcus survives a heart attack at Mike’s wedding to Christine (Melanie Liburd) and comes out of a coma with a serene new lease on life. Armando and Mike have a father-son breakthrough moment heavily facilitated by Marcus, who explains to the confused pair what they’re experiencing as it’s happening. And the flippant but loving banter between Mike and Marcus remains a hallmark of the franchise. We spoke with the film’s editors, Dan Lebental and Asaf Eisenberg, about getting the dual pacing of action and comedy right, incorporating drone and security camera footage, and coming up with a much-lauded set piece—a shootout set to Barry White. 

A few spoilers ahead!

How does the editing on a high-octane film like this support the energy without taking it too far?

Dan Lebental: We know from what the directors told us that they wanted it to be a breakneck speed. If there was any excess slowness to the pacing, we got rid of it.

Asaf Eisenberg: It was very clear from the beginning what the pacing would be, definitely for the action. They swim in action. We just followed their lead.

DL: It’s like boxing — stick and move, stick and move.

There’s also a lot of humor in this movie, and the relationship between Mike and Marcus can be very tender. How did the editing support their funnier, softer sides?

DL: They’ve evolved. The last one dealt with their getting older, and this one is almost like going past the old into the young again. When you mix comedy and action, you have to have a constant pace. If you go too far without one or the other, you lose it, and then it feels weird. The intervals are everything. It supplies the rhythm for continual enjoyment.

AE: There was a big scene, and we were asking if it was worth it to keep buzzing through at breakneck speed or slow down for a joke. A lot of times, the funny has to come in because the balance gets off if you don’t.

DL: And that then sets you up for the poignant moments. There’s the beautiful moment where Marcus sings to Mike. You want to ride those emotional waves. You want to be breakneck and then stop and let it ruminate a little bit.

 

Marcus’s near-death experience is trippy and otherworldly. Was that a very different editing process from the rest of the project?

DL: Asaf did about 193 versions of that.

AE: The near-death experience was something that Will [Smith] specifically dived very deep into. Will was very clear on what he wanted the experience to be. It was just about fine-tuning, and the fine-tuning went all the way to the end.

We get a lot of unusual footage — from a drone’s point of view or a security camera. How did you edit that to the best effect?

DL: That’s the directors’ thing. They wanted something visually exciting. Drones are a very important thing, and then there’s the Snorricam, going in and out of monitors. We’d experimented on that in the previous Bad Boys.

AE: It’s like a superpower, the way the [directors] approach a different point of view. There was one shot in the previous movie — I didn’t work on that — where they changed the angle of perspective. You don’t do that in film. And they did it. They like to give visual content a new light.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

How did you approach editing the shootout in the dark, neon art installation?

AE: That took us a long time, and interestingly enough, it’s about the geography. The directors were very clear about wanting to understand the geography. They had one shot, which is the drone shot, which allows you to see where everything is. It allowed you to be aware of everything that’s going on.

DL: Let’s tell the truth, though. Asaf came up with the Barry White jelly beans thing. Everyone saw it and went oh my God, and then music had to clear it because it was so fun. Because of the strike, the back end of the scene, where they go outside, wasn’t shot until much later. Once we got the scene outside, we realized we’d doubled up on beats. Then, we had to reconvene closer to Asaf’s original assembly. Every scene relates to every other scene, and you don’t want to have a movie that repeats the same beats over and over again. 

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

Spoiler alert. The military plane shootout while transporting Armando seems like it must have been a fairly involved process.

AE: One of the superpowers of Jerry Bruckheimer is a very simple statement that becomes the compass, and that is cause and effect. You don’t have to see what happens to every bullet, but everything has a trajectory that means something. That scene started a lot bigger. It had to find its way into a tight formation, where you feel the pressure and the tension of the centrifugal force. The Chinook, the helicopter that they’re on, is an unusual transport for anything. The approach is like everything else. The footage speaks for itself. As Dan calls it, what’s your picture card when you’re playing poker? What is best, lands.

DL: There were so many discussions about this scene. It was probably the scene the studio also cared about the most. One of the things we had to weigh was where it was to our advantage to not have people know what the cause and effect was—it’s just so wild, and the guys are flying off and hitting the ceiling. We had to find the balance of why that happened, or is it just the mayhem and confusion of the moment?

Dan, having worked on Bad Boys for Life, was there anything you wanted to keep or leave behind?

DL: One of the challenges was that the story related so much to the previous one in that Armando is the key to the character arc for Mike Lowrey. We had to find a way to get enough information across that the audience wasn’t lost. It required a lot of first-act restructuring because our leaders at Sony told us no recaps. So we had to kind of be in the present as we let people know.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

What was a total departure in this movie?

DL: Normally, in a movie like this, you’d end with the gunfight on the beach. But we’re saying the last scene that’s not part of the coda is Mike sending his son off. That’s slightly unconventional in that we decided the most important thing was landing the emotional beat. [There’s] this sense that you don’t know what’s going to happen, but the important thing is they’ve gone through this journey.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is in theaters now.

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

“Paddington in Peru” Trailer Finds the Beloved Bear on an Amazonian Adventure

How “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” DP Robrecht Heyvaert on Creating the Ride of a Lifetime

“Venom: The Last Dance” Trailer Reveals Symbiote Battle Royale

Featured image: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

Ke Huy Quan Talks Drawing from Personal Experience to Play “Loki” Season 2 Standout Ouroboros

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Ke Huy Quan was driving when he got a call from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige two years ago. Having just seen Quan’s (eventually Oscar-winning) turn in the record-breaking A24 epic Everything Everywhere All At Once, Feige — with whom Quan had crossed paths on 2000’s X-Men, working as assistant action choreographer in his first job out of college — offered him the role of the quirky, diligent Ouroboros on Loki Season 2.

“He spent a long time talking about how great that movie is, said some really flattering things about my performance, which got me really emotional … My eyes were watering, and I couldn’t see where I was going,” Quan recounted in an interview with The Credits.

The Academy Award winner, who made his feature film debut as a child actor in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, burst back onto the scene in 2022, sweeping awards season with his supporting role in the Michelle Yeoh action-dramedy vehicle. Having been a longtime fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since its inaugural Iron Man, Quan said that joining the franchise occupied the highest spot on his wish list since his return to acting.

Ke Huy Quan as O.B. in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.

“Every time [Feige and I] talked about X-Men or any Marvel characters, he would always have this big smile on his face, and he was really energetic and very enthusiastic, talking about this universe. So, little did I know that I would have to wait only 22 years to work with him,” Quan said, chuckling.

A month or so later, Quan was flown out to London, where he would join Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson on set at Pinewood Studios. “I remember that meeting vividly,” he said. “Even though I was meeting them for the first time, [I’d] seen the show and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki on the screens for so many years, so instantly I felt there was this connection I had with them, so I couldn’t help but [jump] up and [give] them a big hug. I think I scared them, but that was how enthusiastic I was about joining not only the MCU but also the Loki family.”

 

Like many viewers, Quan devoured the first season of Loki on Disney+ amid the pandemic and thought it was “one of the best television shows ever.” His casting as O.B. was the first he didn’t have to audition for, and Quan said he felt somewhat daunted stepping into the role, excited as he was, because of the responsibility he felt to the series’ creatives and fans. Quan felt the pressure at the reading rehearsal — which he had never partaken in before — on his first set day.

“I was, like, jumping over the lines. My line reading was really clunky. It was bad,” he said. “And I told them I was so embarrassed, and I said, ‘Tom, oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m not prepared for this, but I promise you I will be.’ And on the first day of shooting — after the first shot — Tom came up to me and [said], ‘Ke, that was incredible.’ Hearing it from him, because he is Loki and that’s his show, and getting that encouragement from Tom meant the world to me. I had the most amazing time.”

(L-R): Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Owen Wilson as Mobius, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Eugene Cordero as Casey, and Ke Huy Quan as O.B. in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.

O.B. is a devoted Time Variance Authority engineer who has quietly and diligently ensured the organization’s smooth operation 24/7 for the past 400 hundred years. Following the catastrophic timeline destabilization in the Season 1 finale, O.B.’s wealth of knowledge proves instrumental in helping Loki, Mobius (Wilson), and the team restore the TVA.

As a new character in Season 2, Quan said he wasn’t certain how to approach the role at first, taking meetings with the writers, showrunner Eric Martin, and Hiddleston to see how they envisioned O.B. But it wasn’t until another full-circle moment that it fully clicked for Quan: Stepping onto the Roger Moore stage, where the Ouroboros set had been built, the actor realized O.B. could be a Variant of his character from The Goonies — Data, who was an ardent fan of James Bond, portrayed by Moore.

 

“That was when I was very clear on how to play him,” Quan said. “And I wanted to bring that passion and that enthusiasm — Data loves being part of the gang.”

Apart from this fictional connection Quan had to the character, the actor channeled a significant portion of his personal story into his portrayal of O.B. Since his triumphant second act, Quan has been vocal about his struggles to reach success as an actor — from his beginnings in the U.S. as a refugee to losing health insurance for not meeting SAG-AFTRA requirements after filming EEAAO. In Episode 5 of Loki’s sophomore season, it’s revealed that Ouroboros is a Variant of A.D. Doug, a PhD-level engineer and aspiring science fiction writer who refuses to give up on his dreams, opting to self-publish his novels and sneak them onto bookstore shelves in hopes of gaining a readership.

 

“I think it is that determination, that passion, that not willing to give up, that perseverance, [continuing] to do something nobody really cares about,” Quan said. “Nobody cares about what he wants — that I really resonated with.”

He added, “And also, he just loves what he does. It’s the same thing: Every time I’ve walked on a movie set, I wanted to remember how hard it is to be here and maintain that sense of gratitude … It was a true gift playing him.”

(L-R): Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, Ke Huy Quan as O.B., Owen Wilson as Mobius, and Eugene Cordero as Casey in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.

Now, in consideration for an Emmy for the role, Quan is positively beaming at the opportunity to discuss his love for Loki and O.B., following the secrecy necessitated around taking on a Marvel project and its premiere during the joint WGA and SAG strikes last year.

“When we finished the show, I was so happy and so proud of what we [had] created. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for the show to come out and tell the entire world how happy we are.’ And I was really excited, and of course, when it came out and not being able to promote it and meet with the fans and talk about the show — that was hard. And I can only watch it like everybody else on Disney+ while keeping my mouth shut. It was not easy. So it feels really good to be able to do this right now,” he said, adding that the fan reception “brings a big smile to my face.”

