B E L O W T H E L I N E
Since the mid 2000s, I've been doing "below the line" (aka "crafts") stories -- first for The Hollywood Reporter and now for Variety -- focusing on the work of cinematographers, costume designers, editors, production designers, sound editors & mixers and visual effects artists who quietly go about building, recording and shaping everything we see on screen, while the world fawns over the pretty people playing make believe, reciting other people's lines. As a journalist, it's a nice change of pace to hear their fresh anecdotes about their creative journeys, told with genuine enthusiasm, rather than the well-rehearsed boilerplate that one so often gets from celebrities.
How Sound Pros for ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Maestro’ and ‘Spider-Man’ Found the Right Mix for Their CAS-Nominated Work
Sound doesn’t get a lot of high-profile recognition during movie awards season, outside of a single category at the Oscars. That’s why the 60th Cinema Audio Society Awards are such an important date on the entertainment industry calendar.
The awards honor the work of sound teams across eight categories — from live action and animated movies to one-hour and half-hour TV series — that has them navigating complex technical challenges, while applying sonic shadings and narrative arcs that are often virtually undetectable to audiences. FX's "Impeachment": Behind the Scenes
The most important item of clothing in the Clinton-Lewinsky affair was not the blue dress.
Taking Movie Audiences Back in Time
For “Joker,” production designer Mark Friedberg and set decorator Kris Moran didn’t exactly re-create period New York City, but instead fashioned a rough equivalent of its down and dirty environs circa 1981 for the film’s fictional Gotham City setting.
For Gotham Square, Friedberg transformed the corner of Market and Broad streets in Newark, N.J., adding low-rent store fronts, porno theater marquees and graffiti, along with truckloads of fake garbage. “One of the things that I loved about ‘Joker’ is, as gritty as it is, the walls of the city are actually places where feelings, thoughts, art and politics are expressed through graffiti,” says Friedberg. ‘Fate of the Furious’ Sound Crew Had to Go Bigger, Louder
It’s hard to imagine that a single sonic failing could derail a film, but that’s exactly what the sound team was grappling with on Universal’s “Fate of the Furious.”
It was the moment in which Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) stomps on a red button on the floorboard of his souped-up 1971 Plymouth GTX, and the car goes into misfire mode, giving him a ruse to slip from the clutches of criminal mastermind Cipher (Charlize Theron). The audience needed to be convinced that the misfiring engine sound could fool Cipher, and make sure people would buy it. “The whole film almost unraveled at that point,” says supervising sound editor Peter Brown. “Basically, we gave [re-recording mixer Frank A. Montaño] every sound effect of a stalling car that’s ever been recorded and he did something with it — a lot of different times.” Stunts Went Old School in Oscar-Nominated Films
Filmmakers used every digital tool available to amp up the action in “Deadpool.” In the film’s hyper-violent freeway chase scene, stunt performers were shot against green screens in vehicle interiors or otherwise bare soundstages, then virtually placed into (or hanging off of) careening CG autos alongside wholly-digital characters and a backdrop created with multi-camera plates of freeways in Detroit, Chicago, and Vancouver.
But sometimes the most innovative and effective approach is to dial back the digital technology and go old school as stunt coordinator and second unit director Mic Rodgers did on “Hacksaw Ridge,” the true story of a pacifist’s battlefield experiences in World War II. “For me, old is new,” says Rodgers. “We kept it as real and as in-the-camera as we could.” Oscar Contenders in Production Design Evoke Past, Present and Future
Production designers working on this season’s awards contenders ("La La Land," "The Handmaiden," "Passengers," "Moonlight," "Rules Don't Apply") drew on some unlikely sources to create eye-catching sets that not only provided a stage for the action, but also subtly reinforced the narrative.
Want to Track Costumes & Continuity on Your Smartphone? There's an App for That
It’s hard enough for viewers to sort out the hundreds of characters on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Imagine what it’s like for the show’s costume supervisor, Sheena Wichary, who has to keep track of every stitch of clothing (including multiples of the same outfit) and their state of wear at any point in the narrative, across separate units shooting in geographically diverse locales such as Northern Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Morocco, and Croatia.
