How “Tár” Costume Designer Bina Daigeler Dressed Cate Blanchett in Power

Posted on by babrams

There is a sharpness to Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) that has allowed her to scale her way to the top of the classical music world as director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Those hard, cutting edges prove useful in her profession but leave scars on her personal relationships. Her straight edges and demand for perfection are reflected in a wardrobe created by costume designer Bina Daigeler. 

“For everybody, the way you dress somehow explains a lot,” Daigeler observed. “The first impression that people get, sure, they look into your face, but also, they see the total [package], and so I think she’s a person who is very conscious about what she is wearing. The pantsuits are a little bit her uniform and her protection.” 

Lydia gravitates toward masculine silhouettes. She reaches for button-down shirts in rehearsals and custom-tailored suits, elevated by a tuxedo-style collar, in performances. Polished and powerful, the clean lines demand respect but are also a true expression of Lydia herself. 

“First of all, she is dressed in something that she feels comfortable in, and that represents her and her inspirations,” Daigeler explained. “For us, how we composed her character, the inspirations were more on the male conductors than on the female conductors. You can see how much she is inspired by Karajan and Bernstein, and that is somehow her world, and I think that it gave her a lot of power and a lot of strength. On the other side, it is super comfortable. It is like these two-piece suits, then we used all the combinations. It has something of power and strength. It also gives her importance when she’s coming into the scene.”

Although a fictional character, the dynamics of Lydia’s field reflect our own world. Very few women have led a symphony in a major city. Lydia has helmed four, working her way through Cleveland, Boston, and New York before landing at the top spot in Berlin. As a coveted EGOT winner – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony – no one can question that she has earned her artistic triumphs. 

Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s TÁR, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

“Obviously, such a big orchestra like the philharmonic, any kind of German or international philharmonic, they are big institutions,” Daigeler noted. “They were very male-ruled. There are many more famous male conductors than there have been female conductors.”

A masterful monologue hints at Lydia’s narcissism in her role. Not only does she claim to control the orchestra, but she insists she even shapes time itself with her movements from the podium. A conductor’s baton may be their most powerful tool, but their clothing can also be a subtle support for the physically expressive aspect of their job. 

“It’s all adapted so that she has movement. We really, really, really adapted it,” Daigeler revealed. “We even made the jeans that she is wearing because it has a higher waist so that she gets a stronger feeling, and she feels supported around her core. So that was also something important for her. Of course, we talked a lot about the movement and what makes a nice silhouette.”

Daigeler was brought into the project early on and heavily relied on Todd Field’s script, which she called “deep” and “precise.” She prepared a mood board that pinpointed her intuition for Lydia’s style, but the actual costumes Blanchett reached for each day were fluid, allowing the character to take shape in real-time.

“In contemporary movies, I like to build up a closet, but leave them open and make them just the same day that we shoot certain scenes because the characters grow during the shoot,” Daigeler described. “In every scene, they know more about themselves. For example, in the first nine days, we shot all the music scenes. All the philharmonic things, all the musicians. That was a big step for Cate, but then that was a huge knowledge that she knew how it really is to conduct, how it is to be in front of a real philharmonic and be a professional conductor. That helped us all to move forward with all her other changes.”

Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s TÁR, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

Those surrounding musicians each called for their own personal style. Despite performing as a cohesive unit, their day-to-day lives reflected a wide range of expression. Yet, they all have immense talent and drive in common. 

“Each of them has their own character and own personality,” Daigeler noted. “We are obviously moving in a very high level of an intellectual, rich, artistic world from Berlin and internationally. That is somehow reflected in the movie in the wardrobe and also in the production design. All the characters are set up around the philharmonic. It’s a high level of income for a lot of people, so you see that.”

Sophie Kauer stars as Olga Metkina in director Todd Field’s TÁR, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

Set in a gloomy German autumn, the film has a muted palette. Lydia lives in dark tones and a smattering of lighter neutrals that speak to both her severe personality and the new city falling under her spell.

“It’s definitely a reflection of her world, and it’s also definitely a reflection of Berlin,” Daigeler said of the color choices. “There is a lot of Berlin style in it. It’s also autumn, and Berlin is quite a gray city. It just matches everything that happens in these colder colors that explain the whole story.”

Yet, nothing is casual or common about Lydia. She wears only the finest products, and each piece makes a statement. Daigeler shopped internationally in London and Berlin and Paris. Each piece had to be perfectly fitted, and many of the designs were made specially to Blanchett’s measurements from fabrics chosen by Daigeler. 

“I like different textures,” she said. “You will also see her shirts, it’s textured silk. It’s not very plain. Everything has something interesting in it.”

Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s TÁR, a Focus Features release. Credit: Focus Features

As Lydia clutches at her ambition, her desperate obsession with authority infiltrates her whole life. Her relationship with her partner and first violinist, Sharon Goodnow (Nina Hoss), is strained despite a mutual lust for greatness and the incredible success they both enjoy in their careers. The absolute control Lydia wields over the orchestra does not translate well into life beyond the stage, and she begins to unravel.

“In the movie, there is an arch where the fit of the suits and the pants go different, and then there are also other colors and other textures and materials introduced toward the end,” Daigeler explained. “All that, of course, helped Cate to create her personality and to express her better. To get more feeling for who Lydia Tár is.”

When most of us are facing a collapse in our personal lives, we often reach for worn tee shirts and sweatpants. Lydia’s descent is more of a dignified relaxation achieved by fit and fabric that signals her unraveling.

“I went a little bit more for wool, and it’s just a softer shape and more like a sweater,” Daigeler said. “She loses it a little bit, and she’s less pulled together. You will notice, and it’s reflected in the way she gets more casual and softer, but not so far as sweatpants. It doesn’t match with her.”

Tár is now playing in theaters.

 

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

“Friday the 13th” Prequel Series “Crystal Lake” Coming to Peacock

How “TILL” Costume Designer Marci Rodgers Captured the Racial Dynamics of 1955 America

New “Armageddon Time” Clip Teases Writer/Director James Gray’s Most Personal Film

Featured image: Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s TÁR, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

New “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Teaser Showcases Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up”

Posted on by babrams

With co-writer/director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever now just a week away, we’re officially in countdown mode. And we’re not the only ones. Marvel Studios has released this new, moving teaser which fronts Rihanna’s gorgeous new song for the film “Lift Me Up.” The teaser lets Rihanna’s voice do the talking for what’s on screen, which shows not only Wakandans in mourning after the loss of their king, T’Challa (the late Chadwick Boseman), but also reveals their apparent rivals, the Talocans, in moments of tenderness and beauty. The teaser showcases the two vibrant cultures that will clash in the film now that Wakanda is reeling from the loss of its leader, and the Talocan leader, Namor (Tenoch Huerta), senses a power vacuum. He also has a bone to pick with Wakanda, thanks to the fact they revealed their existence to the world, potentially, in his mind, threatening his own secretive kingdom.

We, too, are still reeling from the loss of Boseman back in August of 2020, and Wakanda Forever will be that rare superhero film that will carry with it so much more significance than mere entertainment value.

The film will be centered on Wakanda in the aftermath of T’Challa’s death as it strains to find its footing and, perhaps, anoint a new Black Panther. We’ve already seen in the trailers that a woman answers the call—is it Shuri (Letitia Wright), as most fans suspect?—while facing a new threat in the form of Namor, the leader of the underwater empire of Talocan, and his vast and powerful army.

Wakanda Forever sees the return of many of the stars from the original Black Panther, including Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Danai Gurira as Okoye, and Winston Duke as M’Baku. Newcomers joining Huerta include Michaela Coel as Aneka, Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, aka Ironheart, and Mabel Cadena as Namora.

Check out the new teaser below. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives on November 11.

For more on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, check out these stories:

New “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Teaser Offers a Closer Look at the New Black Panther

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Reveals Stunning New Image of Namor

Lupita Nyong’o on the Bittersweet Beauty of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

Featured image: Letitia Wright as Shuri in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

How “Causeway” Composer Alex Somers Cued the Cellos for Jennifer Lawrence’s New Drama

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Jennifer Lawrence reanimates a no-frills acting style harkening to her 2010 breakthrough performance in Winter’s Bone with the new indie film Causeway. Directed by Lila Neugebauer and set in New Orleans, Causeway (in theaters now [Oct. 28] and streaming November 4 on Apple TV+) casts Lawrence as a soldier who’s returned from Afghanistan to her hometown burdened with physical wounds and PTSD. 

Lawrence’s solemn performance opposite Brian Tyree Henrys enjoys subtle boosts from composer Alex Somers’ spare score. “My background is more in atmospheric, slow-moving music, so Causeway was a perfect fit,” says Somers, who previously wrote the music for such indie gems as Honey Boy, Captain Fantastic, and Miss Americana. He adds, “This film allowed my music to be unadorned and stay true to the character’s experience.”

Somers studied music at Berklee College of Music and then spent several years in Iceland producing experimental rock bands, including Sigur Rós, before moving to Los Angeles in 2017. Speaking from the patio of his home in L.A.-adjacent Washington Heights, Somers delved into the virtues of film-scoring simplicity and ventured off-topic to discuss his recent collaboration with Bob Dylan. 

Alex Somers

Your music does a nice job of supporting Causeway‘s understated aesthetic by keeping things simple. Was that intentional?

In my early conversations with Lila, the idea was to not actually have a ton of music. Jennifer’s character Lindsey doesn’t show a lot outwardly, and at times she doesn’t say a lot, so when the music does happen, we wanted it to be a little window into her inner environment. 

Unlike a lot of contemporary movie music that features heavy percussion, your Causeway score has no percussion at all. Why is that? 

I did record some percussion with my friend Samuli Kosminen, but we didn’t use it. Over the last decade, as I’ve done more scoring stuff, the number one critique I get after my first pass is: “We love it, but can we have more drive, more momentum, more percussion — just make it bigger?” Causeway was the opposite. Lila asked me to pare it back. “Let’s get to the essence of what is happening behind Jennifer’s eyes?”

 

So how did you conjure that inner emotional landscape in terms of instrumentation?

What I landed on is there’s an amazing Icelandic cellist I work with named Gyða Valtýsdóttir. I basically muted all the other tracks and used varispeed on her parts to make them sound low down, so the bow sounds become thicker and more intense. It was about the sound of the music as much as it was about the notes.

Your melodic theme, which recurs throughout the film, sounds like it consists of just four chords?

Yep. 

Why did you limit yourself in that way? 

That’s what the film wanted, but it’s not difficult for me. This is how I live. I listen to very repetitive music in my home. I listen to field recordings. A lot of my favorite pieces of music are literally one chord for 60 minutes. So four chords seem like, you know, crazy! We’re going all over the place! 

Brian Tyree Henry and Jennifer Lawrence in “Causeway,” premiering November 4, 2022 on Apple TV+.

Less is more.

One of my favorite music quotes comes from Lou Reed, who said, “One chord is alright. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords, you’re into jazz.” Of course, he’s exaggerating, but there’s a beautiful grain of truth there that deeply resonates with me. I tend to be ambitious and experimental when it comes to the sound of the music, but harmonically, I lean toward writing simple music because that’s how I hear the world.

So the score is mostly cello. Anything else? 

I played some of the music on a tiny piano from Japan called a Princess Piano, but I have up to sixteen layers of cello. It sounds like an ensemble, but actually, that’s all Gyða. I’m also a mixing engineer, so I love the control of having one instrumentalist and multi-tracking them. For me, capturing the musicians is fifty percent [of the job], and then the other fifty percent happens in the way I pull the strings and f*ck things up and turn them into something new. It’s super fun.

Growing up in Maryland, were you a music nerd?

