Interview
Cinematographer
Ground-Level Galaxy: “Andor” DP Christophe Nuyens on Making the Most Visceral “Star Wars” Story Ever Told
The satisfactions of Tony Gilroy‘s Andor were such that many viewers comforted themselves when the series came to an end on May 13 by immediately turning to Rogue One, the 2016 feature film that Andor served as a prequel series for. Such has been the power of Andor—it’s been hard to let go, and there’s no better way to keep the rebel spirit alive than by following Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) story to its bittersweet conclusion.
Interview
Cinematographer
Lighting Love in LA: How “Nobody Wants This” DP Adrian Peng Correia Lit Netflix’s Coziest Rom-Com
The moment Nobody Wants This became one of Netflix’s most beloved romantic comedies comes at the end of the second episode. Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) and podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) have been glancing off one another in an uneasy will-they-or-won’t-they start to their relationship that finally ends in a kiss over ice cream. But it’s not just any kiss, Joanne later tells her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), but the greatest kiss of her life.
Interview
Cinematographer, Showrunner
Genesis of Gemstones: Danny McBride and DP Paul Daley Reveal How Bradley Cooper Brought the Unholy Patriarch to Life
The Gemstones Sunday service has come to an end. After four seasons, Danny McBride’s dark comedy following a dysfunctional televangelist family aired its final episode with a glorious blood-soaked banger. But among the chaos, McBride and company focused its scripture on the series’ revolving theme: a family of unconditional love. And it was at the start of the season, we were introduced to the Gemstones’ family origins through a Civil War era epic with 12-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper playing the OG bible preacher.
Interview
Cinematographer
Soul Transcendent: How DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw Captured Black Music’s Timeless Continuum in “Sinners”
In part one of our interview with Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the groundbreaking DP discussed how she leveled up to frame Coogler’s soulful supernatural epic by learning to use the largest film format available. Coogler’s ambitions for his vampire thriller, starring Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, were massive. The brothers return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, after serving in World War I and then taking their talents to Chicago,
Blues, Blood, & Big Formats: How DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw Brought “Sinners” to Epic, IMAX-Sized Life
Yes, there are vampires, but Sinners also excels as a period piece, a history lesson, a romance, a drama, an action movie, and a music-driven drama in ways that have made director Ryan Coogler‘s fifth movie the top-grossing original film of the decade. Based on his own script about gangster twins Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their Mississippi roots with a bag of ill-gotten cash and a plan to start their own juke joint in the middle of the woods,
Interview
Cinematographer
No Character Is Safe: How DP Ksenia Sereda Frames “The Last of Us” Season 2’s Heightened Stakes
Sanctuary is fleeting in The Last of Us. With savage grudges and the ever-evolving infected hordes, who seem to be learning tactics through their cordyceps-controlled brains, no one is safe. Here comes your spoiler alert warning—the savagery proved especially true when antihero Joel (Pedro Pascal) was brutally clubbed to death by vengeful Firefly, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). You don’t need to be a member of the undead to do dreadful things in this world.
Interview
Cinematographer
“Daredevil: Born Again” DPs Hillary Fyfe Spera & Pedro Gómez Millán on Lensing NYC’s Mean Streets
Daredevil built a fierce fandom when the show first appeared in 2015, introducing Charlie Cox as visually impaired lawyer Matt Murdock, whose alter ego roamed the streets of New York at night as Daredevil, a superhero with heightened senses and lethally honed fighting skills. After nearly a decade, Cox reprises his role in Daredevil: Born Again, and in the first of two already planned seasons, doesn’t disappoint.
With the tagline,
Interview
Cinematographer
Calculated Frames: DP Martin Ruhe on Capturing “The Amateur’s” Deadly Chess Game
In the first part of our conversation with cinematographer Martin Ruhe about his latest film, The Amateur, he discussed director James Hawes’ grounded approach to Rami Malek’s CIA analyst-turned-vigilante by focusing on how his character’s humanity and intelligence were the keys to his playing a deadly game with trained spies and assassins. He’s able to do this not only because of his superior intelligence, but also because he blackmails his superiors (who have been ordering unsanctioned black ops) who know more than he does about the specifics of spycraft,
Interview
Cinematographer
Lethal Intelligence: How DP Martin Ruhe Shot a Decoder’s Revenge in “The Amateur”
Tapping into nostalgia for ‘90s spy thrillers of late, 20th Century Studios’ globe-trotting espionage revenge thriller features Rami Malek’s quietly ingenious CIA decryption analyst as the everyman reluctant hero. “He’s not a killer, he’s not trained with weapons, he probably wouldn’t survive in a fist fight. So, he has to be smarter than everybody else,” says German cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Showtime series The Agency, The Tender Bar) of Malek’s Charlie Heller.