Wichary used to do things the old-fashioned way: poring over scripts with a ruler and a highlighter. But three seasons ago, she went high-tech with a cloud-based application for the web and smart devices that uses a software algorithm to automate the script-breakdown process. The program, called SyncOnSet, sorts out characters with “all the costume changes and our budget from episodes one to 10,” says Wichary. “This would ordinarily be a two-man job involving weeks of work.” Stunts Bring Big Screen Action to the Small Screen
When stunt coordinator Anton Moon staged the slave ship mutiny for History Channel’s new miniseries adaptation of “Roots,” he had to deliver more than just exciting action with 20 stunt people and 200 extras. He had to make sure the fighting style accurately reflected the background of 18th century Mandinka captives, not modern action movie conventions.
“No kicking, punching, no head-butting — none of the old go-to favorites,” says Moon. “The Mandinka had to be very light-footed, very fast-moving, in contrast to the European sailors, who would throw a normal punch and move kind of heavy-footed.” Moon’s work in “Roots” is representative of the intricate, large-scale complex stunt work being done in television today on shows such as FX’s “American Horror Story: Hotel,” Netflix’s “Daredevil” and Syfy’s “The Expanse"... Around this time of year, supervising sound editor Mark A. Mangini finds himself fielding phone calls from fellow Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members who aren’t part of the sound branch. “They’ll ring me and say, ‘I’m having a little trouble. Give me a little a little primer on the nuances of what makes great sound work from an expert’s point of view,’ because a cinematographer or a production designer usually isn’t familiar with the nuances,’” says Mangini, who’s nominated for sound editing on “Mad Max: Fury Road” (along with David White). The confusion is understandable. On CBS’ “Code Black,” the hallways and operating rooms of Angels Memorial Hospital don’t have the gleaming white surfaces seen on the typical medical show. The space is gritty and lived-in, with layers of wear reflecting the building’s 80-plus-year history, as well as its status as a chaotic, overtaxed trauma center.
Click here to read my entire article in Variety taking a behind the scenes look at the "Code Black" set. ![]() In the Feb. 4, 2014, edition of Variety, I examine how the Oscar-nominated costume, hair & makeup and art departments brought to life a bygone era that never truly existed in director Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel," with eccentric, meticulous looks mixing historic reality and storybook whimsy.
![]() I get in on the Oscar action for Variety with a behind the scenes look at the three Academy Award nominees in the Hair & Makeup category, "The Lone Ranger," "Dallas Buyers Club" and "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa."
P.S. – I’m the guy who liked “The Lone Ranger.” ![]() While shooting digital may be the prevailing trend for everything from micro-budget indies to blockbuster tentpole releases like "Skyfall," it was never an option for "Lincoln," as far as director Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski were concerned. I explain why in this article in Variety.
I also write about the visual and emotional authenticity Spielberg gained by shooting "Lincoln" in Virginia in this feature for Variety. ![]() Spanish costume designer Paco Delgado didn't merely design and build every piece of clothing worn by the masses of bedraggled 19th century French beggars, prostitutes, prisoners and revolutionaries in the epic bigscreen adaptation of the musical "Les Miserables," he also destroyed them a little -- sometimes a lot.
On the production's busiest days, Delgado had as many as 20 people (led by chief costume breakdown artist John Cowell) attacking fabrics with cheese graters, sandpaper, bleach, paint and other devices, both mechanical and chemical, to make the clothing look appropriately dirty and distressed. "Sometimes we had to age hundreds of costumes in a week," recalls Delgado, who made approximately 1,500 outfits and rented 2,200 more to clothe the 4,500 actors and extras in the film. "I'd walk into the aging department and see people with blowtorches and sandblasters." The techniques used by costume designer Joanna Johnston to dress the Civil War-era milieu in "Lincoln" were less heavy-handed. For instance, sometimes cut fabric would be washed before it was sewn together, then washed again. Click here to read the entire article in Variety. ![]() Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas was atop a snow-covered Fortress Mountain in Alberta, Canada, shooting the final scenes for "Inception" in late November 2009, when he got the call on his cell phone: Steven Spielberg wanted to talk to him as soon as he got back to Los Angeles. Two weeks later, he was sitting in the director's office at DreamWorks discussing a bigscreen adaptation of Daniel W. Wilson's sci-fi novel "Robopocalypse."