Around 12 or 13, I became obsessed with music. I played every instrument I could get my hands starting with guitar. I acquired effects pedals, I got a Shure 57 microphone, and a TASCAM tape machine. When I learned you could play tape backward, that was a huge revelation.

Which artists influenced the way you think about music during these formative years?

I discovered My Bloody Valentine when I was fifteen and really got serious about ambient sounds. Aphex Twin’s double CD Volume II changed my life because I became curious about electronic music and started buying synthesizers at flea markets. Also [I listened to] a lot of rock and roll like Nirvana, Joy Division, and Sonic Youth. 

In Iceland, you started producing bands, and you’ve also released albums of your own music.  How does solo work differ from the way you function as a film composer?

I try to let them occupy the same space as much as I can, but there is a difference. In film scoring, there’s a frame around it and a timeline. You’re accountable, you have to do it. Also, the music almost has to take a side, exaggerating what’s happening on screen or commenting on it, or downplaying something on purpose to set up a reveal for later on. Whereas with your own music, it’s special to create something out of nothing, but it’s also hard to finish because everything’s so nebulous. The thing I love about film scoring is that it’s so collaborative. You’re talking to many people about the work, you’re revising it, and you might do something you love, but somebody decides it doesn’t fit right, so you have to chuck it out. There’s a lot of experimentation and failure.

Can you give an example from Causeway? 

I remember recording these really high-string cluster harmonics performed by my cool violinist friend Jake Falby, and then adding concert bass drums, so there’s nothing in the middle — it’s just air and earth. None of that made the cut. Sometimes you try things, and they get rejected, which can be difficult at times, but it’s so rewarding in the end when you land on something that works. 

On a tangent, you served as music director for Bob Dylan on his 2020 concert documentary Shadow Kingdom. How did that happen, and what was he like?

[Honey Boy director] Alma [Har’al] called me and asked if I could outfit a band for Bob Dylan because he was keen to try something new for the sake of this one-off film project. Basically, all the people in the band are friends of mine. We pitched the musicians with black and white headshots and a little bit of text. Then I assembled the band and rented a little house in Laurel Canyon, where we rehearsed for days and days until everybody knew the songs inside and out.

Did you interact with Mr. Dylan? Some say he’s a man of few words.

He chatted with members of the band a few times. My friend Buck Meeks played guitar, and after one of the takes, Dylan walked over to Buck. “What’s your name? Who do you play with?” And there was a lot of impromptu jamming in between takes when Bob would just start riffing. He was gracious and very hands-on, looking at the monitor, talking to Alma. Dylan had a lot of opinions and wanted to make something cool.

Dylan’s performance feels gritty and unaffected, not unlike Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in Causeway. As a composer, you must have related well to her arc as she re-adjusts to civilian life.

Causeway is the closest thing to real life I’ve ever worked on. Most movies involve things that would never really happen, but Causeway doesn’t do that. Some people might be like, ‘It’s too slow, nothing happens,’ but I think there’s space for films like this. I really hope people can connect to the earthiness and the truth of this story.”

For more stories on Apple TV series and films, check these out:

“Raymond & Ray” Writer/Director Rodrigo Garcia Digs Deep With Ewan McGregor & Ethan Hawke

“Black Bird” Cinematographer Natalie Kingston Breaks Down Her Technique on Apple’s Crime Thriller

Temuera Morrison to Play King of Maui in Jason Momoa’s Series “Chief of War”

Featured image: Jennifer Lawrence in “Causeway,” premiering November 4, 2022 on Apple TV+.

A Peek Behind the Scenes of an Editor’s Career

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Here at The Credits, we talk to film editors all the time. They give us a glimpse at their process of realizing a director’s dreams in terms of the pacing, montages, cuts, and music behind a particular film or series. But what about the nitty-gritty of their own careers? What goes on when the project at hand isn’t a major studio production? After all, anything that winds up on screen has gone through an edit process. And then there’s that most inscrutable question of all: how does an aspiring editor even get started in this industry? Speaking with Eren Gülfidan, a New York City-based editor whose day job spans live-action and animated commercials, documentaries, short films, and branded content, and who serves as a juror for Adforum’s Phoenix Awards, we got a granular peek behind the process and a sense of where the technology her field relies on is going. 

First, we’ve heard this before and it’s really true: if you’ve got the motivation, editing is a great field in which to be self-taught. After leaving a job in film distribution eight years ago, Gülfidan got her start making music videos and album promo videos for friends, having learned her way around Final Cut Pro during college. Her first formal job was as an assistant editor for National Geographic TV, which led to other stints editing different documentary television series. “I was doing night shifts, and it was just really heavy, dark work,” she says, before she made the switch to commercial projects (and the day shift). “The ad work I started getting was 3D or 2D animated stuff, which is a totally different workflow compared to live-action documentary work.”

An image from a stop motion animated short film called "Max and Maxine," which recently won an Annie Award.
An image from a stop motion animated short film called “Max and Maxine,” which was nominated for an Annie Award.

Around the same time, Gülfidan also began working on branded and promotional content for corporate clients like Apple and Goldman Sachs and nonprofits, including New York’s Cherry Lane Theater and the Public Theater, but found that far and away, the most collaborative editing processes were animation assignments. While live-action work tends to see the editor paired just with the director, “with an animated commercial, you’re seeing the process from the beginning,” she says. “You first create an animatic [a simple animation made from still images], just with the storyboards, when there’s nothing,” adding music and sound effects, then going back and forth with the animators, who start drawing based on the editor’s cut. The edit timeline is divided into strictly timed shots for the team to follow and which the editor ensures fits the project. After the client sends over their notes based on a grayscale previsualization, the editor makes any necessary changes, and the animators start animating, lighting, and texturing this newly hatched three-dimensional world. One of Gülfidan’s favorite projects to date is a Hotel Transylvania-themed ad for McDonald’s, an animated commercial created entirely in 3D. 

A scene from the Hotel Transylvania-themed ad for McDonald’s that Eren worked on.

Contrary to what we expected, different editing processes don’t necessarily require different editing software. After starting out working in Final Cut, Gülfidan taught herself how to use Adobe Premiere’s editing suite. “I thought Premiere was becoming more the industry standard, and it felt more intuitive,” she says, with the additional benefit of one creative umbrella for several programs, including After Effects and Photoshop. When it comes to features, however, the editor notes that a third program, Avid, is the industry standard in the field, and this suite she finds the least intuitive of all. But almost a decade in, Gülfidan has only used Avid for one project, with most of her work in both the commercial and documentary fields completed on Premiere. “And now that everything’s remote and you can basically work and deliver from home, I think certain projects, they just leave it up to you,” she says. 

While the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic means that editors, like so many others in the industry, suddenly found themselves with the option to work anywhere, they’re unexpectedly less siloed than ever. All three of the most-used editing suites are continuously improving, and though that sometimes just means bug fixes, a few years ago, there was a major new development: Premiere’s team projects. “In the past, there was one project you were working on alone. After team projects became possible, multiple people could work on the same project from different computers,” the editor explains, and even if the new way of working started out a little finicky — you had to take care not to overwrite someone else’s work — the new technology, which all three major editing suites now offer some version of, has enabled an easier, more collaborative workflow.

Where Gülfidan has seen less of a technological advance in the industry is in virtual reality. Her own experience with the tech showed up on her desk thanks to Oculus Rift’s Resident Evil 4, for which she edited the in-game tutorials’ captured footage. The tutorials themselves weren’t edited via any particular VR process, but reading the excited YouTube commentary on her final product made Gülfidan realize what a huge deal the technology is within the gaming world. But despite the seismic shift in gaming that VR represents, it’s probably not upending the film industry anytime soon. The editor recalls first seeing a virtual reality section at the Tribeca Film Festival around a decade ago. “You had to put the headset on and then engage with what you were seeing, so to me, it was more like an exhibit. It was more like interactive video exhibition than traditional filmmaking,” she says, and since then, she has yet to see the technology make huge inroads in her industry. “From what I’ve been following, I think they thought VR would change the way films were made, or it would be this new groundbreaking thing, but it hasn’t. I feel like traditional filmmaking stayed as it is, and then there’s VR. I haven’t seen in mainstream media a way they’ve merged, yet.”

A scene from a "Resident Evil" game on Oculus Rift.
A scene from a “Resident Evil” game on Oculus Rift.

In terms of traditional filmmaking, Gülfidan writes and directs her own projects — her most recent short, Evening News, played at the New York Short Film Festival, and she’s currently working on a new short with a partial grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. So far, she’s edited all her own creative work herself, but if and when she makes the leap to a feature? That may be the project where she finally turns the editing software over to a collaborator. “There are filmmakers who write, direct, and edit. But sometimes people say editing your own film — especially a feature — you actually don’t want to edit it yourself because you’re looking at it more restrictively,” she points out. “You need a fresh set of eyes who can take it to the next level.”

Featured image: An image from a stop motion animated short film called “Max and Maxine,” which was recently nominated for an Annie Award. Courtesy Eren Gülfidan.

New “Avatar: The Way of Water” Images Reveal James Cameron’s Majestic New Creatures

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Yesterday, the world got its best look yet at James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water with the release of the official trailer. Now, a slew of new images gives us an up-close, detailed look at Cameron’s return to Pandora, with a few shots of the majestic new creatures he and his team created. The Way of Water will be as focused on Pandora’s oceans as the original Avatar was on its forests. Cameron himself has said that the inspiration for the film is the peril our besieged marine ecosystems face here on Earth, and the official trailer gave us some astonishing shots at the beauty beneath Pandora’s oceans—a beauty very much like what we have here.

The new images include shots of Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri, Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, and more of Pandora’s native Na’vi tribe. They also include a stunning image of a massive aquatic creature, more or less like our own whales, that was featured in the trailer as well.

Cameron takes the natural splendors of Pandora seriously—the official website includes a PDF guide to the local flora and fauna of one of the planet’s valleys (Mo’ara), and that barely scratches the surface of the detail he and his team have poured into their creation. For this one valley on the planet, you can learn about Viperwolfs (they’ve got six legs), tetrapteron (flamingo-like birds), stingbats (native of Pandora’s famed floating mountains), and more. And this is just for a few terrestrial creatures. Below the surface of the water is where much of The Way of Water concerns itself, and there will be wonders there galore.

Returning alongside Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington from the original film are Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine and Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Two of the big-name newcomers include Vin Diesel and Kate Winslet.

Avatar: The Way of Water hits theaters on December 16. Check out the new images here:

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

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

“Avatar: The Way of Water” Official Trailer Reveals James Cameron’s Return to Pandora

“Avatar 2” Producer Jon Landau Shows Off 15 Minutes Of James Cameron’s Mega Sequel

“Avatar 4” Has Begun Filming

James Cameron May Handoff Final “Avatar” Films to Another Director

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

“She-Hulk” VFX Supervisor Josh Galbincea on Creating That Epic Incredible Hulk Callback

Posted on by babrams

Ever since the final episode of season one, fans of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law have been reeling from the last show’s rollercoaster ride and celebrating their love for the season as a whole. Much of the praise has been for the edgy script that consistently centered on female empowerment without sacrificing the expected flamboyant action set-pieces Marvel fans know and love.  

Visual special effects are, of course, an essential contribution to that Marvel flair. The Credits spoke to FuseFX’s Josh Galbincea, who acted as VFX supervisor on the series. He explained what parts of Jen ‘She-Hulk’ Walters’ world he and his team had a hand in creating, and breaks down the 9th episode opening sequence that had lovers of the 70s Bill Bixby classic show The Incredible Hulk cheering in their seats. 

 

What specifically did you and FuseFX work on in terms of examples that fans or viewers can see in the show?