Quan, who finds it an “honor” to be a part of the FYC conversation, has remained true to his origins. With upcoming films Electric State (from The Avengers directors the Russo brothers) and With Love, the actor said he is vigilant about approaching every project with the same immense gratitude and humility he has carried from childhood.

“It is so cool, I gotta tell you. For the longest time, I always worried about [whether] I would ever get another opportunity to act again. So, ever since Everything Everywhere, everything has just been incredible. My phone works now, and it rings. I get emails from my agents. I get to meet with some of our industry’s most incredible and talented people.”

Conducting this interview just a few days out from wrapping filming on With Love, where he is No. 1 on the call sheet for a big studio picture for the first time, Quan’s world is a whirlwind. “I just got back to LA, we shot the entire movie in Canada,” he said. “It’s a big action movie. And I still have bruises on my body. It was a very physically demanding movie. And I could not be more happy.”

Some days, he said, he still can’t believe it: “It’s very surreal … I’ll be in a meeting and I would hear, ‘This producer, this filmmaker says we would love to work with you.’ Even just that sometimes feels really foreign to me.”

When talking about what the future might have in store for him as a performer, Quan’s vision is simple: to work with “great people” who inspire him. “I have a long list of people I’m trying to check off,” he said.

“I don’t ever want to forget what it was like, because it helps me maintain this sense of gratitude,” Quan said of his journey back to the screens. “Every time I walk on a movie set I want to have that same feeling that I had when I was a kid and also when I did Everything Everywhere All At Once. I was just so hungry for that, and I want to always remember that. I don’t want to take anything for granted.”

Featured image: Ke Huy Quan as O.B. in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.

“3 Body Problem” Production Designer Deborah Riley on Melding Sci-Fi & Period Perfect History

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Netflix’s adaption of the first book in Liu Cixin’s hit Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, 3 Body Problem, is more than science fiction. Facing a slew of inexplicable suicides, a group of scientists and friends begin to uncover the future arrival of an alien race, the San-Ti, and learn of the Cultural Revolution-era events in China that set this gradual but hostile takeover in motion.

3 Body Problem. (L to R) Yu Guming as Yang Weining, Zine Tseng as Young Ye Wenjie in episode 101 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

The series is primarily set in contemporary London and the English countryside, with the goings-on of today explained through period flashbacks to Beijing and rural China in the 1960s. With Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with Alexander Woo (True Blood, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) at the helm, 3 Body Problem is as visually arresting as it is plot-driven, with particular attention paid to the show’s period elements as well as the immersive, virtual reality game the San-Ti use to communicate with their chosen earthlings.

3 Body Problem. (L to R) Jess Hong as Jin Cheng, Tom Wu as Count of the West, Eve Ridley as The Follower in episode 102 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

The show opens during a struggle session in Beijing in which a young scientist, Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng), sees her professor’s father murdered. “I think that’s something people underestimate—how difficult that was,” said production designer Deborah Riley (Riley previously worked with Benioff and Weiss on Game of Thrones). Visual images from the Cultural Revolution, particularly in color, are rare. “We were very fortunate because we had Derek Tsang, who was our director for those first two episodes, and he was our guiding light through all of that,” Riley said. She also worked with art director Chapman Kan and several graphic artists to ensure the show’s scenes of this side of history were authentic. At the same time, it was important “that they be something horrifying enough for Ye Wenjie to then tell the aliens to come,” she said.

3 Body Problem. Episode 101 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
3 Body Problem. Zine Tseng as Young Ye Wenjie in episode 102 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

After her father’s death, Ye Wenjie is arrested and consigned to hard labor. An astrophysicist, she’s taken to a secret facility where the military is trying to contact extraterrestrial life. “That’s actually my favorite set of the whole season,” Riley said of the location, which was built on a mountain range in Spain. The huge dish the lab used to signal the universe was created by visual effects, but the base and interior were built.

3 Body Problem. (L to R) Yang Hewen as Bai Mulin, Zine Tseng as Young Ye Wenjie in episode 101 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

“We were very careful to make sure the facility looked like it worked,” the production designer said, to the extent that she and the art director created a user guide and floor plan of the set and set decorator Andrew McCarthy traveled to Budapest to find Cold War-era buttons, lights, and oscilloscopes. The trickiest aspect wasn’t the rooms full of machines but the small output device with which Ye Wenjie responds to alien contact. “In the dark corners of the internet somewhere, I actually found a keyboard that was similar to our QWERTY keyboard, which was based on stroke order. It was really embarrassing, because the Chinese guys just laughed at it and said, we’ll never be allowed back in China if you use that, that is terrible,” Riley said. They went around and around, finally landing on a numeral keypad with an accompanying manual that Ye Wenjie uses to convert numbers to characters. “And it’s now become a kind of iconic scene, I guess, of her pressing send,” Riley said.

3 Body Problem. Zine Tseng as Young Ye Wenjie in episode 102 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Ed Miller/Netflix © 2024

In 2024, thanks to the San-Ti, the technology at hand advances considerably. Looking for help with their mission on Earth, select scientists receive a personalized headset, their entry to an immersive game where they must solve the conundrum the alien race faces. The showrunners wanted the headset to be completely seamless. “When you pick it up and look at it, to us in 2024, we would have absolutely no idea how it works. There’s no power source, no cables, no jacks, no nothing,” Riley said. “To book readers, the mirror finish is something you understand later. But it caused an awful lot of trouble to VFX, as you can imagine, because the mirror was reflecting the crew and the lights and everything else. So every time you see a headset, just think of the work that those guys had to do.”

3 Body Problem. Liam Cunningham as Wade in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
3 Body Problem. John Bradley as Jack Rooney in episode 102 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

Once inside the game, whether Jin (Jess Hong) and Jack (John Bradley) are in Shang Dynasty China, Kublai Khan’s palace, or Pope Gregory VIII’s cathedral, the sets needed to be grounded in reality. Riley and her team built the intricate balcony at Kublai Khan’s palace and shot it at Wells Cathedral in Somerset to represent the papal era. “I felt very sacrilegious, I have to say, asking the person responsible for the cathedral if we could remove all of the stations of the cross,” the production designer joked. The canopy the pope sits under was a build, which the crew brought back to Shepperton Studios to singe and burn later. “Obviously, all the fire sequences were visual effects, and there was no horse. No part of the building was harmed in the process,” Riley said.

3 Body Problem. Episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
3 Body Problem. (L to R) Jess Hong as Jin Cheng, John Bradley as Jack Rooney in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Ed Miller/Netflix © 2024

Outside major locations like the virtual reality game, Cultural Revolution-era China, and Judgment Day, the massive ship where the San-Ti’s followers await their arrival (which Riley referred to as an achievement of all the series’ departments coming together), no set is too small to be overlooked, seen best in MI6 officer Wade’s (Liam Cunningham) stark offices. “The showrunners were very particular in wanting Wade to have a very clean, simple, Steve Jobs-like environment where there’s no clutter whatsoever. Andrew, the set decorator, and I tried putting in various other pieces of furniture, but it was all taken out,” Riley said.

3 Body Problem. (L to R) Liam Cunningham as Wade, Benedict Wong as Da Shi in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

In Wade’s first windowless, creepily modern space, he and Clarence “Da” Shi (Benedict Wong) make decisions that will change the course of human history. When the project to save Earth moves to a secret location (shot at the 17th-century mansion Bramshill House), Wade’s office vibe repeats, only now surrounded by moulding and tapestries. “He still had the same setup of a big room, single desk, and him, waiting. And Liam’s the kind of actor who knows how to use those kinds of spaces, so it was actually quite fun to see,” Riley said.

As a counterpoint, the spaces where Jin, Saul (Jovan Adepo), Will (Alex Sharp), and Auggie (Eiza González), drink, live, and hang out are deliberately low-key and relatable. In particular, Jin’s apartment is warm and modest, unlike any other space on the show. “For the storylines and for us to invest in these people, it seemed important to tell the truth of them,” Riley said. “She’s a regular person who’s caught up in this mess.”

3 Body Problem. Jess Hong as Jin Cheng in episode 102 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Ed Miller/Netflix © 2024

Featured image: 3 Body Problem. Eiza González as Auggie Salazar in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

 

“Shōgun” Editors Aika Miyake and Maria Gonzales on Cutting Mariko’s Heroic Path

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The first season of Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo’s masterful Shōgun was an expertly paced slow-burn drama that plunged viewers into 17th-century Japan with a passionate obsession with the rigors and wonders of the period and location. The new Shōgun shifts its center of balance from the swashbuckling but woefully out of his depth British pirate Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) to his Japanese captors. Blackthorne has washed ashore on a land in the midst of a tectonic power shift, with Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira) plotting his takeover in Osaka while the brilliant but taciturn Lord Yoshi Toranaga (star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada) strategizes a way to keep the peace and, if possible, his own head in the process. He entrusts the brilliant, emotionally bruised Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai) to act as his translator to the “Anjin,” their name for Blackthorne, whom Toranaga sees as a potential key chess piece in his eventual move against Ishido.

All of this plays out over a perfectly paced 10-episode arc, easily one of the most captivating seasons of television this year. While editors Aika Miyake and Maria Gonzales are quick to point to the embarrassment of riches they had to work with—sensational performances, an incredible story, period-perfect details—it was their work, alongside fellow editor Thomas A. Krueger, that gave the rebooted Shōgun its perfect, haunting shape.

We spoke to Miyake and Gonzalez about what it was like cutting a series with an ensemble that included so many memorable performances and pacing a story that never felt rushed or halting but moved with its own brilliant, brutal logic.

Maria Gonzales and Aika Miyake.

What conversations were you having with showrunner Justin Marks about your approach to pacing the series?

Maria: Maybe a week before they started shooting an episode, we have these tone meetings, which for Justin are kind of legendary on his shows because they can go for hours or even sometimes a couple of days. Justin is a cinephile, so we hear a lot about movies that inspired him and what TV shows inspired him, but there’s no specific talk about pace. I think for both Aika and me, once we started getting the footage, you just sort of let the footage guide you on what it wants to be.