"The book was still kind of being written," recalls Dyas, who had previously worked with Spielberg on 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." "And it was very unclear as to whether Steven was going to be directing this or producing it. [But] he had a twinkle in his eye and a very clear vision of what he wanted to do with the material." Click here to read the entire article in Variety. Also check out my other feature and the artist profiles I wrote for their special issue Below-the-Line Impact Report 2011. (As always, if you aren't a Variety subscriber, hold down the ESC key immediately after the page loads.) ![]() Production designer Jeannine Oppewall remembers the trouble her elderly aunt had understanding what in the world she did on the film "Tender Mercies" (1983)."She thought all you did was find the place and put the actors and the camera into it," laughs Oppewall, whose credits include "L.A. Confidential" and "Seabiscuit."
Nearly three decades later... the public's understanding of [the craft of art direction] is still on par with Oppewall's aunt. Click here to read the full story from Variety and find out what this has to do with "Gone With the Wind." ![]() When Tony Gilroy's mother heard that he was going to have his
younger brother John edit his directorial debut, Warner Bros.' "Michael Clayton," she was worried her boys would clash. It wasn't
an unreasonable fear. Any two people locked in an enclosed space
for weeks on end struggling to transform hours and hours of raw
footage into a concise, entertaining work of art are bound to have
conflicts.
Read the entire article here in The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() For viewers, the clarity of HD television has been a joyful epiphany, revealing heretofore unseen details like the fine thread of fabrics and individual tree leaves. It also shows every pimple, pockmark, line and wrinkle, along with any heavy-handed efforts to conceal them.
Consequently, TV makeup artists have had to step up their game. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() In a darkened room on the second floor of a nondescript building tucked away in an industrial area near Bob Hope Airport, a dozen or so young men and women sit at computer workstations equipped with dual 32-inch monitors that are wired into a powerful 300-machine, 1.5-petabyte Linux processing system.
These are the members of Reliance MediaWorks Burbank's image processing team, and they're studying and manipulating individual frames of classic and not-so-classic movies such as Michael Powell's 1943 epic "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" and Brian De Palma's campy 1974 rock 'n' roll frightfest "Phantom of the Paradise." Clicker here to read the entire article from Variety. Crafts Prodigies: Celebrating the Next Generation of Below the Line Stars
![]() Sound designer Alex Joseph sewing meat for "Hannibal."
Short of recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it's hard for those working in the crafts departments to pinpoint exactly when they've "arrived." In the case of an actor, the moment is heralded by media coverage, autograph requests and deferential treatment from industry suits and maitre d's. But many of the industry's top below-the-line talents are virtually unknown outside their disciplines and the circle of artists with whom they collaborate, so even recognition from within the filmmaking community can come as a surprise. "I'm shocked when people say, 'Oh, I've heard of you,' " says supervising sound editor Andrew DeCristofaro of Soundelux. "I think, 'Wow. You actually know who I am?' "
Although fame probably isn't the objective for those considering a career as a cinematographer, makeup artist, sound mixer, editor, production designer, visual effects supervisor or costume designer, they can become well-paid, in-demand artists, recognized for their signature talents by industry peers. Still, even highly skilled craftspeople who've spent years employed in these trades often have difficulty making the transition from anonymous worker bee toiling in the shadows to much sought-after artisan -- and there are as many paths to reaching that goal as there are fabric swatches in a costume designer's workshop. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() When it comes to cinema sound, it's not always about who makes the biggest bangs. Sometimes the best way to manipulate the viewer's emotions is to turn down the volume for a moment, if not the entire movie.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter, exploring the subtle sound work in the films No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum and There Will Be Blood. ![]() Click here to read my profiles of the visual effects work in Avatar, District 9, G.I. Joe and the Rise of the Cobra, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and 2012 in The Hollywood Reporter.
![]() In the Julia Child portion of "Julie & Julia," viewers are transported back to Paris of the '40s and '50s via ... eyebrows?
"Eyebrows really show a period," the film's makeup supervisor Kyra Panchenko says. "I was into shaping the eyebrows and making them very penciled, because that's how they were in the '40s." Click here to find out about other unusual ways movie craftspeople evoke the past in my article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() An ominous three-note motif repeats and fades as the gloss-black helmet locks into place... Then the familiar, slow, labored, mechanical inhale and exhale begins.