Interview
Cinematographer
“Snow White” Cinematographer Mandy Walker on Casting a Visual Spell Through Past & Present
Nestled between a dental office and a local tavern in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Atwater Village is Tam O’Shanter, a Scottish restaurant inside a storybook style Tudor cottage, its interior a blend of rustic elegance and historical charm, a vestige of “Old Hollywood.” In the corner of the dimly lit room is Table 31, a regular spot of Walt Disney when the studio was located on Hyperion Avenue in the 1920s. It’s rumored the restaurant partially inspired Disney’s first feature-length animated film,
Interview
Cinematographer
How “Severance” Cinematographer David Lanzenberg Captured a Chilling Corporate Nightmare
Severance earned 14 Emmy nominations the first time around, and after a three-year hiatus, the show has reignited fan frenzy as it builds toward the Season 2 finale streaming Friday [March 21] on Apple TV +. Again, bifurcated employees and their bosses (Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman and Christopher Walken) navigate the tortuously fascistic world of Lumon Industries, which severs employees from their civilian selves — but now,
Interview
Cinematographer
From “Day of the Jackal” to “Captain America: Brave New World”: DP Kramer Morgenthau Breaks Down 70s Thriller Inspiration
Sam Wilson returns in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, here to take on twin domestic threats. Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick (and replacement as the Falcon) Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) have been sent to Mexico to stop Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from making an illegal sale. Sam and Joaquin recover the items but lose Sidewinder. The pair then head home to train with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a former super soldier introduced in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Emilia Pérez’s” Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume on Finding the Light in the Darkness
By now, you’ve either seen or definitely heard about Emilia Pérez. If you haven’t yet seen the film, then likely the first thing you heard was about its accolades—it’s the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, 13 in all. The other story that you’ve definitely heard about is the attention swirling around Emilia herself, Karla Sofía Gascón, the Oscar-nominated star of the film, who is at the center of controversy over her offensive,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Anora” Cinematographer Drew Daniels on an Old School Approach to Modern, Misguided Love
Shot over 37 days in New York, one of this year’s awards darlings is Sean Baker’s compulsively riveting Anora, a lap-dancing underworld version of Cinderella. Mikey Madison plays the titular stripper, Anora/”Ani,” who thinks she has hit the jackpot when playboy and heir to a Russian oligarch, Ivan “Vanya” (Mark Eydelshteyn), falls in love with her. In an instant, she is plunged into a world of immense wealth, but will she be able to hang on to the rags-to-riches fantasy when forces outside of their budding romance are pressed into service to tear them apart?
Making Macondo: How the “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Cinematographers Brought Gabriel García Márquez’s Epic to Netflix
Directors Alex García López and Laura Mora have undertaken the historic feat of adapting Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, into a sixteen-part Netflix series, the first half of which was released on December 11. Unlike the book, which moves back and forth in time across seven generations of the Buendía family, the show is chronological (and it was shot chronologically, too), but beyond the change in timing,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Nosferatu” DP Jarin Blaschke on Giving Robert Eggers’ Masterful Vampire Tale Its Bite
Horror fans were given a fresh infusion of Dracula mythology on Christmas Day courtesy of Nosferatu. Written and directed by Robert Eggers, the gothic tale, set in 1838, follows the bloodsucking Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) as he preys on beautiful Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and her new husband (Nicholas Hoult). Nosferatu boasts an impressive supporting cast who are, like its stars, all-in on yet another of Eggers’ deliciously detailed period pieces,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Dune: Prophecy” Cinematographer Pierre Gill Captures the Many Moving Pieces of a Dangerous Game
A frequent collaborator with director Denis Villeneuve, award-winning cinematographer Pierre Gill respects the filmmaker’s legacy but also relishes being able to play in the same sandbox and create his own vision with Dune: Prophecy.
A prequel to Villeneuve’s Dune films, Gill maintains the epic scope of the universe in the three episodes he directed, including the pilot and finale of the acclaimed six-episode HBO show,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Nickel Boys” Cinematographer Jomo Fray Takes a New Angle on a Difficult Past
“Every aspect of the visual language that we built always came from being rooted in the script,” cinematographer Jomo Fray tells The Credits about director RaMell Ross’s moving film Nickel Boys.
Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name, the screenplay, co-written by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, follows the blooming friendship between two black teenagers – Elwood and Turner – as they’re forced to attend a reform school in the Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights Movement.
Interview
Cinematographer
Feral Frame: How “Nightbitch” Cinematographer Brandon Trost Helped Amy Adams Unleash Her Inner Beast
In Nightbitch, six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams hurls herself into dog mode, slurping meat from a bowl, pawing through the dirt in her backyard, and running with a pack of neighborhood canines in feral protest against the stultifying bonds of motherhood. Cinematographer Brandon Trost, teaming for the third time with writer-director Marielle Heller after Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?,
Interview
Cinematographer
“Maria” Cinematographer Ed Lachman on Painting Angelina Jolie’s Mythic Opera Legend With Light
Passionate Greek-American soprano Maria Callas was the world’s premier opera star when she was struck with various ailments that limited her capacity to sing. She led a life rivaling any opera drama, including a tumultuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis and explosive interactions with collaborators and fans that made her increasingly controversial. She said, “I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best.”
Director Pablo Larraín chose to highlight Callas in his new film Maria.