Aika: A funny thing about our show is that we have Japanese and English, and Japanese tends to take twice as long to be said. So I looked at the subtitles in the initial cut, and they just sat there for a long time. So I remember the moment realizing I had to cater to both Japanese and English audiences and strike a good balance so the Japanese subtitles weren’t too fast and the English subtitles weren’t too slow—that contributed to pacing. And to add to Maria’s point, we had so much great stuff that it could feel like, “I don’t want to let it go,” but you have to make difficult decisions. And Justin and the studio allowed us to experiment.

How do you make those difficult decisions about cutting sequences and scenes you love?

Maria: So initially, we do our cut, and then we work with the director of the episode for several days on their cut. And for the most part, the directors cut very few scenes. Once we get to Justin, a lot of the really big decisions get made. There was a lot of back and forth, and some lovely scenes in the first episode had to go because you’re weighing your options and asking, “Am I getting the same emotion from this other scene?” We also had lovely scripts and all the work that Justin, Rachel [Kondo], and the writers did to establish these really dynamic characters. And casting did a phenomenal job, like casting Tadanobu Asano as Yabushige. So it was just an embarrassment of riches for us when those dailies started coming in, so it was our job to give its due and do it justice. It’s inherent that information will repeat, but to Justin’s credit, he never wanted to dumb the show down for the audience. There was a trust that the audience was in on the ride and would get it.

Aika: I want to add something to what Maria said about the repetitiveness of emotions or information. We identify if two lines are actually doing the same thing, so when something felt really repetitive, I’d explain to Justin that’s why I just took this line out. We had that freedom to explore, and I really appreciated getting that space. I remember in episode 8, the initial cut was a hundred minutes or so, and I remember the shift where we had a lot of Ochiba [Fumi Nikaidô] scenes at the beginning of the episode, but while we started editing the whole thing, episode 6 was more about Ochiba, and that was doing enough of her story that we didn’t have to come back to it in episode 8. When I took it out, it felt so right. I watched episodes 5 through 8, and the flow made sense at that point.

(Spoiler alert) An interesting element of the series is that Toranaga is a step ahead of everyone, including the viewer, throughout the season. This is especially true in episode 8, when his number two guy, Toda [Tokuma Nishioka], commits seppuku in what appears to be despair at Toranaga’s decision to give up.

Aika: My understanding was there were spies everywhere. In episode 2, one of the Kosho working for Toranaga turns out to be a ninja coming to kill Blackthorne. So, understanding the world and everyone’s a spy, I understood that Toranaga had to have a poker face in that scene with Toda. Once you understand that, you understand the acting choices that Hiroyuki Sanada makes. He’s almost a guide for me to pick out the good parts and build the story. Especially the scene with Toda committing seppuku. In my first cut, I missed this close-up of Hiromatsu and Toranaga staring at each other. Toranaga flinched a little bit, and Hiromatsu realized he was doing it for real. That was something that director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour said, “This has to be in this scene.” I understood then the way the scene was built, and that moment was so crucial. Hiromatsu didn’t exactly understand what Toranaga was doing, but he trusted him enough that he must die today. That was a huge, huge moment.

“SHŌGUN” — Pictured: Tokuma Nishioka as Toda Hiromatsu. CR: Katie Yu/FX
“SHOGUN” — “Abyss of Life” — Episode 8 (Airs April 9) Pictured: Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga. CR: Katie Yu/FX

Maria: I think the way Hiroyuki Sanada performs, there’s no real choice to make on our part. It’s not like we were going through a variety of takes and trying to make sure he stayed consistent; he was very consistent. He knew what this role was. So, between him and the writing, I think it was kind of inherent to the project.

Aika: The funny thing about that scene is it’s the most emotional we see Toranaga, and he’s really holding back.

Maria: It’s the only time really in the show he’s emotional, there and a little bit toward the end when Mariko dies, but for the most part he’s very consistent and on his mission.

Let’s end with Mariko, who is such an amazing character. You could argue that among all these fascinating characters, she ends up becoming the one we root for the most. I’d love to hear about what it was like cutting Anna Sawai’s amazing performance.

Maria: We’re so lucky to have Anna on the show. Most of my work was with her in episodes 1 and 4. For me, her introductory scene in 1 was one of my favorite scenes that I cut. This is when she comes to Fuji [Moeka Hoshi]’s aid. Her husband has made a misstep, and now he needs to commit seppuku and end his bloodline, and she’s holding her baby and not wanting to let it go. Mariko comes in and handles the situation, and right from the get-go, even though it’s a brief scene, so much of who she is is established in this scene. She shares a past with Fuji, that she too wants to die, she’s such a complex character. For me, as a woman cutting a character that is so complex, torn between her duty to protect her family name, her duty toward Toranaga, and her love for John Blackthorne, it just made all the scenes I had with her multilayered. Even in episode 4, which was the love story development between her and John Blackthorne, almost every scene is imbued with such complexity and tries to explain her loyalty toward her culture, but she is also torn with this love interest. You don’t always get such complex female characters.

“SHOGUN” — “Anjin” — Episode 1 (Airs February 27) Pictured: Moeka Hoshi as Usami Fuji. CR: Katie Yu/FX
“SHOGUN” — “Anjin” — Episode 1 (Airs February 27) Pictured: Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko. CR: Katie Yu/FX

Aika: I have an easy answer [laughs]. So, in episode 9, I’m credited as an additional editor. I had an opportunity to do a female point-of-view cut. Thomas [Krueger] did an amazing job, and then Justin came to me later in the process and asked me to have a look and add a female point of view to the edit. At that point, episode 8’s intensity had been so high, and episode 9 needed a tweak to get it above that. So, I mainly touched on Mariko’s scenes, including when she’s fighting. A year after our job was finished, I looked back, and the scene in which I felt I contributed the most as a woman and a Japanese woman was Mariko’s fighting scene. That sequence was almost completely recut. The original choreography wasn’t long enough for us to feel like it was as intense as necessary. It felt like it needed more intensity when I watched it, so I tried to make it longer. If you look closely, she throws the naginata (the long staff with a blade at the end), and the guy catches it—that only happened once in the choreography, but if you watch the edit, you see it twice because I’m using the same choreography from different angles to make it seem like the fight was longer. I added Blackthorne and Ochiba watching and a sound layer underneath so that the sequence feels longer and more intense. Then I added Mariko’s scream at the end. I wanted to speak to the female point of view where we want to fight and we have the rebellious spirit. The writers said Mariko has this punk personality [laughs]. I relate to that and the frustration of being a woman and finding a way to fight. I really wanted Mariko to give everything in that scene.

For more on Shogun, check out stories about the lush costume design by Carlos Rosario, the high-tech take on ancient gagaku instrumentation from composers Atticus and Leo Ross and sound engineer Nick Chuba, and the fatally stylish, no-moves-wasted samurai swordplay created by stunt coordinator Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle.

Shogun is streaming now on Hulu.

Featured image: “SHOGUN” — “Crimson Sky” — Episode 9 (Airs April 16) Pictured (C): Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko. CR: Katie Yu/FX

“House of the Dragon” Renewed for Season 3 Ahead of Season 2 Premiere

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House of the Dragons season 2 hasn’t premiered yet—that happens on June 16—but that didn’t stop HBO from topping up the successful Game of Thrones spinoff for another season. Showrunner Ryan Condal and his co-creator, author George R. R. Martin, have no doubt been plotting and planning for a third (and fourth, and fifth?) season already.

The drama centered on the scheming Tagaryen family has been renewed for season 3, proving that HBO’s first GoT spinoff to make it through the creative gantlet and onto air is a major hit. It took the entirety of season 1—which earned nine Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Drama, and two Golden Globes, winning for Best Drama—before the series was renewed for a second run, so this fresh renewal days before the season 2 premiere is telling.

Matt Smith and Emma D’Arcy in “House of the Dragon.” Courtesy HBO.

When House of the Dragon premiered, it drew the largest premiere audience in HBO and HBO Max history. Season 1 pulled in an average of 29 million viewers per episode, linearly and on streaming. The series is based on Martin’s book “Fire & Blood” and has masterfully followed the drama within House Targaryen as family members turn on one another in a battle for power and, of course, the Iron Throne. The series is set 200 years before the events in Game of Thrones, in an era where the Targaryens have ruled the Seven Kingdoms for a century.

“George, Ryan, and the rest of our incredible executive producers, cast, and crew have reached new heights with the phenomenal second season,” said HBO’s programming and drama series chief Francesca Orsi in a statement. “We are in awe of the dragon-sized effort the entire team has put into the creation of a spectacular season two, with a scope and scale that is only rivaled by its heart. We could not be more thrilled to continue the story of House Targaryen and watch this team burn bright again for season three.”

House of the Dragon alums returning for Season 2 include Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Matt Smith, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Rhys Ifans, Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall, and Matthew Needham.

Newcomers include Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong, Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull, Jamie Kenna as Ser Alfred Broome, Kieran Bew as Hugh, Tom Bennett as Ulf, Tom Taylor as Lord Cregan Stark and Vincent Regan as Ser Rickard Thorne. 

While House of the Dragon soars, HBO has another Game of Thrones spinoff in the works: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin’s books “Tales of Dunk and Egg,” which are centered on Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg. Martin also announced that a pilot script for the spinoff series Ten Thousand Ships is being penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth.

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

“House of the Dragon” Season 2 Timeline Revealed

“House of the Dragon” Season 2 Unleashes Two Trailers, Plenty of Dragons, and War

“House of the Dragon” Season 2 Trailer Coming Tomorrow

Featured image: Photograph by Courtesy of HBO

“Inside Out 2” Screenwriter Dave Holstein on Anxiety Taking Center Stage

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In Inside Out 2 (in theaters June 14), Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) is off to hockey camp in the summer before high school, no longer the little girl we remember from the sensational introduction we got nine years ago in Inside Out. Riley is now a 13-year-old tween in the liminal zone of adolescence, with a host of new emotions presenting themselves for the first time. So when the sirens go off again in the Headquarters of Riley’s brain, a new console is installed so these fresh emotions can join the original quintet from Pete Docter’s 2015 film. Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) get repressed in favor of new emotions, including Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

Key to the nearly impossible task of living up to the astonishment of the first film while forging a new emotive path was screenwriter Dave Holstein, who picked up the baton from Inside Out scribe Meg LeFauve and sprinted, fueled by the film’s most prominent new emotion, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), into dazzling new territory in the sequel. Working with director Kelsey Mann, Holstein leaped into the formidable but fecund Pixar Process (and across the Sarchasm—you’ll understand when you see the film) and made the most of the opportunity.