It's the emotional climax of Fox's "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" and the culmination of 30 years of sound design work by Ben Burtt and a long line of collaborators. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() When key makeup artist Geri Oppenheim
first gets her hands on the week's script for "Crossing Jordan," she
immediately scans it for corpses and unusual deaths. Are there any
particularly horrific injuries? Perhaps she'll need to call her
prosthetic suppliers Optic Nerve and order a dozen .22 caliber bullet
holes. Later, technical advisor Gary Kellerman of the Los Angeles
Coroners Office is likely to drop in for a consultation, often toting
bonus autopsy photos.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() Will there come a day when effects artists receive acting awards? I pose the question crafts people people the digital characters in "King Kong," "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," "War of the Worlds" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in this article from The Hollywood Reporter.
![]() When it comes to assembling raw footage to create a polished film, veteran editor Walter Murch says it's a lot like crafting a symphony."An editor's job is really just to keep his eyes open and see what the aesthetic and what the approach of the film is as it builds up rather than try to impose something that's articulated at the editorial level," says Murch, who has won Oscars as a film editor (1996's "The English Patient") and a sound designer ("Patient" and 1979's "Apocalypse Now"), as well as edited Universal's "Jarhead." "It's like playing jazz or something.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() A shot from "Blood Diamond," edited by Steven Rosenblum.
Anyone vaguely familiar with film history knows that rapid-fire film editing is nothing new. It was used to great effect as far back as the Odessa Steps sequence in 1926's "The Battleship Potemkin" and Luis Bunuel's influential 1929 short "Un Chien Andalou" on through to the shower scene in 1960's "Psycho" and 1964's "A Hard Day's Night," to cite a few examples.
But what was once daring is now commonplace. Today, aided by the speed and ease of nonlinear computer editing systems like Avid, editors routinely have films jumping back and forth through time and scrolling swiftly through multiple plots without visual or narrative signposts to indicate where they are in the story. And viewers raised on the dramatic juxtapositions of music videos, video games and other high-impact visual media barely blink an eye. But is all this quick cutting necessary or good, artistically speaking? Three-time Oscar nominee Steven Rosenblum, a contender this year for his editing of "Blood Diamond," isn't so sure. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter, which also features observations from Martin Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. ![]() USA Network's "Attila."
Imagine you're producing a lavish six-hour miniseries spectacular with authentic period costumes, hundreds of extras and an international star or two, but your entire production budget is only about the size of Tom Cruise's per-movie salary. You can't afford to make a film in Hollywood or anywhere else in the United States, so you consider Canada, England, Ireland or Australia, where the bulk of "runaway" productions go. But the governmental incentive programs that make shooting in these locales economically feasible require that you employ a crew that is largely native, meaning that you might be able to hire the American cinematographer and the Italian production designer you have your heart set on, but the support staffs they employ to shape their art will have to stay at home.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() For many decades following the arrival
of sync sound and color cinematography in the '20s and '30s, motion
picture production technology was largely static. Incremental changes
came... but the overall process remained a mechanical and photochemical
one rooted in capturing light on celluloid on practical sets designed
and built by hand ...
But just as the digital revolution opened up new worlds for filmmakers, it also created a wealth of issues for cinematographers, directors and productions designers. Click here to read the entire article from American Cinematographer. ![]() I take a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges faced by costumes designers on the TV series That '70s Show, Any Day Now and Farscape and the telefilms Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and The Great Gatsby in this article from The Hollywood Reporter.
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Costume Designers Fight Gender Bias and Pay Inequity
Costume designer Jennifer Johnson (“I, Tonya”) was blissfully unaware that she was less valued than her peers until she was given the wrong paycheck and discovered that the production designer she was working with on a low-budget film was getting paid a thousand dollars a week more than she was.
“I took it for granted that I was the head of a department, the same as production designers, and surely we were getting paid the same,” says Johnson. Maybe she was a bit naïve. And maybe her lower pay rate was a result of gender bias against a guild that is predominantly female. How the Digital Era is Changing How Directors Interact with Actors
Josh Brolin hardly looked tough shooting his role as super-villain Thanos in Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame,” dressed as he was in a skintight motion capture bodysuit with multicolored tracking markings, two HD cameras attached to headgear pointing at his dotted face, and a pole sticking up from the back of his vest holding a cardboard cutout of his character’s countenance above his head. But the sibling directing team of Anthony and Joe Russo still acted as if he were a badass.