There are a few things that we did that were pivotal and invisible. The more glamorous kind of thing would be when Mr. Immortal jumps out of the office window. That’s basically a stuntman just jumping out of a window onto a pad, but we had to come up with CG glass and things like that. We also helped with some digital costume stuff on Daredevil. There were a few sequences where he was not wearing the cowl that goes underneath his helmet and underneath his shirt, so we had a shared asset from Digital Domain that we did a little bit of work on. The majority of our work, though, I would say, is the more invisible stuff because every single shot inside of Jen’s apartment and every single shot inside of the law offices were blue screen, so that’s honestly a third of the show right there.

And this is for what we see outside of her apartment and the law offices?

Yes. For Jen’s apartment, Marvel gave us some plates that they did widescreen on a crane outside of a house or an apartment building, which was probably Sherman Oaks, though we don’t know the actual address. We established what it looked like outside of Jen’s kitchen, outside of the TV wall, and outside of the entrance wall. Then we did a little bit of art direction as far as things like raising the horizon line a little bit or making it more compositionally interesting.

And for her law office?

The law offices were way more involved, and there were arguably way more shots where we got multiple 360-degree stitches of downtown Los Angeles from different times of day; I think there was 12 total. We took those basically spherical high dynamic range images, super high res, I think they were 16k, and then we had a 3D model of downtown Los Angeles. We took the production designs of north, east, south, and west, plopped that into Maya, and we took the downtown model of Los Angeles and basically mapped out where all four directions of the offices should look.

(L-R): Megan Thee Stallion and Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer "Jen" Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios' She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
(L-R): Megan Thee Stallion and Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

Why is a blue screen needed?

There are two reasons for that. One of them is important, and one of them is practical. The important thing is that by shooting it on a blue screen, you get to art direct it. If you want to change anything, you can after the fact. You can change the time of day or perspective or any number of things. The practical side of that is when you’re shooting in an office building, if you were higher up in downtown Los Angeles, you’d have to find one where your conference room or your offices are giving you the view that you want, and you’d have to shoot it specifically at the right time of day. That becomes a production nightmare to make sure that all of those things are happening at the same time. Whereas if you’re on a stage and you’re building these law offices, you can build a single floor of that law office surrounded by blue, and you can light it after the fact any way you want.

Tatiana Maslany filming an episode of “She-Hulk” Attorney at Law” against a blue screen. Courtesy Marvel Studios.

Can you talk about Mr. Immortal jumping out of the building?

When Mr. Immortal jumps out the window, it’s a very specific look. You can’t just do cracked glass. We use software primarily for simulation called Houdini. It’s all CG glass, and the glass break sim was done in Houdini, but we needed to build something special because office buildings have safety glass, which is when it turns into those small little bits instead of giant shards of glass. There was a very specific look that we wanted. As he jumps through, and his head hit the glass and pushes it forward, we wanted it to feel really dynamic. We found reference footage of safety glass breaking, shot at extremely high speeds. It’s amazing how within a fraction of a second, the entire pane of glass just turns into those little bits. We wanted it to crack around his head, wrap around his shoulders, and, as his arms flail out, push all of these little beads of glass forward. Then, because he’s outside of the window and the glass at the top no longer has the structure to hold it there, it has to fall down. It was a very interesting back and forth of our team at Fuse and then Marvel trying to find the right look and feel of that. There’s a movie called The Raid: Redemption, which is Kung-Fu style action. There’s a reference I took from a guy getting kicked through a pane of glass. It was an actual stunt where they had a little charge that exploded and shattered the glass right before the stuntman goes through for safety, and it looks so good. That was what I based that sequence on because it was grounded in realism.

Tatiana Maslany filming an episode of "She-Hulk" Attorney at Law" against a blue screen. Courtesy Marvel Studios.
The Mr. Immortal scene was shot using simulation software (and a whole lot more). Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Tatiana Maslany filming an episode of "She-Hulk" Attorney at Law" against a blue screen. Courtesy Marvel Studios.
The Mr. Immortal scene was shot using simulation software (and a whole lot more). Courtesy Marvel Studios.

What episode best exemplifies the work you did or was the most fun to do and why?

Episode nine, I think, because it becomes very She-Hulk-driven. It’s almost like Deadpool, where She-Hulk breaks that fourth wall in the most dynamic and fun way. FuseFX did the entire opening sequence for that episode, where we actually based it off of the Bill Bixby version of Hulk.

That’s definitely one highlight of the show for Hulk fans.

Marvel got the original film scans from the TV show for us. We recreated it on a shot-to-shot basis. We actually used the film scans from the original TV show, digitally removed Bill Bixby as David Banner, and put Jennifer Walters into the shots. So a perfect example is the opening shot of him in the chair. We had him digitally painted out of the film scan. There was a plate, meaning something shot on camera, of her just sitting in a chair pretending, against a blue screen, to be at the control panel. We took her out of that and put her into the original film scan. You know the shot of the Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, originally pushing over the car? We painted him out and put She-Hulk in. It was just super fun because I think it meant a lot to Marvel, and it meant a lot to us for sure, too, because it was just so cool to give a little nod to the original show like that. I’ve been a Marvel fan for as long as I can remember, so it was just so cool to be a part of that.

Recreating a scene from the original "Incredible Hulk." Courtesy Marvel studios.
Recreating a scene from the original “Incredible Hulk.” Courtesy Marvel studios.

Creating a callback to the original show must have been a real point of pride.

Absolutely, and hats off to Marvel for thinking of it and having the courage to do it. We were thrilled to work alongside overall supervisors Dadi Einarsson and Shannon Justison in bringing our sequences to life. And I was fortunate enough to lead a team of extraordinarily talented artists at FuseFX.

 

Season one of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is currently streaming on Disney+. 

For more on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, check out these stories:

“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” Director Kat Coiro on Taking on The Trolls Head-On

“She-Hulk” Composer Amie Doherty on Blending Megan Thee Stallion With Marvel’s Orchestral Bombast

“She-Hulk: Attorney At Law” Early Reactions Call Tatiana Maslany a Super Addition to the MCU

Featured image: (L-R): Mark Ruffalo as Smart Hulk / Bruce Banner and Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

 

 

 

“Avatar: The Way of Water” Official Trailer Reveals James Cameron’s Return to Pandora

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The new Avatar: The Way of Water official trailer goes deep. Stunning underwater shots, brilliant new creatures, and a sense of almost awe-inspiring beauty start the proceedings. Don’t worry, reader—danger is on the way.

James Cameron’s return trip to Pandora comes a full 13 years after his original Avatar, which went on to break records and break new ground in filmmaking technology. This new look at Avatar: The Way of Water offers a ton of new footage, and we’ve been waiting quite a while for it—the first trailer debuted back in May.

The trailer takes us to Pandora ten years after the events in Avatar, after the battle for the gorgeous alien planet ended on what seemed to be a positive note. Way of Water finds Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) living as a family on the oceanic wonderland, but a major threat looms. The trailer reveals just how much of Cameron’s sequel will be set both above and below the water, utilizing bespoke technology to capture novel shots, brand-new aquatic creatures, and some old favorites from the original, like the majestic flying Toruks.

Recently, producer Jon Landau told a crowd at the Busan International Film Festival that the filmmaking technology used in The Way of Water far exceeds what was on hand for the original Avatar, and that included a team of specialized VFX artists who created a brand new kind of underwater motion capture technology. Landau said that if Avatar was after creating effects that look photographic, the sequel is after photorealism.

Cameron, a longtime environmentalist and an oceanic explorer himself, has said that Way of Water was inspired by the increasingly dire threats to our besieged marine ecosystems. This follows Avatar‘s example, which showed the ruthless pursuit of profit as humans decimated Pandora’s forests. Cameron’s passion for conservation is the engine that has fueled this mega-franchise.

Returning alongside Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington from the original film are Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine and Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Two of the big-name newcomers include Vin Diesel and Kate Winslet.

Avatar: The Way of Water is due in theaters on December 16. Check out the trailer below:

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

“Avatar 2” Producer Jon Landau Shows Off 15 Minutes Of James Cameron’s Mega Sequel

“Avatar 4” Has Begun Filming

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Featured image: Zoe Saldana is Neytiri in “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

“Raymond & Ray” Writer/Director Rodrigo Garcia Digs Deep With Ewan McGregor & Ethan Hawke

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Writer/director Rodrigo Garcia‘s initial idea for Raymond & Ray was simple—a trumpet player is digging his father’s grave—but something wasn’t quite working. “I can’t even remember if the digging of the grave was his idea or the father’s requirement,” Garcia admits, reflecting on the first draft of what would become his surprisingly funny, raw look at father/son relationships in his new Apple TV film. “The reverend was there, and a woman showed up with a child, but I couldn’t expand the script past a half-hour short.”

So how did Garcia eventually find his way to a story about two half brothers, Raymond (Ewan McGregor) and Ray (Ethan Hawke), who are thrust together after an unusual request by their estranged father, Harris (Tom Bower), to dig his grave? He kept going toward where the pain was. “You gotta go where it hurts,” Garcia later reflected, and the result is an unusual and unusually satisfying look at how two distant brothers with little to nothing in common come together over a common cause, even if that cause is to bury a man they both detested.

We spoke to Garcia about crafting this intriguing character study, which is led by unsurprisingly deft performances from McGregor and Hawke, and then bolstered and expanded by some delightful turns by Maribel Verdú as their father’s last fling, Lucia, Sophie Okonedo as a nurse, Kiera, who befriended him.

So the fellas have the same name. How did you strike upon that idea?

When it later occurred to me to expand the script [from one man digging a grave to two] and that they could be half brothers, which obviously immediately multiplies everything. And then I had the idea that they were given the same name, which is, you know, crazy enough, although not unheard of. Certainly, in Mexico, I’ve heard of it. Men who have two secret lives would give their sets of children the same name so as not to have to remember two different ones.

What made you gravitate towards centering the story around this ritual burial?

It’s very easy to approach stuff about funerals and surround them with human follies. Funerals are so incredible, anyway. Just the fact that somebody dies can be mind-blowing. Wow, they’re no longer here. There are these rituals and the heightened tensions, all of which I picked up while working on Six Feet Under. That’s something Alan Ball exploited very well. I knew I had to take the guys to very extreme places.

The chemistry between the two brothers is fantastic, which is unsurprising, given the actors involved, but I’m curious how it was for you, having lived with these characters on the page for so long. 

A lot of the humor comes from what Ethan and Ewan brought themselves, The stuff that’s in between the lines, the way they look at each other, provoke each other, rib each other, riff off each other, judge each other, feel judged by each other. All of that brotherly stuff that siblings do. There was humor in the script, but they definitely heightened it. And then, obviously, they had two different mothers and are different people, but you do believe they’ve got this shared history. They both know what it means to be the son of Harris. They both tapped into two things that, for me, were essential. Raymond, with his mantra that forgiveness is good and let’s forgive our father, which denies his feeling. And Ray, who’s a little more jaded and a little bit more feeling like their father was a bastard and that he’s over it, also denies his feelings. 

 

You’ve done a lot of films focused on female characters, like Nine Lives, and here you’re exploring these two brothers, and you seem to be having a lot of fun with them. I’m curious if you made a conscious decision to interrogate masculinity or male characters in general?

Well, I think what happened is I did a lot of movies where the central characters were women, but a lot of that wasn’t about offering my take on womanhood or femininity, but because I always felt I could write the female characters better. They were more detailed and differentiated from one another. The men I initially wrote were all kind of variations of myself, but with time, I got better at writing guys. You gotta go where it hurts. It wasn’t so much about the scrutiny men are under right now, which is deserved, but the way men deny their feelings, which is where the pain and bad behavior that we’re talking about comes from. It’s from men not being in touch with themselves. 

Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke in “Raymond & Ray,” premiering October 21, 2022 on Apple TV+.

You have to go where it hurts feels like a good lesson for screenwriters and writers in general.

Your writing reveals you. Even when you write genre—Guillermo del Toro has said that he’s the monster. He can’t write a movie without a monster. I think part of the satisfaction in his movies, certainly for him, is that they’re so personal. When I’m teaching at the writer’s lab at Sundance or mentoring someone, I ask, ‘Where are you in this? Where’s the personal stuff?’ This doesn’t mean you have to tell me your life, but show me what stuff makes you uneasy. Often I can see that the script is stunted in the directions where they’re going to hurt you more as a writer. You have to go where the script is scary.

Once you cast your actors, how do you let go of the character you wrote on the page to let the actor inhabit the character in a way that might be different from how you imagined them?

If an actor passes on a script, it’s heartbreaking for me. I’m always scared an actor is going to say no, and then when they say yes, there’s a day or two of terror because now that’s who the character is going to be, you know? No matter how wonderful the actor is, it’s like the end of imagination. Now Raymond is Ewan McGregor, and Ray is Ethan Hawk. But after that initial shock, I embrace it, and it’s wonderful. They are then part and parcel, they fill in the holes, and they do everything that’s not in the script. The script is actions and words, and they do the reactions, which tells you a lot about who someone is. 

You know going in that those guys are going to be compelling, but you surround them with some really wonderful performers in the surrounding cast. Let’s talk about them.

The love interest, as it’s called in our industry, it’s an opportunity to unravel those guys even more. The two romantic interests—Lucia, played by Maribel Verdú, and Kiera, played by Sophie Okonedo—allows me to see what the guys might be outside of their problem, and Maribel and Kiera did wonderful work. I always thought that Lucia was a Hispanic American or Latin American who could hold these contradictions, to appear frivolous but to really be very wise, and to appear maternal but also be very sexual. And Maribel is able to communicate all those contradictions with a lot of humor and charm. And Kiera, I always thought was very smart, very grounded, working with people as a nurse who are dying, she’s on the front row of real life. There’s a no-illusions quality to her, but she needed to be sensitive enough to fall for the wounded bad boy. And Maribel and Sophie Okonedo brought not just humor but humanity. 

Maribel Verdú and Sophie Okonedo in “Raymond & Ray,” premiering October 21, 2022 on Apple TV+.
Maribel Verdú and Sophie Okonedo in “Raymond & Ray,” premiering October 21, 2022 on Apple TV+.

We often think of our parents as these fixed entities, and there’s a very narrow band of who will imagine they are. In your movie, the two Ray’s think of their father as just a very bad dude. But then they meet these other people, and these people know a different guy.

It’s the old question, do you ever really know your parents? People are different with different people, especially people they’re not related to or in love with. As Lucia says, Harris was a racist who liked everybody. He was a prick, and he was a people person. And also, it’s possible that Harris could have mellowed out, as sometimes people do in old age. Sometimes people harden, but sometimes they mellow out with old age. I don’t know whether his desire for them to dig his grave is a reward or a punishment. And we’ll never know. 

Raymond & Ray is streaming now on Apple TV.

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Featured image: Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke in “Raymond & Ray,” premiering October 21, 2022 on Apple TV+.

Lupita Nyong’o Will Lead “A Quiet Place: Day One”

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The sound-hunting aliens will have to contend with an Oscar winner.

Lupita Nyong’o will star in the A Quiet Place spinoff, A Quiet Place: Day One, leading Pig director Michael Sarnoski’s upcoming sci-fi thriller. The film, as the title suggests, will show us the first, full terrifying day of the alien attack that John Krasinski explored (at a much later date) in A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II. It was only in Krasinski’s second film did we get a brief glimpse of what the initial invasion looked like, and you can expect Sarnoski to take that little taste and expand it into a feature-length meal.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Nyong’o’s involvement, which will give the spinoff the kind of star power that Emily Blunt provided in the two previous films in the franchise. What Day One will explore—aside from the obvious—will be kept under wraps. Part of the thrill of Krasinski’s original film was how close to the vest he played his hand. Where the aliens came from, why they were here, and, up until Sarnoski’s film, what it was like when they arrived were left as mysteries.

Day One isn’t the only film in the works in the franchise—there’s a third installment of the main arc of the series, set after the events in Part II, already in the works.

Nyong’o won her Oscar for her haunting work in 12 Years a Slave and has one of the biggest films of her career coming up in just 9 days—Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. As for her work in thrillers, she deserved another Oscar for what she pulled off in Jordan Peele’s Us, and she’ll likely bring that same intensity to her fight against the alien invaders in Day One.

A Quiet Place: Day One is due in theaters on March 8, 2024.

For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:

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Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 27: Lupita Nyong’o attends the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)

New “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Teaser Offers Thrilling Glimpse Phase 4 Capper

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In just ten days’ time, co-writer/director Ryan Coogler’s long-awaited Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives in theaters. A new teaser hypes what is irrefutably one of the year’s most eagerly-anticipated films, the sequel to Coogler’s game-changing 2018 Marvel debut, although this time around, there’s even more emotionally at stake. That’s because, of course, Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman’s tragic passing in August of 2020, which led to a complete re-write of the script and an entirely new direction for the franchise. The new teaser gives us a fresh look at the new Black Panther—her identity isn’t known, but there’s plenty of speculation about who she is—as well as the film’s villain, Namor (Tenoch Huerta), and brand new glances at its stellar cast. Fittingly, Wakanda Forever is the last film in the MCU’s Phase 4.

What’s new in this teaser? A surprisingly decent amount, considering it’s a snack at half a minute long. With Coogler’s film arriving next week, we’re not likely to get any more meaty trailers, but the teaser offers glimpses of the film’s epic scope. These glimpses include a shot of Michaela Coel’s Aneka unsheathing a pair of serious blades at the 0:08 mark, some high-tech aircraft (we’re guessing Wakandan) at the 0:12 mark, Talocan warriors (Namor’s people) attacking a ship at 0:16, and Namor himself, airborne, hurling some nasty looking projectiles at an unseen challenger. The teaser ends, thrillingly, with Danai Gurira’s Okoye taking on a roomful of Talocan warriors and a leap from a ship onto a passing plane by the new Black Panther, whose visage ends the whole shebang. It’s a short shot of adrenaline that will get you seriously pumped up if you weren’t already.

Check out the teaser below. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives on November 11.

For more on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, check out these stories:

New “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Teaser Offers a Closer Look at the New Black Panther

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Reveals Stunning New Image of Namor

Lupita Nyong’o on the Bittersweet Beauty of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

Featured image: Winston Duke as M’Baku in Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. Photo by Eli Adé. © 2022 MARVEL.

“Friday the 13th” Prequel Series “Crystal Lake” Coming to Peacock

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Halloween may be over, but that’s no reason to think about next year’s celebration of things that go bump in the night. To that end, Variety confirmed that Peacock has given a straight-to-series order to a Friday the 13th prequel series titled Crystal Lake. 

Crystal Lake comes from Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller, who will serve as executive producer and showrunner. Fuller’s bringing along some Friday the 13th royalty in screenwriter Victor Miller, who wrote the original 1980 film and will executive produce the series. The show comes from the powerhouse mini-major studio A24, known for, among other things, their unflinching horror films. (Think Ari Aster‘s Hereditary and Midsommar).

“I discovered ‘Friday the 13th’ in the pages of Famous Monsters magazine when I was 10 years old, and I have been thinking about this story ever since,” Fuller said in a statement. “When it comes to horror, A24 raises the bar and pushes the envelope, and I’m thrilled to be exploring the campgrounds of Crystal Lake under their banner. And Susan Rovner is simply the best at what she does. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be working with her again.”

Susan Rovner is the chairman of entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. She had this to say in a statement: “Friday the 13th is one of the most iconic horror franchises in movie history, and we were dying to revisit this story with our upcoming drama series Crystal Lake. We can’t wait to get to work with Bryan Fuller, a gifted, visionary creator who I’ve had the pleasure of being a longtime friend and collaborator, along with our incredible partners at A24, in this updated version for Peacock that will thrill long-standing fans of the franchise.”

In the original Friday the 13th, Jason Vorhees isn’t the maniac killer in a hockey mask (the mask, in fact, didn’t show up until the third film); rather, it’s his mother, Pamela Vorhees, who goes on a killing spree after her son Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake. The film became a sensation and kickstarted a franchise that includes eleven films. It ended with the suggestion that Jason’s decomposing corpse was, somehow, animated and ready to kill.

Although it’s unknown what Fuller has cooked up for his prequel, you can be sure that with the talent involved and A24 producing, Crystal Lake will not flinch from depicting something truly terrifying. Whether or not a hockey mask is involved, however, is anyone’s guess.

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

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“Halloween Ends” Final Trailer Pits The Shape vs. Laurie Strode One Last Time

Featured image: Mask of maniac Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th movie on black background – Russia, St. Petersburg, May, 2022

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Set to Star in Marvel Studios Series “Wonder Man”

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Yahya Abdul-Mateen II already knows a thing or two about the superhero genre, as he’s set to reprise his role as Black Manta in the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Now, Deadline reports that the rising star is in talks to make the jump from DC to Marvel Studios to star in Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series, Wonder Man.

The series comes from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community writer/producer Andrew Guest. Guest will serve as head writer, with Cretton executive producing and potentially directing.

While you might not be familiar with the character of Wonder Man, he’s actually one of the oldest Marvel characters, created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby and appearing in “Avengers No. 9” in 1964 as a villain. Known as Simon Williams, Wonder Man gained some serious superpowers while working beneath the villain Baron Zemo (played in the MCU by Daniel Brühl). He was eventually depicted as a hero and Avenger by the time he re-appeared in the late 1970s, and by the 1980s, Wonder Man found his footing as an intriguing, very West Coast kind of hero—a dapper actor and stuntman by day and a founding member of the Los Angeles-based West Coast Avengers by night.

Wonder Man’s closest ties to characters you likely do know by now are with Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, and her android main squeeze, Vision. In fact, Wonder Man and Vision have been depicted as siblings of sorts, connected telepathically (through ionic energy), with Wonder Man developing feelings for Wanda. In the comics, Wonder Man was white, but Marvel has long cast the best man for the job, with previously white characters like Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson. It’s now impossible to imagine there being any other Nick Fury.

Ben Kingsley is already slated to appear in Wonder Man as the drunken actor Trevor Slattery, a role he first played in Iron Man 3 when Slattery was pretending to The Mandarin, a notorious Marvel supervillain. With Wonder Man set in Los Angeles, there’s speculation that Tatiana Maslany’s Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk might appear.

Abdul-Mateen II has not only proven his superhero chops by squaring off against Jason Mamoa in the Aquaman films as the vengeful Black Manta, but he also had a major role in HBO’s Watchmen, playing the God-like Dr. Manhattan. His previous credits include starring in Nia DaCosta’s ripping Candyman, taking on the role of Morpheus in The Matrix Revolutions, and starring alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in Michael Bay’s breathless action flick Ambulance.

For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:

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Featured image: LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 23: attends the UK Special Screening for “AMBULANCE” at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on March 23, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Universal Pictures)

“The Penguin” Casts Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone

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The versatile, talented Cristin Milioti is heading to Gotham.

Variety reports that Milioti is joining Colin Farrell in HBO Max’s The Penguin as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of Gotham mob boss Carmine Falcone. The Penguin will pick up after The Batman ended, which means that Milioti’s Sofia will be living in a Gotham that no longer has to bow down to her father—played by John Turturro in writer/director Matt Reeves’ film—after being taken out by Paul Dano’s Riddler at the end of that film. This will likely put her in an interesting and dangerous position.