We spoke to Holstein about leveling up to Pixar’s high bar, what it’s like to write for comedic geniuses like Amy Poehler, and how he learned to love the challenge of scripting a movie that spoke to children and adults.

I’d love to hear about your writing process from the beginning when you mapped out the story for the sequel.

There was a strong desire not to retread the first movie and find something that felt resonant for today. I think anxiety really hit home. Anxiety is not a feeling you can destroy. There’s a certain lesson in learning to live with anxiety that had to feel different than living with sadness, you know, and that was sort of the original challenge of the piece; how to make it new and exciting and also give everyone what they love from the first film.

Was anxiety always the emotion you’d be exploring in the sequel? 

We cycled through a few different ones. As with anything at Pixar, you’re constantly iterating to ensure you have the best possible collection of 800 puzzle pieces. But we all just went through this thing called COVID, and anxiety is not really an enemy you can defeat. It’s kind of something you have to learn to live with, and it felt like maybe there was a resonance to the anxiety that we’ve all experienced. I think there’s something important to the phrase: every pain needs a name. It just becomes a lot easier to talk about, especially with children, so that was a big part of anxiety as opposed to, say, shame or guilt, which were totally valid in other ways to play with antagonists. That’s how we kind of hatched that egg.

 

Tell me about the vaunted Pixar iteration and ideation process. I’m curious what that’s like as the writer from the inside.

Yeah. I mean, it’s like they come to you, and it’s like, “So you’ve written screenplays? Have you written screenplays inside a dishwasher?” I think that that’s always been my feeling is that you’re thrown into a process where everyone is constantly in all three stages of filmmaking at once—writing, shooting, and editing— and you’re constantly working in different parts of the movie and trying to make sure the pylons all build to something.

Writing a script inside a dishwasher sounds difficult.

It’s a very specific process because it’s a lot of pages. I think I wrote upwards of 750 pages on this movie. I guarantee you I have at least 11 drafts in my folder of the most important scenes in this film. It’s not even that hard to write a scene; there are plenty of great scenes, but the hard part is how they fit with everything around them. I kept trying to imagine myself doing the same process with a live-action film, and it doesn’t really work like that. There are just too many boxes to hit in a Pixar film.

INSIDE OUT 2 – FEELING ENVY – Featuring Ayo Edebiri as the voice of Envy, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Pixar films are well regarded for operating at multiple levels and truly appealing to the entire family, including adults without children. 

There are so many levels it has to work on, both comedically and emotionally. It has to work on two different eye lines—for the adults and the kids. It has to make you feel something. It has to make you laugh. It has to make you want to watch it again. It has to make you want to see it in the theater. People say 3-dimensional chess. I think it’s like 8-dimensional backgammon. I’ve done a lot of different intense pipelines, I mean, I created a show for Jim Carrey that went for two years, so I’ve gone through different versions of insanity, you know? This was a very specific brand of great, but it was a lot of work.

How do you know when you’ve gotten it just right? Or can you ever truly know that until the movie is in theaters?

Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing you’re searching for the whole time. It’s not necessarily the moment when someone is crying, but it’s the moment when you feel something so emotional that it just puts you in a place. You want people to watch this film and say, “That really hit,” because that’s what we associate with Pixar. When you’re given the keys to Pixar kingdom and the tools and budgets they have, you feel this necessity to swing really, really, really hard, you know? And that doesn’t just mean more laughs per page. It means, “Can we figure out the secret to life in the next 94 minutes?”

 

That’s a lot of pressure, and the fact that you’re literally writing a film about anxiety adds to it.

You’re like, damn it, I’m in this self-fulfilling prophecy of a script. But if there’s nothing that can go horribly wrong, it’s kind of boring. This is what I signed up for.

What’s it like writing for animation? Does it change anything for your approach to crafting a satisfying story arc?

You know, it’s funny. I try to think about it as a drama first and just write adult stuff to see how I can find that sort of center lane. There’s a scene I’m very proud of where Joy breaks down. She’s like, I’m sick of being Joy all the time. You have these great actors like Amy Poehler who can do that, and you want to give these characters different shades. I think the trap in a film where you have Joy, Anger, Sadness, etcetera is that Joy, Anger, and Sadness are only happy, angry, and sad. And I think that what’s sort of fun is to dimensionalize characters that are so inherently one note, which is the same in a live-action, dramatic script. You’re always trying to find what feels like a real moment.

JOY AND ANXIETY — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of freshly minted teenager Riley just as a new Emotion shows up unexpectedly. Much to Joy’s surprise, Anxiety isn’t the type who will take a back seat either. Featuring the voices of Amy Poehler as Joy and Maya Hawke as Anxiety, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters Summer 2024.© 2023 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

And I imagine it’s different writing alongside artists and animators.

The trick is just writing visually. I don’t think there’s a line of dialogue in the script that’s more than two horizontal lines on the page. You start to see the math of what you’re doing, and most of what has to be conveyed has to be conveyed with the eye. When I started writing on network sitcoms, being in a joke room was like a whole different muscle to train your brain. And I think that’s the jump for me—up at Pixar, you’re sitting in a room of a dozen story artists with pens in their hands, and I’m trying to speak their language so that I can convey what’s in my head to their head—it’s a totally a translation event.

How much are the film’s stars in your head when you’re writing their characters? Are you writing in a particular way to suit Amy Poehler’s gifts, for example?

It’s great writing a sequel when you can have Disney+ open in the background and play a scene from the first movie just to get their voices. But what’s really fun and kind of unexpected is when we were recording, that writer’s brain kind of fires up, and you start to hear new lines and feed them new ideas because their cadences or where they’re headed comedically is inspiring something. I was kind of surprised that we found on the day a line that’s 20% better than what was written, you know, or 20% darker in a lot of cases, frankly, with Phyllis [Smith, as Sadness] and Lewis [Black, as Anger]. A lot of those ended up in the movie. Like in the first movie, when Sadness says something like, “I loved that movie where the dog died,” I was like, Oh, we can do that. It’s totally dark, but it works.

Considering Anxiety is the big new character, what was it like when you finally heard Maya Hawke performing the role?

She really knocks it out of the park. Maya Hawke is phenomenal. Her interpretation of Anxiety is dimensionalized. She’s had a great rhythm. She’s one of the only characters I could write more than two lines of dialogue for. I could give her a big chunk, and she would sell it really well. And she wanted tongue twisters. She wanted what Jim Carrey wanted: a lot of verbal marbles to chew on, and that was really fun because I like a challenge, and she was really good at it.

 

And about another newcomer, Ayo Edebiri, as Envy?

Oh man, Ayo’s great. She’s such a born voice performer as well. She’s so funny, and she gave her character so many levels. I think because her character was so short she felt she had to have moments where she was up here and then down here. She was really fun to watch; she would go off on these riffs, which were like full monologues. And I would just sit there in awe. She’s the real deal. She’s really funny.

What does it feel like to be at the end of the road and have the film finally coming out?

[Holds up a toy version of Anxiety.] That’s kind of what it feels like, you know?

Inside Out 2 is in theaters on June 14.

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Featured image: Ayo Edebiri as the voice of Envy, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

“BRATS” Director Andrew McCarthy on Reuniting With the Iconic Brat Pack

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It’s fair to say the youth movie genre in the 1980s was defined by the Brat Pack, the group of young actors who appeared together in such classics as Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo’s Fire. They are famously familiar: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, and Andrew McCarthy, among others. What is less well known is the profound impact that moniker, coined by then New York Magazine writer David Blum, had on them personally and professionally. As McCarthy, whose feature documentary, BRATS, explores the label and its ripple effect, notes, “The paradox is that we hated it and the public loved it. To them, it represented something different than it represented for us.”

In BRATS, McCarthy, now an established director and award-winning travel writer, reconnects with some of his fellow Brat Packers after several decades to discuss the aftermath of the branding. He also gleans surprising insight from many industry figures and Blum. His documentary is raw and revealing as it traces the actors’ journey from resenting the term to embracing it.

The Credits spoke with McCarthy about the idea that sparked BRATS, the logistics of meeting up with his former co-stars, and the film’s ending, which is certain to resonate with fans of the genre. Edited interview excerpts follow.

 

You write about the Brat Pack in your memoir, Brat: An ’80s Story. Did you always plan to follow up your book with a film?

I had no intention. It never occurred to me to make a film about it. If you read it, then you know, it’s just very subjective about my experience. What I was interested in was that I’m a result of my beliefs about what happened then, not other people’s beliefs of what happened then. The life I’ve lived is an outgrowth of the way I reacted to all that. But then, when I finished the book because it was a seismic event in all our lives and I’d never talked to any of them since, I thought it would be really interesting to see how it had affected their lives. I knew we all hated it at the beginning, and I wanted to see how that changed over time.

Andrew McCarthy in Central Park. Courtesy ABC/Hulu.

Did you map it out at the outset, or did it evolve as you were filming?

Well, it certainly evolved. I mean, I can’t even recall what it started as. All I knew I wanted to do was be utterly transparent the whole time with it. I just wanted it to be like a homemade movie, like you’re with me, I’m going to do this, and we’ll see what the hell happens. The shock I had from it was how much affection we all had for each other when we saw each other again. That was a big surprise to me, and so that changed the way the film eventually ended up being because you just have to follow the story.

Emilio Estevez in BRATS. Courtesy ABC/Hulu.

BRATS is a road movie of sorts. How many crew members did you travel with? And when did you shoot it?

We started in March of ’22, and I filmed about 10 or 11 days over a year because you just can’t call up Rob, Demi, and Emilio and get them all in the same afternoon, as much as you would like to [laughs]. I would get a crew, but like for me and Ally, it was just me and Ally; I had my iPhone, I rented two cameras that day, and she said I can talk to you today, like OK, I can’t get a crew today but I’ll be up in an hour, and I set up everything myself. And so it was just me and her at her apartment. With other people, I had a crew. I had two cameramen and multiple cameras, and each time, we’d set the cameras up and just walk away because I wanted multiple different angles. There was also a sound man and probably a PA helping us. That was it. There were no lights, there was no makeup crew, and there was nothing like that.    

Demi Moore in BRATS. Courtesy ABC/Hulu

I found it interesting that you see David Blum, who wrote the article. He didn’t think the label was negative or would have the ramifications that it did on all of you personally. You also speak with a lot of other industry figures, including Kate Erbland, Laura Shuler Donner, and Malcolm Gladwell. Did their positive takes change your perception in a good way? And why was it important for you to include them? To lend some balance?