“Brolin would love it that we would treat Thanos like he was a gangster character,” says younger brother Joe Russo. “We’d use terminology that would be reflective of that and say he’s a psychopath and he wants control, not he’s a giant purple creature who relates to the universe this way, so he could correlate it to a genre and character motivation that he could access.” Cinematographers Blaze New Trail in Digital World
The classic image of a cinematographer is that of a middle-age white male squinting into the viewfinder of a bulky 35mm Panavision camera, but that image is evolving, and not just because more women and people of color are working as DPs.
Production Designers Bring to Life Past and Future Worlds
![]() Historical accuracy is vital to a period film, but invariably reality must be bent to serve not just narrative expediency and budgetary limitations, but also the artists’ personal vision, as a sampling of this year’s awards contenders demonstrates.
For director Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama “Dunkirk” (pictured above), production designer Nathan Crowley went to great lengths to be true to the historical record ... But when it came time to flesh out the Allied forces on the beach, he used cutouts of soldiers and vehicles. Choppers vs. Drones: The Battle for Cinematic Air Supremacy
For decades, helicopters ruled the sky as Hollywood's go-to vehicle for capturing spectacular aerial shots. But in recent years they've been challenged by drones. Who's winning? I try to find the answer in my latest article for Variety, in which I visit the set of the CBS series "S.W.A.T." as they film an action sequence where star Shemar Moore hangs out the side of a helicopter, and get a demo from leading drone maker DJI.
Do Tight TV Schedules Put Stunt Performers in Danger?
It was supposed to be part of a routine fight scene. But when 33-year-old stuntman John Bernecker fell from a balcony on the Georgia set of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” on July 12, something went wrong. He missed the safety padding by inches, and his head hit the concrete 22 feet below. He died five hours later in an Atlanta hospital after being taken off life support.
The incident has renewed long-simmering concerns about set safety, especially as they pertain to television. Thanks to the increasing proliferation of original scripted programming on cable and streaming outlets, more and more shows are one-upping each other with movie-quality stunts. But they’re still shot on tight, small-screen schedules (typically nine days for a 60-minute episode), on budgets dwarfed by their big-screen counterparts. “As safe as you try to make things, and as much as you try to control everything in your power, there’s always going to be a level of risk,” says stunt coordinator Norm Douglass, Emmy-nominated for Fox’s “Gotham.” Drone Dangers Have Hollywood Worried
Matt Ragan loves telling directors how his drone can follow a car down the street at eye level in a tight shot, like a dolly without rails, then rise into the air like a crane, and soar into the sky like a helicopter.
“That seamless transition is something they really eat up,” says Ragan, an entrepreneur who launched Birds Eye of Big Sky, a company that provided drones to scout for “The Revenant,” among other films. But as versatile as drones are, they have drawbacks. Small remote-controlled aircraft can be hard to handle and are sometimes flown carelessly — as exemplified by a drone’s close call with a Lufthansa jet near LAX in March. Virtual Reality in Sports Poses Unique Challenges for Producers
“The average person thinks they’d love to stand on the sidelines to watch an NFL game,” says Cliff Plumer, president of Jaunt VR’s production arm, Jaunt Studio. “They’ll learn that it’s the worst place to stand. You can have an action all the way across the field, and it’ll seem very far away. So how you cover that for VR is much more challenging than traditional broadcast.”
Visual Effects Shop Makes Big Bangs for Netflix's 'Luke Cage'
When the writers of the new Netflix series “Luke Cage” included a scene in which the bad guys try to kill the hero by blowing up a building he’s in, they couldn’t have foreseen that it would take a VFX team a total of 130 worker days to make those quick keystrokes come to life.
Cinematographers Bring a Big Screen Look to Television
Twenty years ago, when cinematographer John S. Bartley won an Emmy for his work on “The X-Files,” the sci-fi series’ shadowy, cinematic look made it stand out amidst the bright, relatively flat visuals typical of TV at the time.
Today, hour-long TV dramas deliver such uniformly excellent visuals that many viewers find them virtually indistinguishable from what they see in movies. From Lucasfilm's "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," immediately post-Velvet Revolution in 1990, to the upcoming Amazon/Sky Channel historical drama "Britannia," I examine the evolving state of film and TV production in the Czech Republic in Variety.