The Penguin‘s main focus will be, of course, Farrell’s Batman villain, who survived the events in The Batman by the skin of his beak. The Penguin, aka Oswald Cobblepot, was Carmine Falcone’s lieutenant in the Gotham underworld, but with Carmine gone, The Penguin will track its titular villain’s rise.

The character of Sofia Falcone was introduced in the comics in the mid-1990s and was played by Crystal Reed in the Fox series Gotham. Milioti is no stranger to HBO Max, having previously starred in Made for Love, which ran on the streamer for two seasons. A multi-talented performer, Milioti has been a star of both the stage and screen, able to shift seamlessly from dramatic to comedic roles. Her work includes standout performances in Netflix’s sci-fi masterpiece series, Black Mirror, as well as 2020’s excellent time-loop comedy Palm Springs.

The Penguin will expand the world of Gotham that The Batman writer/director Matt Reeves is creating, with additional films and possibly shows to come.

For more on The Penguin, check out these stories:

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Featured image: PARK CITY, UTAH – JANUARY 25: Cristin Milioti of ‘Palm Springs’ attends the IMDb Studio at Acura Festival Village on location at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival – Day 2 on January 25, 2020 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)

Trusted Partner Network President Terri Davies on Cyber Security in 2022 & Beyond

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Terri Davies became the president of the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) this past February, and her role really couldn’t be more crucial. She was tapped to lead the Motion Picture Association (MPA)’s evolving TPN program into a flexible, multi-tiered model to better serve the vendor and content owner communities and align with the rapid changes in the film and television industry. This includes the introduction of cloud security assessments, overseeing the creation, publication, and ongoing management of MPA’s content security site and cloud best practices, as well as the operations of the assessor accreditation program. With Davies’s insight and leadership, the MPA published an updated version of the Best Practices that the MPA has been publishing for decades, which is the foundation for the Trusted Partner Network Program.

It’s a massive job in an industry that has been on the cutting edge of technological advances since its inception, which makes it particularly important for those working in entertainment to keep their data secure.

“These are things that you know as an individual,” Davies says. “These big companies who are working on content need to focus on the same things on a different scale. They need to educate their employees, but it still comes back to those individuals working for those companies. Do you have good education programs? Is your management well-trained in the event of an incident? Do you know what to do next? How do you escalate it? So it’s, you know, big, big, big stuff right down to the individual level. It’s a big matrix. Any vendor can take that assessment to determine their security preparedness and their compliance with the MPA best practices.”

To that end, on this final day of Cyber Security Awareness Month, we spoke to Davies about where we’re at now and what the future of Cyber Security in the evolving landscape of the entertainment industry looks like. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch a condensed version of our conversation here:

Since 2004, when Cybersecurity Awareness Month first launched, it’s been very focused on helping individuals protect themselves online as threats to technology and confidential data become more commonplace. How do you view it today?

It’s incredibly important, and I think no matter whether you are working from home, a stay-at-home mom, or somebody working for the biggest corporation in the world, you have got to be aware and stay skeptical about keeping your information secure and keeping your company’s information secure. The biggest reason for breaches in our industry, the media and entertainment industry, as well as beyond, is individuals. It’s individuals not following protocol or not noticing something they should have. There are infamous examples of folders being found on networks called passwords, where well-meaning executive assistants have, you know, kept, had to keep their boss’s passwords. Hackers get hold of that, and you’ve given them the keys to the kingdom.

This is why we all have to do this cyber security training now that nobody really wants to do.

I think companies are getting much, much smarter now about how to educate, so it’s not something onerous that individuals are like, ‘Oh God, here comes another week’s worth of training.’  It’s really key points that you can keep top of mind. The focus this year is on things like stronger passwords and updating your software so you can patch it against vulnerabilities.

At The Credits, we obviously focus on the filmmakers and TV creators personally and how they create their films and series, but the work you do is connected in a profound way to theirs. I was hoping you could speak to that.

The creativity behind storytelling is just people, right? These are people that we all love so much, and we’re all passionate about the content they create. There’s a huge rise in fishing scams through text, which kind of feels personal to you, doesn’t it? Because it’s coming over text, and it’s on your phone rather than an official email to your official work email. But fishing is coming to you through text now, and they can get through that way if you just click on the wrong link. So I think it’s really about every individual in the entertainment industry understanding that we are one big ecosystem. We’re a big community of people who touch content from inception and ideation all the way through production, all the way down to distribution at the other end. And we’re all responsible for keeping that content secure.

And now that the post-production process can be done remotely across multiple countries, the way our creators protect themselves and their work seems even more crucial.

Yes. It’s a responsibility to the community at large because it just takes one chink in that huge supply chain all around the world as content is globalized. Everybody in that supply chain has to worry about their passwords, has to worry about phishing attacks, has to keep their software secure, and has to think about multifactor authentication and be okay with it and pay attention to the education that they’re given. If your company has a cyber security program, you have to watch it. For example, are you a Breaking Bad fan?

Oh yeah.

So you know how important those last two episodes are where we find out whether Walter White lives or dies. I was at Sony managing operations during that time, and it was really the first time we realized that we had to do more than just protect content. We had to protect a storyline. We had to protect the secret of whether Walter lives or dies, and we looked at all of the release schedules and all of the work we had to do to create a German dub track and a French dub track and Bulgarian subtitles, and so on. And I think we counted in the thousands of people who would know whether Walter White lived or died before its release, and that was in a controlled environment. That was people going into a studio and recording, or going into an editing bay and doing their editing, or working on ADR [automated dialogue replacement] in a controlled environment. It just takes, you know, a dad at a dinner table telling his teenage kid whether Walter White lives or dies and boom, it’s out. Again, it comes down to the individual, and this is much more than awareness of fishing and passwords. It’s that community of all of us responsible for caring for this precious thing that we’ve been given them that we’re working on and really understanding the consequences.

This is a great way to explain why people who love film and TV, which I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest is a fairly large segment of the global population, should care about this stuff. 

Yup. I mean, think about the news that just broke with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman regarding Deadpool and Wolverine. How they kept a lid on that is beyond me. It was very impressive. But it must have been a very, very tight group who, again, understood the importance of the information, not just the data and the stuff that they were protecting, but the storyline of it.

 

Featured image: Walter White (Bryan Cranston) – Breaking Bad _ Season 5, Episode 16 – Photo Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC

 

 

“The Midnight Club” Production Designer Laurin Kelsey on Creating a Haunting Hospice

Posted on by babrams

Facing the end is not always the scariest part of a person’s story. The terminally ill teenagers in The Midnight Club meet to entertain each other with spooky tales, but the stories may actually be clues to a secret cure or even a glimpse at life after death. The Victorian mansion serving as a hospice facility for young people even harbors secrets of its own. Production designer Laurin Kelsey developed the dynamic location that serves as the core of the series. 

“I think it’s so great because there’s something so intricate about Victorian architecture,” Kelsey observed. “There’s nooks and crannies and details. It gives you places to hide. It gives you this imagination, feeling of the past and it gives the kids this environment where they can get in the mood to tell their ghost stories.”

Brightcliffe Hospice possesses a special power that calls to newcomer Ilonka (Iman Benson) as she battles aggressive thyroid cancer. Her visions hint that maybe there are restorative properties to the house, and she is determined to see if moving there could save her life. Not to mention, it’s a dream locale. 

“It’s really about the grandiosity of the house that intrigues them all to be there,” Kelsey noted. “This beautiful setting where they’re on this cliff next to the ocean. Massive bedrooms. They have these four poster beds, a library, an arcade, and there’s so much space for them. The feeling of living in this palace for their last days is what draws them all into the space.” 

The Midnight Club. Iman Benson as Ilonka in episode 104 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. Iman Benson as Ilonka in episode 104 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

Both peaceful and imposing, the house has a duality that could conceivably be either comforting or creepy. It’s picturesque enough that someone would want to spend their final moments on the grounds but can also be mysterious and dangerous. When the lights are low, anything could be lurking in the stately halls. Kelsey tailored the rooms to serve both purposes.

“I tried to use a palette that fits with the landscape, so we leaned into blues, greens, wood tones, a little bit of yellows, and a little bit of pinks depending on the character and their individual bedrooms. From there, those colors allowed, depending on the lighting, to either really warm up if we turn all the lights on or to really cool off when the lights are down. I thought that sort of palette lent us the ability to lean into either side. The warm, bright natural world that they’re in, or this dark, eerie, sinister other place.”

The Midnight Club. Ruth Codd as Anya in episode 101 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. Ruth Codd as Anya in episode 101 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

The house has a mysterious history that provokes the Club to peel back its layers. For Kelsey and her crew, that was achieved with actual layers – of wallpaper and other changes to decor. Despite the design updates, they were careful not to touch the bones of Brightcliffe. 

The Midnight Club. Annarah Cymone as Sandra in episode 109 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. Annarah Cymone as Sandra in episode 109 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

“How do we show the age of it and the layers of it, and then if we go backward, what is that previous layer, what is that previous layer,” Kelsey considered. “We did it mostly with wallpaper in terms of the actual physical space. We didn’t change the architecture, so you’ll see the room, and then we came up with creative ways to flip paneling wallpaper in and change the rooms, and then you would change the light fixtures and some of the pieces that would be updated regularly.”

The Midnight Club. Heather Langenkamp as Dr. Georgia Stanton in episode 107 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. Heather Langenkamp as Dr. Georgia Stanton in episode 107 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

A real-life illusion is baked into Brightcliffe. The grand Victorian mansion obviously wouldn’t fit on any soundstage, so Kelsey puzzled out how to cram all the locations needed for filming into a small space. Along with hacks for quickly changing a room’s interior, they had to map out how to keep audiences oriented while moving through the space.

“There’s a relationship because in each bedroom, you get to know who’s across the hall from each other,” Kelsey noted. “You do see a lot of activity in the hallway. But we didn’t have space on stage to build seven bedrooms. I come from a theater background, so I have a lot of sneaky ideas about how to change things around. I built the bedrooms on wheels and basically built the whole hallway practically, all the doors. Then we had the bedrooms move to the different doors as they were needed.”

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya in episode 102 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. (L to R) Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya in episode 102 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

Brightcliffe was constructed on two major sound stages. One for the conservatory/dining room, the foyer, the arcade, the triage room, and Dr. Stanton’s (Heather Langenkamp) office. Kelsey used the hallway as a “cut point.” The other stage housed the library, the recovery wing, and the dorm wing. A third soundstage made up other locations needed for the stories the teens told. 

Time waits for no man—or film crew. Fitting scenes into a tight schedule sometimes meant making a quick jump across the decades. Kelsey had to maneuver spaces so that they were ready for their proper period but not allow a stray detail from the wrong era to wander into a shot.

“We had one day where we shot the foyer as 1962 and the hallway that you can see through the archway down the side as 1900,” Kelsey explained. “If you look through this way, you saw 1960, but they shot them back-to-back. So literally boom, shooting this scene, moving the camera into the hallway, no time to change, now we’re shooting this way.”

Kelsey scoured the script for the essence of each member of the Midnight Club to make sure that their personality carried through their storyline. Each teen had their own color palette that you’ll catch in both their Brightcliffe bedroom and their scary story. Anya’s ballet tale inspired a dusty rose accented by peaches, beiges, and maroon. When Ilonka moves in, her own lilacs and purples complement her new roommate’s style. The hospice environment meant everything we learned about them from their surroundings had to be economical. 