Yeah, of course, you just want some reality check. You want perspective. To meet David, finally, I think that was really an interesting experience, for me and for him. He had never met any of us before. He’d been keeping up with all our careers. He knows more about what everyone’s doing than I certainly did. He knew he affected our lives in a deep way. He knew we didn’t like him. And so I tip my hat to him for agreeing to meet me.

I love the ending, by the way!

[Laughs] Well, I mean, it’s such an iconic Brat Pack moment with Judd pumping his fist, you know, stick it to the man. It’s so great. How else could it have ended? It wasn’t my idea. My editor [Tony Kent] did it, and when Tony put the song on there, I’m like, OK, done, we’re done here.

I believe Rob Lowe remarked that the youth movie genre made shows like Glee and Friends possible. Do you agree?

When Rob said that, I was like, really, dude, that’s a bit self-congratulatory. But what I didn’t understand before I started doing the documentary was that movies were not aimed at kids until the ’80s. They were aimed at adults, and then Hollywood realized that with the few youth movies they’d made, kids were going six or seven times to see them. So almost overnight, there was this seismic change in Hollywood about who was in movies, and we were the beneficiaries of that. And then David Blum comes along and just throws this really zingy tag on it and categorizes us. And so it was putting a label on this cultural shift that was happening. So, I don’t think it’s that far off. What is Friends but St. Elmo’s Fire, except in New York and not Washington? We were certainly at the forefront of that.

Rob Lowe in BRATS. Courtesy ABC/Hulu

What do you want the audience to take away?

Well, I think naturally, for most people, it will come down to nostalgia, but then I hope they walk away with something very different. You go, yeah, I had my walk down memory lane, but actually, I’ve got an interesting perspective on things now and maybe how that reflects on their own lives. I’m fascinated by how we look at things one way and know it to be the case, and then, in time, we look at it from 180 degrees the other way and know that to be the truth. I hope they come away with, huh, there’s a bigger thing involved here than just cool music and funny hairdos. 

BRATS premieres on Hulu on June 13.

Featured image: (L-R) Actors Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy.

How the “Bridgerton” Costume Designers Dialed up the Romantic Fantasy in Season 3

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In the Bridgerton universe, imagination is key. One of the reasons the show skyrocketed in popularity since its season one debut is that it’s a romance and a period drama reimagined. It’s a romance set in a royal world with diverse characters, whimsical clothing, and orchestral covers of modern-day pop hits that give the period trappings a modern sensibility.  

And what better way to sell a romantic, fantastical world than through the detailed costuming created by Bridgerton costume designers John Glaser, George Sayer, and Dougie Hawkes?

“The producers and the writers allowed us to veer even further away from the actual period and become a little more fantasy, a little more fashiony [this season],” Glaser says. “We broke as many rules as we could.”

Glaser describes this season as a bit more of a “rom-com.” The audience is familiar with the characters by now, and the two leads, Colin and Penelope, have been teased as a will-they-won’t-they? couple since the first season. 

Bridgerton. (L to R) Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

In season one, we were introduced to the primary family houses categorized by color palette: Bridgerton blue and Featherington orange. In season two, Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) is mostly seen in different violet hues. But in season three, costume coloring got a bit more complex. 

“The audience knows the characters,” Glaser says. “They know the families and that allowed us to not have to follow such strict — I call them Disney color rules. We could break out and become a little more realistic in the colors.”

Bridgerton. Emma Naomi as Alice Mondrich in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

This year, it’s Penelope Featherington who is the season’s diamond — the former wallflower turned leading lady that, until now, was only ever seen in some painfully bright, citrus gown. 

Bridgerton. (L to R) Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington, Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton in episode 307 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

“We used colors that were good for her skin tone and hair color,” Glaser says. “Also, if you look at her fabrics they’re layers of blues, greens, pinks—so you’re not really sure what color it is. And that’s because people who watch the show look at color and see easter eggs, and we didn’t want to foretell the story.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

Nicola Coughlan’s starring role this season has caused somewhat of an antiquated media frenzy around her body. But the truth of the matter is that Penelope has never looked better. She absolutely lights up the screen this season, and online audiences are eating it up.

“The colors that Penelope is wearing — even though she is more mature, more powerful — allows her to still be a wallflower,” Glaser says. “She’s not sticking out. Color is no longer telling her story. She’s telling her story.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington, Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

When designing costumes for a show like Bridgerton, Glaser says they turn to “modern paintings” for inspiration. 

“Like Andy Warhol, we use [Robert] Motherwell, Serjeant [Painter],” he says. “And we always say the same thing with our research that it may be modern research, it may be actual period research, or painting, but we use certain things because we extract the Regency period…and that’s how we mix things all together.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Hugh Sachs as Brimsley, Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

“We’ll have that under bust line which is very much part of the Regency period,” adds Sayer. “But then we might take it in, smooth it out, and move it. We moved the line once and we added another line underneath.”

This season’s leading man is Colin Bridgerton. Fresh off the boat from his travels abroad, Colin has a revived perspective on life, and a dashing, new wardrobe to match. 

“With Colin, especially, you’ve seen him since season one and season two quite pure and quite soft in his color palette,” Hawkes says. “And I always yearned a bit to escape from that color range. So to give him that transformation… He’s an incessant traveler anyway, after each season he’s on an adventurer. So it was time to make him an ultimate adventurer and come back a fully fledged man, rather than still a boy.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton, Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma, Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton in episode 307 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

Hawkes says with the men it’s almost easier to adhere to more traditional Regency era styles.

“[We] used a lot of contemporary fabrics and contemporary designers…but it has a grounding in silhouette to authenticity, historically,” he says.

This season’s other Bridgerton family lead has a bit of a different look. Inspired by Hollywood starlets like Grace Kelly and Catherine Hepburn, Francesca Bridgerton has a reserved elegance about her. 

Bridgerton. (L to R) Hannah Dodd as Francesca Bridgerton, Victor Alli as John Stirling in episode 303 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

“We used a lot of sheer fabrics this year because it helps make things a little mysterious,” Glaser says. 

According to Sayer, Francesca is feminine but not “in your face.” She maintains all the class of her elder sister, Daphne, but with an air of mystery. But it wasn’t Francesca that presented the biggest challenge for costuming this season.

Very true to her character, Claudia Jessie (Eloise Bridgerton) became the problem child this season. After accidentally breaking her wrist on set, the costume designers were faced with a new task: how to hide a modern-day cast in Regency-era garb.

Bridgerton. Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton in episode 201 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2022

In a few scenes, Eloise is seen wearing a muff so that the team would be able to hide her cast.

“It was a tricky one because it’s summer and you don’t wear muffs,” Glaser says. “And some people have noted that the muff looks very light and thin, and that’s all because she couldn’t have any weight on her arm. So it’s like a piece of tissue paper wrapped around.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington, Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton in episode 301 of Bridgerton. Cr. © 2023

Because Jessie wasn’t able to put her arm into most of her outfits for the show, the costuming team had to redo much of her clothing — adding “frills and fluff” to confuse the eye and divert attention from her wrist. 

“And then we split open the sleeves on her green embroidered coat…so she could actually get into the coat,” adds Sayer. 

As seasoned veterans in the industry, Glaser, Sayer and Hawkes have all experienced their fair share of costume mishaps. 

Bridgerton. (L to R) Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton, Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton in episode 301 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

“If you look carefully, she’s standing in certain ways, and she’s got a scarf draped over her, or she’s behind a chair,” Glaser says.  The rest of this season’s magical looks will appear with the release of the second half of season three on Thursday. 

 

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Featured image: Bridgerton. (L to R) Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington, Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton in episode 306 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2024

“Paddington in Peru” Trailer Finds the Beloved Bear on an Amazonian Adventure

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The beloved British bear is back on another adventure in Paddington in Peru.

The marmalade-devoted bear is finally back on the scene after a 7-year hiatus since Paddington 2, the third film in the critically acclaimed series. In the new film, directed by Dougal Wilson, Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) heads back to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton), who is now living at the Home for Retired Bears. Paddington’s trip to visit Aunt Lucy turns into a proper adventure when he and the Brown Family end up on a thrilling journey into the Amazon rainforest.

The third film has new faces (and voices), including Olivia Colman’s The Reverand Mother, a nun who can shred on the guitar, and Antonio Banderas’ boat captain Hunter Cabot. Hugh Bonneville returns as Mr. Brown, with Emily Mortimer stepping in to voice Mrs. Brown.

Director Dougal Wilson spoke at the trailer launch and said that the third film will explore Paddington’s origins and how he came to be rescued and live in London. “There’s a lot of missing information about what happens before that, and we thought for the third film it would be very appropriate for him to return to Peru, but this time taking his London friends and community with him and have an adventure there and, in doing so, fill in some of the missing pieces.”

Check out the trailer below. Paddington in Peru hits theaters on January 17, 2025.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Paddington in Peru brings Paddington’s story to Peru as he returns to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown Family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon rainforest and up to the mountain peaks of Peru.

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Featured image: “Paddington in Peru.” Courtesy Studio Canal. 

“Knuckles” Composer Tom Howe on Scoring the Speedy Warrior’s Paramount+ Debut

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Composer Tom Howe constructed the score for Paramount+’s superpowered new series Knuckles, putting the warrior Knuckles the Echidna from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe at the center of the action.

“He’s like Sonic, but more fun, more attitude, and probably more fun to have a beer with or go out for dinner with,” Howe says of the titular character. Howe also benefited from an added element that made the sound of Knuckles so appealing—the voice of Knuckles himself, played by Idris Elba. “Idris Elba’s voice is fantastic, with a sort of gravitas. It helps the character a lot. Knuckles is so committed to being a warrior. He has that superhero quality. The fact that he’s so into it gives it believability, but it also play as a comedy or be straight as well. I think he’s a great character.”

In an interview with The Credits, Howe talks about mixing genres and tones in the series, recording in the legendary Abbey Road studio, the inherent music of Idris Elba’s voice, and making friends with the cast of Ted Lasso.

Where did you grow up, and what was the first instrument that you played?

I grew up in England, and the first instrument I played was the piano. My dad played the piano, organ, guitar, and drums, and my parents sang in a choir, so I was exposed to church music early on. Piano was the first thing I learned, and then I took up guitar at about eight or nine, and clarinet, and I did a lot of singing choirs and things.