TV shows increasingly serve up big screen-style action, but that doesn't mean they have cushy movie schedules to pull it off. In my article in Variety, I explore the challenges faced by the stunt coordinators behind some of this year's most Emmy-worthy action sequences in Netflix's "Daredevil," Starz's "Black Sails" and NBC's "Chicago Fire."
![]() I call on the directors of a gaggle of films (including "The Bourne Legacy," "The Expendables 2," "It's a Disaster" and "The Apparition") and ask what they learned from their below the line brethren in the lead story for Variety's Below the Line Impact Report.
In the same issue, I also profile stunt coordinators and second unit directors from such films as "The Bourne Legacy," "The Avengers" and "Mission Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" and talk to DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Weinstein Co. co-chairman Bob Weinstein and others about their adventures working with famed Hollywood attorney Bert Fields. I talk to the production designers and set decorators who crafted the looks for "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Into the Woods," "Mr. Turner" and "Unbroken" in this feature for Variety.
![]() With just 12 weeks to go before Paramount's "Hugo" was scheduled to lock picture on Nov. 7, VFX supervisor Rob Legato went to director Martin Scorsese and told him the film's elaborate opening sequence wasn't working. The 3D images of commuters moving mechanically through Paris' Montparnasse train station circa 1931, like interlocked gears in a giant machine, were "like a meal that's too rich," Legato says.
Click here to read my entire article from Variety's Eye on the Oscars: Art Direction, Costume Design & Makeup special issue. ![]() Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned, and there is no species of geek
more dedicated or passionate than the Trekkie (or Trekker, as they
prefer to be called). Roger Guyett, the visual effects supervisor for
Paramount's "Star Trek" prequel, knows this all too well.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'll meet someone on a dark and stormy night and he'll come at me with a machete because I didn't do something the way some hardcore fan would've done it," says Guyett, in a deadpan tone that suggests he's not quite kidding. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() When it comes to cinematography, there's no set greater than the great outdoors. But Mother Nature's lighting is not always perfect. Sometimes it has to be augmented by three Musco Light trailer rigs parked atop a bluff.
That's what it took for Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins to put a soft wash of moonlight over a valley strewn with corpses and bullet-riddled vehicles left over from a drug deal gone bad in Miramax's "No Country for Old Men." Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() In Variety's
Eye on the Oscars: Art Direction, Costumes & Makeup special issue, I take a look at how hair, makeup and costume work together to depict a forced gender transition in writer/director Pedro Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In" ![]() From the flying gore of exploding
wounds to the room-shaking whistle and
boom of 75mm shells, HBO's "The Pacific"
is probably the most graphic
depiction of the horrors of war to hit the small screen, outdoing even
2001's "Band of Brothers"...
Click here to read the entire article in The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() The scene this past summer was
said to resemble the classic 1939 feature “Gone With The Wind” after the siege of Atlanta, and the casualties were not soldiers but mixing boards, noise-reduction units, audio interfaces, components of Pro Tools suites and other high-end audio hardware.
The Saul Zaentz Film Center, an independent postproduction facility in Berkeley, Calif., that had hosted some 350 films -- including best sound Oscar-winners “The Right Stuff" (1983),“Amadeus” (1984) and “The English Patient” (1996) -- was being closed and stripped of its assets. For sound editor Nathan Gunn, the sight was not pretty. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() When costume designer Arianne Phillips was told by director James Mangold that their next film would be a remake of 1957's "3:10 to Yuma," she felt a flash of panic. As a girl growing up in the '70s, she would turn the TV channel from anything remotely "cowboy."
"It was kind of looming over us: the Western," Phillips says. "'We're making a Western.' But Jim made it clear from the very beginning that he didn't want the genre to intimidate or eclipse the honest work that was to be done." Click here to see my entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() Click here for a behind the scenes look at the art direction, cinematography costume design, editing, makeup and sound design work in Amelia, Avatar, A Serious Man, The Hurt Locker, Nine, Star Trek and Up in The Hollywood Reporter.
![]() It's tempting to put a decade into a tidy box, with a strict list of unique cultural and design attributes. In reality, no era is completely self-contained. Architecture, fashions and hairstyles all show the accumulated remnants of previous decades.