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Ruth Codd as Anya, Iman Benson as Ilonka in episode 103 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

“There’s a very unique thing about seeing them in the house, which is that they don’t bring everything with them. It’s a temporary space,” Kelsey observed. “They know they’re not going to be there forever. They don’t know how long they’re there, so how much personality do they stamp on it, and how much of it is the house on its own and part of Brightcliffe as a hospice? What do you take when you’re terminally ill? You only bring the essentials.”

Audiences who grew up reading Christopher Pike’s books that inspired the series will delight in the detail and magnificence of the Midnight Club’s meeting space – the library. The set was built practically and stretches two stories. It’s a bibliophile’s dream and the ideal setting for cozy fireside stories.

“There are real books in there. There’s a Dewey decimal system. Every book has a unique number on it,” Kelsey revealed. “It was a really big task. All of the walls are all hand painted, and all the murals were done by our amazing paint team. It’s not wallpaper. It’s all originally hand-painted. All the furniture we sourced was real antiques, but we had a lot of them recovered to get some of the bright colors that we wanted. We bought all of the velvets and had all of those redone so that they all matched and tied together. It’s a huge set, but it’s one of my favorite things about the show.”

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Ruth Codd as Anya, Sauriyan Sapkota as Amesh, Igby Rigney as Kevin, Annarah Cymone as Sandra, Iman Benson as Ilonka, Aya Furukawa as Natsuki, Adia as Cheri in episode 104 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

The centerpiece of the room is the grand fireplace depicted on the original book cover. It’s so recognizable to fans, and Kelsey went to great lengths to make sure it was perfect in every way.

“The fireplace is funny because you have to think when it’s the only light in the room, and everything else is dark, it’s going to be quite an iconic shape behind them,” she said. “I built a whole bunch of models of the fireplace with to-scale figures in front of it just to get the right height of the arch so that it wouldn’t always cut through the back of their head.”

The Midnight Club. (L to R) Igby Rigney as Kevin, Annarah Cymone as Sandra, Adia as Cheri, Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya, Chris Sumpter as Spencer, Sauriyan Sapkota as Amesh in episode 107 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club. (L to R) Igby Rigney as Kevin, Annarah Cymone as Sandra, Adia as Cheri, Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya, Chris Sumpter as Spencer, Sauriyan Sapkota as Amesh in episode 107 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

Hoping to go visit Brightcliffe in real life? You’re out of luck. It’s a conglomeration of Kelsey’s imagination and digital design.

“I designed the house as a whole, and then visual effects painted and created the upper layer,” Kelsey explained. “The way that they wanted to do it was rather than build the entire thing from scratch in vis effects, they wanted me to find a real house that they could go scan so they could use elements. So instead of building the whole thing, they were like, ‘Oh great, we have the windows 3D scanned. We can just plunk the windows in.’ What I found was this amazing house in Martha’s Vineyard. We went and scanned that and then brought the scan back and used certain features of the house combined with my design and put it all together.”

 

The Midnight Club is now streaming on Netflix. 

For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” Early Reactions: A Stop-Motion Masterpiece

Guillermo del Toro on Why He Set “Pinocchio” in a World of Fascism

The Official Trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” is a Creepfest

Featured image: The Midnight Club. (L to R) Igby Rigney as Kevin, Adia as Cheri, Chris Sumpter as Spencer, Aya Furukawa as Natsuki, Iman Benson as Ilonka, Ruth Codd as Anya, Annarah Cymone as Sandra in episode 104 of The Midnight Club. Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022

Let “Hellraiser” Production Designer Kathrin Eder Take You To Hell With The Cenobites

Posted on by babrams

The Cenobites are back and seeking new victims for their blood-letting games. This time, they have the perfect playground for their sadistic mission. Hellraiser production designer Kathrin Eder created a lavish and indulgent new environment for the inter-dimensional pain-seekers to explore.

Time doesn’t bind The Priest (Jamie Clayton), more commonly known as Pinhead, and their mutilated crew. Thirty-five years after Frank played around with the puzzle box, new mega-worshiper Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic) has dedicated his life and fortune to calling the creatures back to Earth. His excessive wealth creates a surreal and unsettling space to explore. 

“Voight’s obsession with the Cenobites and the cube and the boons he might be rewarded with definitely inspired how we went about the design of this mansion,” Eder explained. “It was a complex puzzle to solve. The movie is placed in Massachusetts, and we wanted to have something that’s realistic enough to believe that a mansion like this could exist there. But at the same time, we knew we had a little bit of liberty because the world of Hellraiser allows us to move into a fantastical realm. There was a really fine play with what’s still real and where does it become a visualization of Clive Barker’s world and what he created.”

A scene still from Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
A scene still from Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

The Cenobites have always been a symbol of temptation, vice, and uninhibited desires. The new film drills beyond personal obsession and draws in vulnerable new targets struggling with addiction. A fascinating battle develops between the characters who are succumbing to their temptations and those fighting to free themselves from the destructive hold of dependency. 

“[Director] David [Bruckner], edgy as he is, definitely paid a lot of attention to understanding which aspects of the original Hellraiser we should bring into this film in order to honor Clive Barker and this feeling of what Clive evoked in the original first two movies,” Eder assured. “At the same time, we definitely wanted to be truthful to the story that the writers wrote, and that story centered around young adults in their twenties that are struggling with larger themes that we might not have seen in the original film, such as addiction and seduction.”

Odessa A'zion as Riley in Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Odessa A’zion as Riley in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

Voight is the new Frank Cotton to the extreme, with far greater monetary resources to devote to his Cenobite mania. He possesses unchecked power, shady staff, and an untouchable cloak of protection that obscures his predatory hunt for sacrifices. His disreputable methods for fulfilling his fetish-driven lifestyle are evident in his custom mansion. He’s a reflection of our times, Eder notes, with plenty of real-world mega-rich egomaniacs that she drew on for inspiration.

Goran Visnjic as Voight in Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Goran Visnjic as Voight in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

“There are so many of these men. There was a lot of food for inspiration and food for thought of who Roland Voight might be and what he got away with,” Eder noted. “That was important to me. That was always my secret anchor. What can we tap into? It really gave me the guidance and allowed me to go down these dark paths of research. What did torture look like over the course of history? How was pain visualized in art? Is there a sense of pedophilia in certain Baroque paintings of children, or could it be interpreted as such? It was a real challenge, but at the same time, exciting, thrilling adventure to put myself into Voight’s brain and wonder what kind of art he would have on the walls and what colors he would choose and why.”

That level of depravity can be frightening to probe. Eder is a self-professed “scarecrow” when it comes to watching horror, but she has become more appreciative of the genre since working with Bruckner on the haunting and atmospheric The Night House. Delving into the dark nature of monsters and villains has helped her to create memorable manifestations of their tortured minds. 

Adam Faison as Colin in Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Adam Faison as Colin in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

“That’s why I became so appreciative of horror films because, in horror films, we visualize something about the human soul and the human psyche that is difficult to verbalize in a normal setting,” Eder explained. “In this genre, we get to explore those dark themes and fears and deal with them. I think that’s really important that we do that rather than keeping that somewhere locked up. It’s kind of a safe space to deal with very difficult things and questions.”

To reach the ultimate Cenobite reward, the puzzle box, designed by Martin Emborg, must be solved in a precise order with the necessary sacrifices offered at each level. Whether that prize is truly desirable is up to the player, but it’s alluring enough for Voight to emulate the puzzle box in the pseudo temple he’s created. The mansion’s mysterious mechanisms and geometric details suggest that they serve a premeditated purpose of their own. 

“One thing I noticed studying mansions throughout history is that the repetition of details is much more pronounced than in the world of normal human beings that don’t have obscene wealth at their hands to build their dream homes,” Eder noted. “That also played a key part as to why there is symmetry because we multiplied certain things. When you look at the showroom, for example, it’s not a square. It’s a hexagon [which is] a very occult symbol. We designed one side of that hexagon. Naturally, the other five sides would be a complete copy of that one. When you look into the room with our aspect ratio, you will always see some sort of symmetry because there is repetition throughout.”

Despite Voight’s efforts to conquer the otherworldly realm, the Cenobites are always the ones pulling the strings – or nerve endings, in this case. When his plan collapses and turns him from master to prisoner, the mansion is abandoned. Eder took the lavish design and aged it into an abandoned, haunted shell.

Vukašin Jovanović as The Masque in Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Vukašin Jovanović as The Masque in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

“What was very important to David was to take something that once looked impressive and immaculate and wealthy and powerful and then throughout Voight’s struggle with the Cenobites and the boon he ended up with over the course of the six years that lead us to where the story is taking place right now, there is decay,” Eder said. “We played a lot with how we take an immaculate space and how it would look six years later in a decayed version. That decay really represents chronic pain because Roland Voight is the living proof of what chronic pain can do to someone.”

As the puzzle box claims more victims, portals begin opening with greater frequency and dimensions collide. When anti-hero Riley (Odessa A’zion) arrives, darkness has fallen on the mansion, and we really get to see the Cenobites in their full glory. Keith Thompson led the design of The Chatterer (Jason Liles), The Weeper (Yinka Olorunnife), The Gasp (Selina Lo), The Asphyx (Zachary Hing), The Mother (Gorica Regodic), and The Masque (Vukasin Jovanovic). Eder worked with cinematographer Eli Born to design spaces that played to the element they show best in – the darkness. 

“We did concept designs in order to visualize the color palettes that I proposed for Voight’s mansion. We did camera tests as well where Eli, with his color timing that he had in mind, photographed a very large group of samples of different colors on the grayscale. Red was important, gold was important, certain greens and blues. Then we made those decisions together. I think it was always clear that it was going to be dark because the Cenobites are more mysterious and read really well in the dark. So, contrast was important working with practical lights and how the lighting design helped us to shape those spaces. So, when we’re in a dark room, the room behind might be a little lighter to reveal a certain depth in space.”

Of course, there’s a particular light and coloring clue that will signal to true Hellraiser fans that the Cenobites are approaching. “When the dimensional doorways open and the Cenobites come into this world, in the original film, it was announced with some blue flickering light. We tried to stay truthful to that. Eli put a lot of work into making those light gags practical, which is really wonderful.”

Jamie Clayton as Pinhead in Spyglass Media Group's HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Jamie Clayton as Pinhead in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

Despite being easily spooked, Eder said she was too preoccupied with her job to get spooked on set. “What’s scary is will we nail the right mood and tone? You don’t want to go overboard. It can never look farcical. Too much aging sometimes brings a little bit of an uncanny reality to it. That can get scary sometimes,” Eder admitted. 

However, not every member of the crew was so lucky to avoid a good jump scare. 

“My boyfriend, who also worked on the show, has this really great story. He was on set on a dark stage when we were filming, and he turns around and suddenly The Chatterer, which is an eight-foot Cenobite, stands behind him soaked in blood, and there was this moment of like, ‘Oh my f———g God. What is happening here?’ Because The Chatterer casually said, ‘Hey, what’s up? How are you doing?’ Scary moments came with a really funny connotation because seeing the Cenobites in the dark on stage was pretty crazy. Like, it was so convincing. It was so great.” 

 

Hellraiser is now available to stream on Hulu, if you dare.

For more on Hulu, check out these stories:

“Reasonable Doubt” DP Robert E. Arnold on Lensing Hulu’s Legal Drama

“Ramy” Costume Designer Nicky Smith on Season 3’s Style Evolution

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

Featured image: Jamie Clayton as Pinhead in Spyglass Media Group’s HELLRAISER, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.