How did you start piecing together the score for Knuckles?

Well, it’s challenging. I started by coming up with thematic ideas for the different characters. I spent a lot of time thinking about the Knuckles character, obviously the star of the show. What I ended up with is actually a very simple tune, but it took me a long, long time to get there. The score can be very heroic, but at the same time, you can hear a couple of notes of it with a comedy cue. There’s a lot to contend with in this show. Even the episodes jump around. You go from the end of episode one, when they’re in a bowling alley, to having a full-on fight, which looks very much like a video game. They’re jumping around, there are lasers. And in episode three, you’re at a family dinner. In episode four, you’re in a musical.

 

That’s a tremendous amount of variety for a single series.

In episode one, Knuckles initially runs up the hill, and you see this huge landscape shot of green hills before he runs down and takes out the workmen. Obviously, a big landscape shot like that can have a big, wide-scale sound. But when you’re in a family dinner with just three people and Knuckles, it won’t take the same kind of palette. So, you’ve got to feel your way around that and work out what the picture can take and what’s suitable for the characters in the story. So that made it very fun. But as a composer, there are a lot of different things to deal with, and you don’t want to over-egg a pudding.

L-R: Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) and Hudson as Ozzy in Knuckles, episode 1, season 1, streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures/Sega/Paramount+.

Knuckles is voiced by Idris Elba, who has that fabulous voice that’s its own kind of music. How does that help you with what you’re creating? 

It really helps. His voice reminds me of David Attenborough. There is a lot of talking, the voice is very low, and a lot of the music is sitting above that. There’s very little going in the bottom end of that except for the action cues within that episode.

 

There are a lot of special effects in this show. When do you enter the process? Do you get the script or storyboards, or are you actually looking at the final visuals?

I get a complete picture, but it’s forever changing in length, and this scene’s now over here, or that bit that was there is now gone completely. It’s an ever-moving thing until they lock it down. If you work on a drama, they may change the edit, but fundamentally, the shots are the shots. But when you’ve got an animated character like Knuckles, in any of the scenes he’s in, when the special effects shots come in, it will all be a little bit longer or a little bit shorter. It may only a frame here and there, but when you start doing that over a number of sequences, all the music timings will have to move around.

 

I get an early picture to look at, and that’s when I’ll have a conversation with the filmmakers. We’ll talk about what a particular scene needs, whether it needs music, and if it does, what the music is doing, what the mood behind it is, or what the intention behind it is. I then start trying to kind of put things down, but at that point, it is an ever-moving thing. Every time you move forward, you have to go backward and fix something. I remember in episode six when Knuckles was in the last battle there, and Wade gave a fantastic speech. What I actually see is Wade standing in front of a blue screen. Giving a great performance is challenging enough, but to do it when you’re on your own is really difficult, I’m sure.

There’s a very varied selection of surprising needle drops on the soundtrack. In the first episode alone, you have Edith Piaf and A Tribe Called Quest.

Matt Biffa selected those in collaboration with the filmmakers. Toby Ascher, one of the producers, was also very involved.

What’s the most fun about writing for Knuckles? 

The breadth of the palette that you get to play with. If you have a dark drama project, all of the music is going to be in that world. There are not many projects where you can jump around like that and still keep a throughline in terms of melody and instrumentation choice. Episode four has a lot of electric guitars in it, but the others don’t. Episode three has a lot of solo violin and mandolin, but not a lot of the others do. It is a lot of fun to put on these different hats while trying to thread a needle and make it sound like one thing.

 

Are there individual musicians playing all these parts, or are you creating it on a synthesizer?

I do a demo here in my studio; any pianos, guitars, if there are drums, I will play those here. I have a setup that allows that. But for Knuckles, a lot of it was orchestral, particularly in the big action moments. So, I went to Abbey Road for four episodes and AIR Studios in London for two episodes with an orchestra. And it’s all played and recorded for real, which obviously gives it a quality that can’t be obtained by samples as well as when you get all the musicians together.  

What’s your next project?

 I’m finishing a David Attenborough series for the BBC and then starting Shrinking season 2 for Apple.

You worked with the Shrinking people on Ted Lasso, too, right?

Yes, of all the things I’ve ever worked on, Ted Lasso was unusual because it went on a long time and because I was involved on some of the things on set as well. I became very friendly with all the actors and filmmakers, and that carries on to this day. I actually had dinner with Nick Muhammad two nights ago, just the two of us in the pub. He’s a fantastic violin player, and I’m also friends with Phil Dunster and Hannah Waddingham. I see Jason Sudeikis when he is in town. So that’s been a lovely thing to be a part of.

Knuckles is streaming on Paramount+

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Featured image: Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba) in Knuckles, episode 6, season 1, streaming on Paramount+, 2024. Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures/Sega/Paramount+.

James Gunn Reveals Another New “Superman” Image

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Back in early May, we got our first look at David Corenswet as Superman, and now it appears that Superman writer/director James Gunn has revealed an image of the Kent Family farm, where the young Kryptonian is raised.

Gunn is one of the most active and open filmmakers when it comes to sharing images and updates from his films. He’s been keeping up that level of engagement ever since he took over DC Studios with co-chief Peter Safran and began working in earnest on Superman. Gunn shared the image of what appears to be the Kent Family farm on his Threads account, and he hasn’t refuted the comments to the post that suggests as much.

You can decide for yourself what iconic Superman location this is, but to us, it screams a farm outside of Smallville, Kansas. (Even if it was shot in, say, Ohio.)

Courtesy James Gunn.

The Superman cast has been growing by leaps and bounds lately. Mikaela Hoover and Christopher MacDonald have just signed up as Cat Grant and Ron Troupe, two members of the Daily Planet staff. They join recent addition Beck Bennett, who’s also playing a member of the Planet team. These three follow the recently added Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince, playing Martha and Jonathan Kent, respectively. Corenswet leads, of course, as Clark Kent/Superman, and he’s joined by Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. The ensemble also includes Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, María Gabriela de Faría as The Engineer, and Gunn’s longtime collaborator Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner.

Superman is set to fly into theaters on July 11, 2025

For more on Superman, check out these stories:

James Gunn’s “Superman” Brings “Saturday Night Live” Alum Beck Bennett Aboard

James Gunn’s “Superman” Coming to IMAX Next Summer

James Gunn’s “Superman” Finds its Martha Kent in Neva Howell

James Gunn’s “Superman” Casts Crucial Role of Jonathan Kent

Featured image: David Corenswet is Clark Kent/Superman in “Superman.” Courtesy James Gunn/Warner Bros.

Andy Serkis Unveils “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” Footage at Annecy

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As promised back in mid-May, the first look at The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was unveiled at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Tuesday by none other than Andy Serkis. Serkis, of course, was one of the stars of Peter Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy, and his time playing Gollum has not come to an end (more on that later). For the War of the Rohirrim unveiling, Serkis moderated a panel about New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.’ upcoming anime epic, which treated festivalgoers to 20 minutes of the film. 

The War of the Rohirrim is based on a brief portion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and is centered on Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the daughter of the legendary Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), a mighty king of Rohan, tracks the Hammerhand family’s attempts to protect their lands from the Dunlendings. Serkis promised that fans were “gonna go nuts for this,” as he himself is a fan of the film—he didn’t work on it, but his Lord of the Rings future is mighty busy. Serkis channeled his iconic character to priase the upcoming anime film—”There is only one word to describe a movie with Lord of the Rings and anime at the same time, and that is precious.”

The panel included the film’s director, Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series), producers Philippa Boyens and Joseph Chou, and Warners executive Jason DeMarco. DeMarco reflected on the challenge of combining The Lord of the Rings world with anime.

“We did not want to make an animated version of a Peter Jackson film,” he said. “We wanted to make a Kenji Kamiyama anime feature film that lives within that world. And that’s a difficult, difficult task that requires a lot of delicate balancing between two types of filmmaking that haven’t really collided like this before.”

Image by Winson Seto. Courtesy Warner Bros.
Image by Winson Seto. Courtesy Warner Bros.

The War of the Rohirrim is set roughly two centuries before the events in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” and will include the creation of Helm’s Deep, the fortified gorge in the White Mountains that was a major setting in Tolkien’s work and the middle film in Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy The Two Towers. The script comes from Phoebe Gittins and her writing partner, Arty Papageorgiou, and is based on a draft from Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews.

“I’m in awe of the creative talent who have come together to bring this epic, heart-pounding story to life, from the mastery of Kenji Kamiyama to a truly stellar cast,” Boyens told Variety back in 2022.

The connection between the new anime film and Jackson’s creative team includes Oscar-winning makeup and visual effects artist Richard Taylor and Oscar-winning art director Alan Lee. Tolkien illustrator John Howe is also involved. The film is slated for a December 13, 2024 release.

Serkis also teased his upcoming live-action feature Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which he will star in and direct, with Peter Jackson executive producing.

Featured image: Helm Hammerhand. Image by Winson Seto. Courtesy Warner Bros.

“Shakespeare but with football”: Director Matthew Hamachek Unpacks “The Dynasty: New England Patriots”

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Director and executive producer Matthew Hamachek calls The Dynasty, the 10-part docu-series now streaming on Apple TV+, “Shakespeare but with football.”

He’s not overstating it. As Dynasty charts the rise and fall of the six-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots over the course of 20 years, dazzling on-field highlights are deftly layered with the documentary’s themes of male ego, betrayal, the price of success, and the corporatization of sports at the expense of players. The result is textured, riveting drama designed to appeal even to viewers with little interest in football.

Bill Belichick and Tom Brady in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+. Courtesy of the New England Patriots.

“If you are making something for fans, then you’re probably not getting to the core of what story is because that’s just hagiography,” says Hamachek, who co-directed and produced the Emmy-winning, two-part HBO documentary Tiger, which delivered a similar revealing look at the rise, fall, and epic comeback of golf legend Tiger Woods. A veteran editor, his credits include the acclaimed documentaries If a Tree Falls, Gideon’s Army, and the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land.

The Dynasty offered a unique creative opportunity, he says. “I felt it was important that this would be an unvarnished telling of the New England Patriots story and that it would not come from any one person. It wasn’t going to be [head coach] Bill Belichick’s story or [quarterback] Tom Brady’s or [team owner] Robert Kraft’s story. I wanted to let the 70-plus people we interviewed tell it from their perspective. And we had to get into all of it: Spy Gate, Deflategate, Aaron Hernandez …. At its core, this is a human story; to tell a human story, we have to get into all of it, including the fact that it fell apart at the end.”