"Sometimes when people make period films, they seem to be saying, 'Oh, it's 1974. Everybody must be wearing wide ties,'" observes ["Zodiac"] constume designer Casey Storm. Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter, featuring No Country for Old Men, Atonement, Hairspray and Lust, Caution. ![]() Giving voice to a zombie isn't easy. Just ask Skip Lievsay, the supervising sound editor/sound rerecording mixer on Warner Bros.' "I Am Legend." It wasn't just a matter of him coming up with some cool noises. He also had to determine how human their sound could be, as well as how to communicate a wealth of emotions and ideas without using words -- a challenge compounded by the fact that the filmmakers had yet to finalize a look for the CG creatures when he embarked on the process ...
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() To see how drastically the look of television has changed during the past quarter-century, watch a vintage episode of "Starsky & Hutch" back-to-back with one of today's primetime police procedurals. Visually, they have about as much in common as granddad's home movies do with the "Star Wars" films — and it's the new shows that look like they were shot on Super 8.
Click here to read the entire article "Saturation Point?" from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() Fashioning contemporary looks for feature films requires a skilled, thoughtful approach, but a movie star dressed in an interpretation of an Indonesia-made Target knockoff simply doesn't pack the same visual wallop as two 19th century noblemen in brocade jackets dueling to the death against the backdrop of an ancient castle. That's why, when honoring the year's best in costume design, production design and hair and makeup, awards bodies--be they crafts guilds, critics groups or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--invariably give their nods to period work.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() When cinematographers are applauded for their work, the praise tends to focus on gorgeous panoramic views of wide-open spaces shot not by them, but by the second unit. But even when the work receiving the kudos is their own, the truth is, while lighting large sets and vast exteriors can be a challenge, the shots that truly move an audience are typically of the more intimate variety -- one's that enable viewers to feel what the characters are feeling. Oftentimes, the image is not postcard pretty. In the case of director Julian Schnabel's Miramax drama "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," they're not even consistently in focus.
Click here to read entire the article from The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() Click here for my Hollywood Reporter survey of below the line work vying for Oscars in 2005, featuring behind the scenes looks at The Aviator, Collateral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Million Dollar Baby, Finding Neverland, The Incredibles and more.
![]() Click
here for an in-depth look at how cinematographers, production designers and
directors communicated and collaborated on Star Wars: Episode III --
Revenge of the Sith, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Memoirs
of a Geisha and The Prestige from American Cinematographer.
![]() Sure, it's a little late, but you might still enjoy reading my analysis of the 2010 Oscar crafts race.
![]() Even later are my picks for shows
most likely to get some below the line Emmy love and my analysis of the 2009 Emmy crafts
race.
![]() TV craftspeople get their due at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards -- or, as Kathy Griffin likes to call them, the Schmemmys -- the most unpredictable show biz awards show this side of the Golden Globes.
Click here for the article in The Hollywood Reporter. ![]() Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski,
director Gore Verbinski and
production designer Rick Heinrichs
recount how they prepared for the seemingly impossible task of shooting
two Pirates of
the Caribbean sequels
simultaneously.
Click here to read the article from American Cinematographer. ![]() Production designers are taking advantage of the eye-popping
clarity of HD broadcast and treating viewers to surreal looks that push
the boundaries of creativity and good taste.
Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter featuring Pushing Daisies, CSI Miami, Ugly Betty and Smallvile. ![]() Fifty years ago, studios and exhibitors were reeling from a precipitous drop-off in movie attendance brought on by the advent of television. Desperate for a way to get people out of their living rooms and back into theaters, they hit on the idea of giving audiences something more than the straightforward viewing experiences they'd be getting from their little box at home. Thus, cinema processes -- including CinemaScope, Cinerama and Todd-AO -- were born, not only dramatically widening the screen but opening up the sound field with multichannel audio. Today, with a plethora of reasonably priced big-screen televisions and 5.1 DVD player/amplifier/speaker systems ... a well-shaking home entertainment setup that was once the province of audiophiles with six-figure incomes is now within reach of the average 12-year-old with a paper route ...
Are there any imminent audio innovations poised to wow today's jaded cinema audience? Click here to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter. |