Sinéad O’Shea on her Unflinching & Award-Winning Documentary “Pray For Our Sinners”

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Dublin-based filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea wasn’t sure what she’d find when she returned to her small hometown of Navan, north of Dublin, last year to interview Mary Randles, who’d been a local doctor alongside her late husband Patrick. O’Shea did not expect to discover that, in addition to the Randles, other residents in Navan years ago stood up to injustices inflicted by the Catholic Church, which then controlled all aspects of life in their tiny town. 

O’Shea’s documentary Pray For Our Sinners recounts the experiences of Mary, Betty, and Ethna about the brutal treatment of young, unmarried pregnant women who were separated from their families and placed in “mother and baby homes,” run by Catholic nuns, where girls were mistreated, many infants died, and many were taken illegally for adoption. A fourth subject, Norman, details how as a boy, he was routinely beaten in school until he and his mother went public, with the support of Dr. Patrick Randles, about the brutality of corporal punishment. Norman was ostracized and forced to leave school at age nine to work in a factory long before physical punishment in schools was eventually banned in 1984.

Pray For Our Sinners had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and won best documentary honors at the Hamptons Film Festival on October 15. The following day, the film screened in Boston’s GlobeDocs Film Festival.

 

“When I left Navan at 17, I felt it was a conservative place. I discovered later it was a hotbed of resistance. I’d been oblivious,” said O’Shea following the GlobeDocs screening. A friend told the filmmaker about Patrick Randles and how he had “really stood up to the church in terms of corporal punishment. I met [his wife] Mary, and she was emphatic about Paddy’s role but did not mention [the work] she’d done or the mother and baby homes.” While O’Shea was conducting interviews with Mary, a report came out in 2021 that cited atrocities in Ireland’s mother and baby homes where 9,000 children died over the decades all the way until 1998, O’Shea said. “I asked if she knew about it, and she said, ‘Oh yes, we used to hide unmarried mothers here.’ It was so amazing. She would never volunteer information, but if you asked her the right questions, she’d tell you. It’s part of the general modesty of the place.”

O’Shea did ask the right questions and was able to draw the painful memories from her subjects. A journalist for the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and The Irish Times, among others, O’Shea’s first feature documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot (2017), was about paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland and its effect on one family in particular. “I investigated the family for five years on and off. It helps to be not grandiose with people,” she said. “The famous or politicians, if you are too modest, they freak out; they think you’re incompetent. But normal people like it.”

A scene from “Pray For Our Sinners.”

O’Shea wanted to highlight how these ordinary people stood up to the powerful Catholic Church’s injustice and mistreatment at a time when there was little institutional or community support. In addition to sheltering young girls at their home, the Randles dispensed contraception, which was illegal at the time, and helped Betty get her infant daughter back after she was illegally adopted. Ethna refused to go to a mother and baby home and kept her baby. 

O’Shea said one of her goals for the film is to give credit to these unsung heroes.

“Nobody was praising them for taking such huge risks when the stakes were really high for them. To me, that’s real heroism. I sometimes think a lot of what we praise these days is quite shallow; when the stakes are high, that’s bravery,” she said.

“I’m not sure if this is a film of suffering or triumph,” said O’Shea. “It’s a bit of both. In the case of Norman, the price he paid for resistance was unbelievable. Was it worth it? Certainly, it wasn’t for Norman. To go to a factory at nine was a huge price. In some cases, just expressing difference and saying no was really difficult in a society dominated by one form of thinking.”

The film traces the decline of the church’s power in Ireland and the advent of social changes, including the right to divorce, abortion access, and gay marriage. The film may be resonating with festival audiences in North America especially, said O’Shea, because many are now seeing how easily such gains can be stripped away.

A scene from "Pray For Our Sinners."
A scene from “Pray For Our Sinners.”

“It does point out the dangers of church-state collusion. That relationship needs to be quite separate. But I had no idea [about this] when I was making the film. I began in early 2021; by feature documentary standards, it was a swift process. When I met Mary, it was the height of Covid in Ireland, and everything was shut down, so I asked [the national agency for Irish film, Screen Ireland] to give me a micro-budget to make the film, and they agreed to that,” said O’Shea. “We shot over a few days, then we didn’t have enough for an edit, so we spread that over nine months. I finished the film in May and sent it to Toronto.”

The film has screened in just a few festivals so far, but since it’s already earned accolades, O’Shea hopes the attention won’t offend anyone in Navan.

“Mary has seen it, and she loves it. Mary drove the film; she really wanted it to be about her husband. For her, it is about him and less all the other things, so she’s pleased with it,” she said. “I’d love it if Betty, Norman, and Ethna could watch it with a festival audience and feel the appreciation.”

Featured image: A still image from “Pray For Our Sinners.” 

 

How “TILL” Costume Designer Marci Rodgers Captured the Racial Dynamics of 1955 America

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Some of the most powerful stories are the most difficult to watch, but Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) knew there comes a time when we can’t afford to look away. When her son Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) became one of the most tender and tragic victims of racial violence in America, she bravely shaped his legacy into a catalyst for the civil rights movement. TILL revisits the facts of the crime but focuses its lens on the heroic way Mamie made a statement from her suffering. 

Costume Designer Marci Rodgers brought immense personal and professional experience to the film. She has become a time traveler stitching her way through 20th century America with projects like 1970s BlacKkKlansman and 1920s Passing. She also shares a hometown of Chicago with the Till family. Emmett’s urban sensibilities proved to be a critical component in the events that led to his murder. Rodgers can understand how the cultural differences between the city and the South were so difficult and dangerous for Till to navigate. 

“I can reflect back on my experiences growing up. They would always say, ‘Oh you city boys’ or ‘Oh, you city kids’ because we just had access to different fashion,” Rodgers explained. “It was a mechanism of survival. He grew up in the south side of Chicago. Little boys in Harlem dressed like that, like Emmett. It just so happened; it was unfortunate that – it shouldn’t have happened to anybody’s child – but it happened to Emmett.”

Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures.
Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures
© 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The Till family was not free from prejudice in Chicago, but they did maneuver with less fear of racial violence than their relatives living in Mississippi. Emmett was accustomed to small comforts like shopping in department stores. Bright, happy childhood memories that were more difficult to come by amidst the oppression of the south. 

“Mamie was a middle-class working woman. She had access to certain stores and certain fashion,” Rodgers observed. “Obviously, Marshall Field’s, which is where I grew up going to with my parents, and then we would go down there to see the lights in the window. They would have big merchandising, kind of like here at Macy’s. So, she had access to that. The first scene opens up with that. Mamie is shopping with Emmett. She sees it as being equal. The security comes to her and is basically like, ‘No,’ but in her brain, it’s freedom.”

(L to R) Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.
(L to R) Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Rodgers prioritizes accuracy in all her historical projects. She scoured Sears catalogs from the era for silhouettes, textures, and fabrics and researched photos of the real-life inspirations for the characters. Like all major cities, Chicago had a personality that shaped the styles and trends of fashion. Capturing that energy was important to illustrate Emmett’s worldview. 

“During that time, nobody walked out of their house without their Sunday’s best. And even their Sunday’s best was the best of their Sunday’s best,” Rodgers emphasized. “For Emmett, I wanted to make sure that he was an innocent of Chicago as a 14-year-old, but he still had the essence of Chicago.”

Rodgers’ designs illustrate two ways of life for African Americans in 1955 delineated by region. The costume designs establish vital visual clues that signal how the worlds of Chicago and Mississippi could coexist simultaneously but were destined to clash in devastating ways. 

“I wanted [Mamie’s husband] Gene [Mobley] (Sean Patrick Thomas) to represent the masculine side of Chicago during that time, but not be in a suit,” Rodgers noted. “He was a barber, so he wouldn’t necessarily be in a two-piece suit. Juxtapose him to [Rayfield] Mooty (Kevin Carroll), which was Mamie’s cousin. They also worked in two different sectors. Gene was in more of the polos, or I put him in a blazer and trousers. Then you fast forward to Mississippi. Really, it is what it is. You have the cotton-picking group, and then you have those who attended the trial, which wore white shirts, khakis, or some kind of white shirts with brown pants because it’s hot in Mississippi. They wouldn’t have anything on that’s going to acquire heat.”

(L to R) Whoopi Goldberg as Alma Carthan and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.
(L to R) Whoopi Goldberg as Alma Carthan and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Emmett’s wardrobe would not allow for easy assimilation to the South during his visit. His fashion alone marked him as an outsider. Acting like a city boy in the Jim Crow South proved deadly. Emmett’s naïveté about this unfamiliar environment ultimately gave way to unthinkable brutality. 

Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Andre D. Wagner / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures.
Credit: Andre D. Wagner / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“Truthfully, my father told me a story about how he left because my father grew up in Missouri,” Rodgers recalled. “He left his mother, he left his nest and moved to Chicago by way of Gary [Indiana] because he didn’t want to pick cotton. My father left the south and went to Chicago and never wanted to do it again and never did it again, because he felt like it was oppression, and he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Then you see Emmett, who comes down just for a short period of time and can’t wrap his mind around it either. That part for me was important.”

In the wake of Emmett’s murder, Mamie is suddenly plunged into mourning that becomes a public battle for the soul of the nation. Rather than succumb to the intimidation and threats of her son’s killers, she stands tall in the face of racial hatred attending the trial. She was extremely aware of the impact of her public image, which, in large part, was expressed through her attire.

“There is a dynamic shift in how I presented her in dress, but then also, I just didn’t want her to be in black,” Rodgers explained. “Like, what represents mourning? She had so many highs and lows, but she also, I feel, may not have wanted to wear black on a daily basis in court. She was facing opposition, and she was facing Mississippi, for that matter.”

Rodgers was able to call on public images and even recreated some of the iconic pieces, like Mamie’s giraffe dress and Gene’s outfit, in a powerful image of Gene supporting Mamie viewing her son’s mutilated body. Rodgers purposefully made 80% of Emmett’s clothing, including his historic pleated tie noting, “That was the least I could do.” She estimates she made the same amount of Carolyn Bryant’s (Haley Bennett) costumes, 90% of Mamie’s, and all of Alma’s (Whoopi Goldberg). Rodgers collaborated with hatmaker Patrick Rogers to be sure that they were also accurate. 

Sean Patrick Thomas (left) as Gene Mobley and Danielle Deadwyler (left) as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Sean Patrick Thomas (left) as Gene Mobley and Danielle Deadwyler (left) as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“I walk into his office and was like, ‘I have to have this in like five weeks,’” she recalled. “He had three other projects that were probably bigger than mine, and he was like, ‘You know what? I believe in this story, and I’m going to make it work.’ And he was so meticulous, even finding the things that I couldn’t find. Your eyes are only going to catch so much as you’re constantly looking at it. He was amazing.”

Mamie carries herself with unimaginable dignity as she uses her deepest pain to lead a nationwide awakening. Her story was bolstered by her authenticity and self-expression. Rodgers noted that Mamie always finished her outfits in rhinestones jewelry and is never seen without them. 

Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“She was very dainty. I tried my best to communicate that through her wardrobe and her earrings, even down to her shoes and her purses. Just proportionally how her purse should be against the silhouette of the costume and what I thought and specifically Miss Mamie would have worn.”

 

Till is showing now in select cities and opens nationwide on October 28. 

Featured image: (L to R) Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley and Whoopi Goldberg as Alma Carthan in TILL, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, released by Orion Pictures. Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures © 2022 ORION RELEASING LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“Black Bird” Cinematographer Natalie Kingston Breaks Down Her Technique on Apple’s Crime Thriller

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There’s a symphony of visual subtlety threaded throughout creator Dennis Lehane’s psychological crime drama Black Bird (available now on Apple TV+) that harmoniously lifts the resonating performances and moody tenor of the story that can be easily overlooked. Series cinematographer Natalie Kingston (who alluringly photographed all six episodes) prefers it that way.