Bill Belichick in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+. Courtesy of the New England Patriots.

Hamachek and his team over two-plus years examined more than 30,000 hours of video footage and audio files from the Patriots organization’s archive. Although much of the material was covered in series writer Jeff Benedict’s bestselling book of the same title, the documentary, which is nominated for a Critics Choice Real TV Award in the Best Sports Show category, goes deeper. Besides never-before-seen footage, Hamachek and his crew conducted 70 new interviews with former players, coaches, sportswriters, family members, and NFL officials for a more detailed story.

Drew Bledsoe in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

From the opening episode, “Backup Plan,” the series traces how the New England Patriots evolved from a struggling team to a powerhouse franchise. The episode’s climax is the devastating knee injury that sidelined star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, one of the series’ candid on-camera interviews, and the ascension of backup quarterback Tom Brady. As coach Belichick takes the risk of sticking with the untested, sixth-round draft pick Brady, the episode builds suspense leading to the famous “Snow Bowl” win against the Oakland Raiders in episode 2.

 

By the time a dynasty is established, the Patriots have become the New York Yankees of the NFL: no longer a scrappy underdog but a soulless machine with a struggle for control between Brady and Belichick. The Dynasty doesn’t shy from covering controversies; besides accusations of cheating in Spy Gate and Deflategate, episode 6, “At All Costs,” details the miscalculation of signing the troubled Aaron Hernandez. The theme of fathers and sons echoes throughout the series, nowhere more tragically than Kraft’s unwavering belief in Hernandez until the player was charged with murder.

In conducting the face-to-face interviews, it probably helped that Hamachek, who grew up in Washington, DC, wasn’t a Patriots fan. “I wasn’t sitting on the couch with my dad when I was 12 years old remembering this team,” he says. “It was more like, ‘You tell me what was important.’”

Covering two decades of on and off-field drama was a tall order, and Hamachek credits the Dynasty team of editors led by Dan Koehler for the layers of storytelling. Information from the interviews often changed the direction of the narrative, and sometimes an entire episode had to be recut, he says. “It was a great group. They fell in love with the process and wanted to get it right even when [the story] was constantly shifting and moving around. Everybody bought into the idea to make it as perfect as we could. There were a lot of 3 and 4 a.m. nights.”

Rob Gronkowsi in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Some of the most entertaining and insightful commentary comes courtesy of former players, including Bledsoe, Adam Vinatieri, Tedy Bruschi, Rob Gronkowski, Ty Law, Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Randy Moss, and Malcolm Butler, who offers candid thoughts on the controversial penultimate episode “Breaking Point” in which Belichick inexplicably failed to play Butler in a big game.

Sports journalists Howard Bryant and Michael Holley, who wrote his own book on the Patriots, are particularly insightful. Sportswriter Nora Princiotti offers a unique perspective on the tenure of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who replaced a suspended Brady following Deflategate, musing that their ensuing rivalry was possibly as much about good looks and charisma as it was about talent.

The on-camera interviews are particularly revealing, especially Hamachek’s questioning of tight-lipped Belichick, who emerges as the drama’s villain, communicating volumes with his body language, facial expressions, and silence.

Bill Belichick in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“It was important, especially in Belichick’s case, that if he didn’t want to answer, that the editors leave it in to show that he did have the chance to comment and that there wasn’t something else he said we weren’t showing. It was important to give him the opportunity to comment on the record,” Hamachek says.

He credits the Dynasty crew for its preparation and research prior to the interviews. “We had 50-plus people working on the archives, so when [subjects] sat down in the chair, we could say things like, ‘Do you remember this particular moment in the locker room?’ It showed them that we had done our homework, which is one of the comments Bill Belichick made after his interview. He came up to me and said, ‘It’s very clear how well-researched you are,’” Hamachek says. “Coming from Bill Belichick, that’s as good a compliment as you could possibly get.”

 

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Featured image: Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and Robert Kraft in “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” now streaming on Apple TV+. Courtesy of the New England Patriots.

“The Wild Robot” Starring Lupita Nyong’o & Pedro Pascal Reveals Stunning Footage at Annecy

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DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures unveiled the first footage of writer/director Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot on Tuesday at the Annecy Animation Festival, drawing laughter and tears from the festivalgoers.

The upcoming animated film stars Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, and Kit Connor and was adapted by the three-time Oscar nominee Sanders from Peter Brown’s novel. Sanders and his Wild Robot team are still working on the film, which is set to hit theaters on September 20. The Wild Robot is centered on ROZZUM unit 7134, better known as Roz (voiced by Nyong’o), the titular robot who ends up marooned on a wild island filled with animals but no one and nothing like Roz. Roz must learn how to form a connection with the islands’ animal inhabitants and eventually try to support a little orphaned gosling who will need to fly off for the fall migration. 

Sanders revealed The Wild Robot‘s opening section for the Annecy crowd, which drew lots of emotion from the audience as Roz explored the wild island. The next portion revealed Roz and the goose Brightbill (Connor) as the gosling grows up, which drew both tears and a standing ovation.

Sanders told the crowd that what he and his team were going for with the look of The Wild Robot was the “analog warmth and soul” of hand-drawn animation. “We start by doing these inspirational paintings,” Sanders explained, aiming for a final film that looks indistinguishable from this initial artwork. As for Peter Brown and his novel, Sanders said, “His guiding principle was that kindness can be a survival strategy.”

The cast includes Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, and Ving Rhames. 

Check out the trailer below. The Wild Robot premieres on September 20.

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Featured image: The Wild Robot poster. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

First “Knives Out 3” Image Finds Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc With Long Locks

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Knives Out 3 has officially begun filming.

To be accurate, the third installment in Rian Johnson’s whodunit franchise is actually called Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and Johnson took to X to share the first image from the set—Daniel Craig’s delightfully dandified sleuth Benoit Blanc is now sporting some long locks. Craig’s Blanc is, as always, dressed to the nines, wearing a three-piece suit and holding a hat. He looks ready to take on the next case, which Johnson promised is Blanc’s most dangerous yet.

The third Knives Out film will once again boast an incredible ensemble. This time around, Craig is joined by Josh O’Connor (recently seen steaming up the screen alongside Zendaya in Challengers),  Andrew Scott, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, Daryl McCormack, and more.

Johnson is, of course, keeping mum about the plot to Wake Up Dead Man, but we did get a teaser of the title two weeks ago:

Johnson is clearly having the time of his life with this franchise, getting to play in the whodunit sandbox which he has pointed out is vast and offers plenty of room for invention.

Wake Up Dead Man is due in theaters and on Netflix sometime in 2025.
 

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Andrew Scott Joins Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out 3”

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Featured image: Daniel Craig in “Knives Out 3.” Courtesy Rian Johnson/Netflix.

Giving the “Abbott Elementary” Teachers a Glow Up With the Hair & Makeup Maestros Moira Frazier and Constance Foe

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As summer shimmers just ahead and another school year wraps up, we take time now to reflect on the fire looks our teachers were serving. The educators at Abbott Elementary gave it their all through two semesters of change. As they navigated celebrations and setbacks, this season was filled with transformations guided by Hair Department Head Moira Frazier and Makeup Department Head Constance Foe.

Janine Teagues’ (Quinta Brunson) relentless optimism and dedication to her students saw a major payoff when her big ideas caught the attention of the school district. She was recruited for a fellowship, stepping into a more visible professional role. In light of a recent breakup and job offer, Frazier and Foe elevated Janine’s look to take her into the community leadership position.

QUINTA BRUNSON. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

“Me and (series creator) Quinta [Brunson] were like, we envision Janine going on YouTube trying to figure out how to style curly hair. What do I need to do? What products do I need to use? That’s why this year, you see her hair a little bit more manageable. It looks a lot more defined in her curl pattern,” Frazier noted. “That middle part just brings more dominance and confidence to her, which is why we ended up doing it that way. It sets a high standard and makes a statement for her.”

The sparkly new glint in Janine’s eye doesn’t just come from her excitement over new school initiatives. She also started playing with bolder makeup products. According to Foe, mixing in metallics was the biggest change in Janine’s routine.

TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS, QUINTA BRUNSON. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

“We started doing little jewel tone eyeliners, and when I tell you it was so dark to the naked eye, it was black,” Foe explained. “But when you start to see it in the light, it was like an emerald or an amethyst, and it would match what she would have on, and she was more cognizant of what she was doing this time instead of just, ‘Ok, I’m going to school,’ and she just put on lip-gloss and her regular black or brown eyeliner. She actually spent time in the mirror and said, ‘Ok, I’m ready for the day.”

Abbott’s flamboyant principal, Ava Coleman (Janelle James), also leveled up her look. Although she typically favors style over substance, a summer endeavor steered her in a new direction. After a trip to the halls of Harvard and completing an unrelated professional course, she adopted a more academic style.

“For Ava’s character, we wanted to touch on a little bit of texture and more quality this season,” Frazier said of Ava’s wigs. “This season, when she steps into her role as principal, it’s being taken a little more seriously because of this whole, ‘I went to Harvard’ thing. Even though it was online, she wanted to be taken more seriously. So that’s why we’re seeing a bit of toned-down Ava but with a bit more of a statement. Because there’s no more of a statement than to have a middle part, straight down, all the way, exaggerated, 30 inches. It’s still Ava, but it reads that ‘I’m being taken seriously.’”

JANELLE JAMES (9:00-9:32 p.m. EST), on ABC. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Frazier is a one-stop shop, producing every wig used on the show, including guest actors. She makes a full lace wig in five to seven days with only the highest quality lace and 100% human hair. With cameras reaching 8K resolution, she has to be careful that the lace is not visible to the human eye, or it will be picked up on screen.

“Literally, if there’s any repairs that need to be done, I’m getting it done in a day,” Frazier revealed. “Every guest cast got my high-quality ventilation because I can ventilate a hairline in a day. So, when we had Tatyana Ali, who came in to play ‘Ava 2.0’, I sat there and did her hairline the day before she played on the episode, and I had to do it that day. When she came in the following day, she had a brand-new wig that matched her exact hairline.”