Based on the life of James Keene (Taron Egerton), a Chicago-area high school football star turned dope dealer and eventual prison inmate, ends up serving ten years without parole until he’s offered a commuted sentence; befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) and get him to confess before he’s released. The binge-worthy whydunit has a tremendous amount of gravitas, in part from a rich, character-driven narrative that has Egerton at top of his game, while Hauser’s portrayal of Larry Hall is disturbingly magnetic. Not to mention it’s one of Ray Liotta’s last performances as he plays James’s father (Big Jim), who’s struggling with failing health. The poignancy in the father-son moments are not to be missed.

The series’ visual language expresses a tense, unsettling tone without being overt or ostentatious. The cinematography feels familiar and richly layered. If you happen to press pause on the remote (or keyboard), there’s minimalist expressionism in each frame that complements the foreboding atmosphere. Kingston tells The Credits her main source of inspiration for the painterly look was Gordon Parks’ 1957 The Atmosphere of Crime, a photo essay that depicts crime in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. “What really resonated with me [about the book] was this rich, sort of pastel-like palette where Parks used available light but still felt intentional and expressive. That’s what we were trying to create [with Black Bird].”

Michaël Roskam directed the first three episodes (Jim McKay dir. E4, Joe Chappelle E5, E6), and in establishing the look of the series, the director-DP duo shared similar “sensibilities and taste” and leaned into “creating expressive but grounded lighting.” “We really wanted to play with the nuance and not distract but enhance the performances,” says Kingston.

Kingston takes us on a tour of three specific scenes and explains her thinking and her approach.

They’re Just Dreams

One such scene is between chief investigator Brian Miller (Greg Kinnear) and Larry in the pilot episode. Miller has an interest in questioning Larry after learning about a mysterious van that’s connected to several missing girls, one of them being Jessica Roach (Laney Stiebing). Larry owns such a van. In framing the unnerving sequence, the cinematographer intentionally crossed the 180-degree rule as Larry and Miller are speaking to each other.

“We did this to visually separate them [Larry and Miller] from the other detectives in the room. We shot Larry’s coverage in profile and Miller straight on,” Kingston says. “Then, through Paul’s performance, his choice was to barely make eye contact. We did this combination of shooting until Larry says, ‘In my dreams, I like to kill women, you know.’ Michaël and I thought keeping Larry in profile keeps his character mysterious and creates a visual barrier that hopefully insinuates his mental state by perpetuating his fluctuating confessions.”

In episode two, the cinematographer bookended the visual style in a second scene between Miller and Larry in the same conference room. This time, instead of the camera being on the side of Miller and Larry, it starts off with Larry in a close-up before pulling back to the side with the other detectives. “This was to subtly communicate that maybe Larry didn’t kill those girls, and the other detective might be right. It was also a way to visually express that Miller might have lost Larry in the moment.”

Visiting Hours

An intimate scene between Ray Liotta and Taron Egerton takes place during prison visiting hours with Big Jim suggesting to his son he dreamt more for him. Kingston covered the scene with expressive close-ups, connecting the audience to the emotional moment.

“It was one of my favorite scenes to shoot,” Kingson says. “We wanted to be very intimate within the conversation they are having privately amongst other inmates. Keeping it close, we felt it emotionally drove the scene. The goal was to visually accentuate the tension and the complexity of this father-and-son relationship. The window and the bars create a barrier between them, symbolizing their rocky past and lack of emotional connection. Then if you notice in Ray’s close-up, Taron’s reflection is positioned over his face. That symbolizes his longing for a deeper connection with his father. I think it also represents the parallels between the two men and how similar they are.”

Kingston lit the scene with larger fixtures providing light through the row of windows behind the actors. Diffusion was used to soften the light. “My general approach to lighting is to keep them outside of the set. It feels the most natural and gives the actors the freedom to perform and the camera to move around,” the cinematographer notes. As for the camera of choice, the ARRI Alexa Mini LF was paired with Panavision H spherical lenses, which add a vintage feel and soft roll-off to the image.

A Sadistic Confession 

Episode five, “The Place I Lie,” has one of the most chilling scenes in television. The short clip above is part of a ten-minute scene that begins at the 35:34 mark of the episode.

The unsettling moment is between an imprisoned Larry and James, who sits in a woodshop talking as if they were best friends. But the conversation is not a light affair. Larry shares the grisly encounter with Jessica Roach. It’s the confession James has been trying to get from Larry.

In approaching the coverage, Kingston let the performances do the heavy lifting while the camera and lighting shaped a crescendo of visual nuance. To get into the scene, a wide shot from the door cuts to a medium shot of James looking at several carved birds. Kingston says it’s one of her favorite shots in the whole series.

“Everything is coming down to this moment. The blackbirds and what they symbolize [the girls that Larry allegedly kidnapped and killed] are positioned in the foreground. Then there’s a subtle pop of hard light behind James, which was also a motif that we wove in the series where these subtle pops of hard light in the background or foreground were made to represent freedom and the light outside.”

As the two begin to talk, the coverage moves from matching over-the-shoulders to matching medium shots as Larry becomes curious to how many women James has had sex with. The question triggers Larry to admit that no women will ever talk to him. The camera then shifts to a wide shot with the two characters in profile, a soft grayish light fills the background. When Larry begins to detail how he met Jessica, a slow push-in from profile marks his confession.

“Throughout the whole camera move, the lighting outside slowly dims. It starts to rain, and the color temperature gets cooler,” notes Kingston. “The challenge was the multiple moving parts, and everyone had to be in perfect sync for it to be impactful. We didn’t want to draw attention to the fact we were moving in. It was supposed to be a subconscious where you get pulled into this moment with Larry, and you can’t believe what you’re hearing.”

The design of the shot was a technical symphony, from the camera operator, focus puller, and dolly grip, to the dimmer board operator and special effects team making it rain. Everything had to hit just right over the course of Larry’s monologue. “It was exciting when we knew we nailed it,” recalls Kingston. “The feeling was palpable in the room.”

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Temuera Morrison to Play King of Maui in Jason Momoa’s Series “Chief of War”

Will Smith’s “Emancipation” Reveals Trailer & Surprise Release Date

Vince Gilligan’s Next Show Coming to Apple With “Better Call Saul” Star Rhea Seehorn

Featured image: Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser in “Black Bird,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

How “Werewolf By Night” Makeup Maestro Ellen Arden Made Marvel’s Monsters

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Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino chose to plumb new depths of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for his directorial debut with Werewolf by Night. Inspired by the comic book released as Marvel Spotlight #2 in 1972, this special presentation is streaming as part of the Halloween season on Disney+. It features a group of monster hunters led by Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal), a man afflicted with a curse that turns him into a werewolf. Following the death of Ulysses Bloodstone, Russell and his fellow hunters are called to Bloodstone Manor by the widow Verussa Bloodstone (Harriett Sansom Harris), where they are expected to take part in a competitive hunt to find their new leader.  The victor will be rewarded with the Bloodstone, a magic gem that gives power to its possessor and causes weakens otherworldly creatures. 

A scene from Marvel Studios' WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
A scene from Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

Werewolf by Night is created in the tradition of classic holiday releases and uses practical effects and black-and-white cinematography to recall the style of the great Universal Monsters films of the 30s and 40s. The Credits chatted with makeup department head Ellen Arden about her role in creating new horror archetypes while evoking an atmosphere of old Hollywood just creepy enough to entertain monster fans of all ages.  

 

How did you get the gig on Werewolf by Night, and what about this project was something you’d not done before?

I’m familiar with most of the MCU and have worked on a lot of Marvel projects, but Werewolf by Night leans into more of the pulpy side of Marvel, which I love. How I came about this project was I did the Hawkeye reshoots and worked with the producers that went on to do Werewolf by Night, and I had a really great rapport with them. We all love each other and get along, so they invited me to submit for the job. Michael, our director, really liked that I had a lot of MCU and DC work but also that I had a lot of horror films under my belt because I recently did the Fear Street franchise, so I definitely wasn’t afraid of a little blood. My favorite thing about the project is that we were able to create characters in the MCU, which made it a really unique experience. We had two characters, Jack and Elsa, that had already been established within Marvel, but then we also have this set of characters, the hunters, that we had never met, and we just had so much fun putting those ideas together and deciding what their origins were and introducing them in the MCU.

Kirk R. Thatcher as Jovan in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

How did you collaborate with director Michael Giacchino for the looks created on the project?

Michael and I had a fair amount of meetings about all of the characters, and we had some of the wardrobe ideas and concept art, and we got all of these materials together, and then I started pitching ideas, which would evolve. We had a lot of freedom, which is something that isn’t always the case in the makeup department, especially within something that’s highly constructed, like the MCU. Michael was just so excited about the project that it made us excited to pitch things to him, and even if I thought he was going got think I was crazy, he was all in, all the time. 

Ulysses Bloodstone in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

What is a good example of that? 

For the character of Verussa, when we first meet her, she’s the grieving widow. She’s very old money, very polished, and proper looking, but we also know that she’s unhinged because of the way she’s talking to her dead husband in his casket. When we see her at the cage, I wanted her to have this crazy moment. I knew she was going to be cloaked, and I didn’t know initially that she would be masked, but I wanted her to come in and just have a real power move because now, Elsa and Jack are in that cage. I really wanted a reveal that shows us that, all of a sudden, she is participating in the hunt, unlike before, when she didn’t seem much of a participant as much as just the widow orchestrating the event. When she removes that mask, I wanted to make her look crazy. We wanted to have this bright red tear-stained look on her face. Her hair is messed up from this cloak which just adds to the effect. I think her look is one of my favorites, especially when we get up close to her, where she’s being pulled into the cage. I love that shot. 

Harriet Sansom Harris as Verussa in Marvel Studios' WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
Harriet Sansom Harris as Verussa in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
Harriet Sansom Harris as Verussa in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

You designed the looks to work in either full color or black and white, as you weren’t sure which way they’d decide to show it. How did that factor into your choices? 

Fortunately, I went to college for camera, so I had a little bit of knowledge about how shots translate between color and black and white. We knew that it had the potential to go black and white but also might end up being seen in color at some point, so we needed to make sure that both would be visually striking for whoever was watching it. Again, using Verussa as an example, we had this red that we knew would read well in black and white that’s a very primary red, but also we needed to create dimension within that red, so we used a tone that veered towards violet, which on the color spectrum for the panchromatic film would read as deep in some of those areas, to give some of the texture instead of it just looking like a flat black.

Gael García Bernal as Jack Russell in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

What were some specific influences and inspirations for the design of Jack Russell’s face? 

Initially, I knew that Michael had an idea about giving Jack the Day of the Dead look, and we had done some testing and went through a variety of different makeups, staying away from the commercialized look that we normally see. Eventually, we landed on a design that came from Rosana Ahrens, who’s a Chicana graphic designer and artist. She designed this two-dimensional makeup for us, and then we had to figure out the opacities and the color and how that was relating to black and white versus color film. I love how the makeup itself plays with the light. This organic feeling almost glows. When he leans into the light, it disappears, then in some scenes, it’s a little bit brighter. The makeup itself was very consistent. But the makeup would interact and shift with the lighting, which I thought was really interesting when I saw the end product. 

Gael García Bernal as Jack Russell in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

 

Werewolf by Night is streaming now on Disney+.

For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:

Harrison Ford Joins the MCU With Role in “Captain America: New World Order”

Lupita Nyong’o on the Bittersweet Beauty of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Reveals Stunning New Image of Namor

Featured image: Harriet Sansom Harris as Verussa in Marvel Studios’ WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.