JANELLE JAMES, TATYANA ALI. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

In the emotional and revealing episode “Mother’s Day,” Frazier leaped into a new level of wigs for the show. Several of the Abbott colleagues agree to spend the holiday at a drag brunch where hairstyles are famously maximized and competitively flawless.

“I really, really loved how the queens came through with the hair, the makeup, the wardrobe,” Frazier beamed. “Everything just felt so right. It looked absolutely amazing and read beautifully onscreen, even in the 8K cameras. I’m very, very proud of that work. I’m proud of the structural design that I did on that. It was a beautiful enhancement to see it all play out between myself, my team, Dustin Osborne and Christina Joseph, and our guest hair stylist who came on to help put the wigs on because we can’t do everybody.”

SHEA COULEÉ, CHRIS PERFETTI.(Disney/Gilles Mingasson)
SYMONE, CHRIS PERFETTI, DONZELL LEWIS. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Glamorous entertainment icon Sheryl Lee Ralph shines as Barbara Howard, the principled and orderly matron of the school. The Emmy winner has alluded to the transformative nature of her wig as she embodies her character.

“Based on the interviews Sheryl has been doing, the wig is a character in itself,” Frazier explained. “Barbara doesn’t show up until we put the wig on. Once the wig was on Sheryl Lee Ralph, she became Barbara Howard. We made that wig like that because so many people you know have that exact hairstyle. They have that exact personality, and that exudes that type of character. Everyone has a Barbara in their life, whether they’re an aunt, a cousin, a friend of a friend, even a grandmother.”

SHERYL LEE RALPH. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Barbara’s makeup look is timeless and impeccable. Even through the trials of corralling a room full of messy kids all day, she never has a smudge or smear. Foe said that Ralph brings her own vision of the character to the table.

“Miss Sheryl and I collaborated on her look, and we came up with her classic look of grace,” Foe said. “She always has that cut crease, but it’s like the pretty Black girl cut crease. Then she has a mauve lip, or her bold browns and reds go with her cardigans. She really does have a hand in it.”

In the mid-season episode “Panel,” Foe’s greatest challenge was concealing rather than highlighting. Teacher Gregory Edie’s arms are famously admired among his coworkers, but when he bears it all, makeup must cover actor Tyler James Williams’ many tattoos. In a heated basketball match with the students, Foe’s team had to make sure that his real-life ink didn’t show through.

TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS, LISA ANN WALTER, JANELLE JAMES, CHRIS PERFETTI, SHERYL LEE RALPH. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

“[Tyler] has tats from his fingers all the way, everywhere,” Foe revealed. “All on the insides of his arms, all on his forearms, on his chest, on his neck. I came up with the perfect formula of color to match his arms. I was talking with lighting to ensure that lighting in our trailer matched the set so that once he left our trailer, he looked exactly the same on set and was natural. It literally took me about an hour to cover both arms and his chest area when he played basketball. I had to shellac him, for lack of better terms, with tattoo cover because he was going to be sweating. I had to make sure it didn’t run off.”

TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS, ZACK FOX. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Of course, the heart of Abbott Elementary is the students, but that makes for a lot of young actors for Frazier and Foe to prep each day. Both department heads are hands-on and involved in making sure that everyone looks ready to learn.

“We go through each and every kid, make sure there is no Cheeto dust on their fingers or their faces,” Foe teased. “Making sure they have lotion, making sure there’s no ice cream or anything. We have said they can’t have donuts anymore because we have little icings everywhere.”

Both teams are dedicated to ensuring that each child is camera-ready and looks appropriate for the scenes.

“I wanted to make it feel very authentic,” Frazier noted. “If you ever really pay attention to the background, you’ll see a lot more braids, twists, and child hairstyles because these kids are not the kids you see on Instagram. These kids are kids, and that’s what we’re trying to bring back that playful era so that they can remain children.”

That includes being cognizant of the script, including location.

“You’ve gotta remember, this is in Philly. This is not in California. Children are not going to come out with a wash-and-go set when it’s 20 degrees outside. I’m from Ohio, so I would like to know. My mom is not sending me out with a freshly washed head so I can catch a cold, as she would say. Don’t nobody got time to take off work because you got sick,” Frazier laughed.

Abbott Elementary is available to stream on Hulu.

Featured image: TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS, QUINTA BRUNSON. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” DP Robrecht Heyvaert on Creating the Ride of a Lifetime

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In the fourth time around for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s wise-cracking Miami detectives, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, now in theaters, earns its summer popcorn movie bonafides with loads of goofy banter and antic action sequences. Helmed by Belgian-Moroccan directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Ride or Die follows Mike Lowery [Smith] and Marcus Lawrence [Lawrence] as they do battle with a sadistic criminal mastermind named McGrath (Eric Dane) and corrupt cops.

As always, cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert helps Arbi and Fallah bring the story to life. He’s shot every one of their movies since the trio first met as teenagers at a film school in Brussels. “We know each other very well,” says Heyvaert. “I can tell in three seconds, just from a look or a hand motion, what they want. Then it’s up to me to explain that to the rest of the gang, which potentially might be 50 crew members.”

Speaking from the London area, where he’s prepping a new movie, the Brussels-based cinematographer discusses using nonstop camera movement to capture Ride or Die in all its eye-popping, trash-talking glory.

 

Building on the hyper-kinetic style originated by Michael Bay back in 1995, the camera never stops moving in Ride or Die. Literally, cameras move from side to side every moment of screen time, circling around the actors, going in close, or pulling back. How did you arrive at this dynamic approach to camera movement?

The original tagline during pre-production, I think, was “Bad Boys: On the Run.” The idea embedded in the story is that Will and Martin are always on the move, so the camera should always be on the move as well, without it feeling weird or wrong. In most cases, the camera movement goes hand in hand with the blocking, characters going from A to B to C to D, wherever. On top of that, we have a lot of push-ins or pull-outs to emphasize the drama or the spectacle. And more than the previous one, Bad Boys for Life, there’s way more handheld here, for dialogue and even action [scenes]. We thought it would be fun for a blockbuster of this size to go down and dirty, take the camera in hand, move it around, and get close to people’s faces.

The bright color palette contributes to Ride or Die‘s high-energy feel in the spirit of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. What colors did you want to accentuate for Ride or Die?

Looking at contemporary Miami, the colors that most attracted us were the bright pinks and blues. In the night shots, we really pushed the envelope on the pink. In fact, I think pink might be my favorite color now. On shooting days, it’s the low golden sun that you see almost every day in Miami, especially during the golden hour.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

What were some of your references cinematically?

For this movie, where we push everything slightly further than reality, we were inspired by classic eighties and nineties cinema, like Tony Scott movies [Top Gun and True Romance], which always have this golden sun with strong backlight and high contrast usually combined with long focal [lenses]. We really embraced that golden feel. In short, I would say our credo was neon-soaked nights and golden sun days.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

What kind of gear did you use to capture all that color and movement?

The main cameras were Alexa 35 and Sony Venice. We combined those modern digital cameras with Panavision G series cameras. They’re lightweight and perfect for handheld action scenes but also give you that classic anamorphic feel with the wide-angle perspective.

What about lenses?

Working with Panavision, we adjusted the lenses and all the other optics so that when you get a streak of light that would normally be a horizontal blue line, in Bad Boys every streak line is pink. Panavision did a great job tweaking the coating on the lens glass so we could really embrace the pink.

Martin Lawrence stars in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

You also used something called the SnorriCam, which was invented by a couple of guys from Iceland who call themselves the Snorri Brothers. How does it work?

You have the actor wear a harness with a camera attached. The first time I heard about SnorriCam was in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. In Ride or Die, we pushed it a step further and adjusted the rig in such a way that we could go from a frontal shot of an actor and then the camera swings around so you’re really [seeing things] in their point of view, almost like video game. It took some physical strength because the rig is quite heavy, about thirty pounds, Will and Martin pulled it off.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

When do your SnorriCam shots show up in the movie?

In the final piece, when Will and Martin’s characters enter Gator Land, we start with a long shot frontal on Will. Then the camera whips around, and you look over his gun. He tosses it to Martin’s character, who catches the gun, and the camera [POV] attaches to his body. It’s not a very long sequence, but I hope it’s iconic.

You enjoy an unusually tight relationship with Live or Die directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. How do you deal with having two directors that you need to answer to? Is there a division of labor?

It’s a good question, but I don’t really know the answer. They cross over all the time within days or scenes. One day, I’ll be talking mainly to Bilall because he knows the angles, and halfway through the scene, Adil will step in and say, “Let’s do it this way.”

Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah on the set of Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

Martin Lawrence and Will Smith look like they’re having fun. What’s it like filming these guys?

It’s amazing watching them do their thing, especially with the comedy when they’re free-styling. Obviously, there is a script, but for every single take, they’ll come up with new lines or better lines or add a joke. We always have many cameras rolling simultaneously because once Will and Martin start free-styling, it might only happen once, so you’d better get it. That’s always a little stressful for me to make sure three, four, five, and six cameras are in the right position because you have to be ready and on edge when that spark of genius comedy comes to life.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

On the action front, what was your favorite Ride or Die scene to film?

The sequence I had the most fun shooting was the crashing helicopter. It’s a very contained set, almost like we were filming a mini-submarine movie. Making a big action piece in a tiny environment is really challenging, and you also have to keep that camera moving. We used a rig with a speed rail built into the ceiling that could transport the camera back and forth, allowing us to move the camera really fast from the back of the chopper to the front and vice versa.

People are flying all over the place!

We needed to capture the moment where the characters fall from back to front at twenty miles an hour and then the moment when the guy’s parachute is being sucked out of the chopper. Choreographing all that action in sync with special effects took a lot of storyboarding, meetings, and prep to tell the story beats in a clear way.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi

You also have to deal with that giant cage imprisoning Mike’s murderous son Armando (Jacob Scipio).

That cage weighs about half a ton, but we still needed to keep things energetic and keep the camera shaking like it would in a real crashing helicopter—or so I assume. I’ve never been in a crashing helicopter.

Helicopter crashes, shootouts, movie stars, Miami—for a kid from Belgium, does it sometimes feel a little surreal when you find yourself making a big Hollywood movie?

Any kid on the planet would think it’s surreal. Belgium is a small country that does not have a big film industry, so growing up there and now getting the chance to collaborate with the cream of the crop of the American film industry feels like a blessing.

 

 

Featured image: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. Photo by: Frank Masi