May 2021 – Below the Line

Composer Series: A Quiet Place Part II’s Marco Beltrami on Changing Things Up for the Horror Sequel

May 28, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

For over 25 years, Composer and Conductor Marco Beltrami has been a go-to music provider for filmmakers like Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, James Mangold and others, creating exciting and powerful scores for movies like the Scream series, Hellboy, Logan and more. Beltrani has received two Oscar nominations for his music for Mangold’s Western 3:10 to Yuma and for Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, and in 2018, Beltrami was nominated […]

End of Week Production Notes: HFPA Hires Diversity Consultant, Wes Anderson’s French Dispatch Gets Date, and More News

May 28, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

It’s Friday… finally! And we get a longer weekend where there’s actually some cool movies in theaters again, particularly John Krasinski‘s long-awaited horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II, but also Emma Stone and Emma Thompson in Disney’s Cruella. If you get the long Memorial Day weekend off from production, it would be a great time to catch up on movies. The long, ongoing controversy surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), who present the Golden […]

2022 Oscars Will Take Place a Month Later with Some COVID Eligibility Rules Intact

May 27, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Today, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) the date for the 94th Oscars ceremony, which will take place on March 27, 2022, a full month later than the usual late February airdate. Part of it is to give a little more time from the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl in February, but some of the eligibility and qualifying requirements that were created to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic […]

For All Mankind Cinematographer Stephen McNutt Creates A Luminous Look on Earth And Moon

May 27, 2021 Robin Milling Comments Off

When the space-themed television series For All Mankind debuted in November 2019, it presented an alternative reality to the year 1969. The biggest accomplishment in the history of space travel was turned upside down. The jarring and unsettling reality in the world of creator Ronald D. Moore was the fact that the Soviet Union had beat the United States to the moon. In Season 2, it’s 1983, almost two decades […]

Solos Costume Designer Shiona Turini on Dressing Actors for the Future, During a Pandemic

May 27, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

You only have to take one look at Shiona Turini’s website to marvel at the amazing career she’s had in fashion and style even before she was hired by Issa Rae to be the Costume Designer for her HBO show, Insecure. Turini’s latest project is David (Hunters) Weil’s seven-episode series, Solos, on Amazon Prime Video. It allowed her to design for and dress an amazing cast that includes Helen Mirren, […]

MRMC Releases Entry-Level Bolt Mini Model Mover

May 26, 2021 Staff Comments Off

The latest high-speed robotic arm from Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), a Nikon-owned company with over 50 years of expertise in motion control robotics for the film and entertainment industry, is a new entry-level machine allowing companies to enter the world of high-end motion control at previously unreachable price-points. Big on creativity, low on price, the Bolt Mini Model Mover is an extremely versatile, lightweight, 6-axis high-speed arm designed for […]

The Accidental Turitz: With a New Streaming Giant on the Horizon, Will Netflix’s Position Finally Be Threatened?

May 26, 2021 Neil Turitz Comments Off

A couple days ago, I was talking to a friend about the Streaming Wars, and how, up to a couple weeks ago, it appeared that Netflix had won it just by getting such a huge head start. This was before the bombshell news that AT&T was merging WarnerMedia with Discovery, thus turning the whole thing on its head, and possibly becoming a genuine gift to consumers of content. For a […]

Hump Day News Update: Amazon Offically Buys MGM, Blumhouse Firestarter Starts, and More News

May 26, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

It’s official! Amazon has bought MGM Pictures for a whopping $8.45 million, which means that the streaming studio that released Coming 2 America and Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse — both Paramount Pictures productions — now owns the rights to one of the biggest film and television libraries that goes back nearly 100 years. This isn’t the first time that MGM had been up for sale or sold, and much of this game of corporate hot potato over the past […]

The Nevers Art Department Team of Gemma Jackson and Tina Jones on the HBO Series

May 26, 2021 Daniel Eagan Comments Off

Picture a Victorian London where a certain few “Touched” have been given extraordinary powers: superhuman strength, the ability to predict the future, the power to heal wounds. They pose a huge threat to an addled male patriarchy. In The Nevers, Writer and Director Joss Whedon explores what happens when the known world careens into the unknown. Creating that new world was the job of Production Designer Gemma Jackson and Set […]

Review: Two Emmas Make Cruella a Deliciously Devilish Origin Story

May 26, 2021 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

Origin stories, including villain origin stories, are a core staple of the movie-going landscape in the 21st Century. A curious mind may seek to ask the creators of a particular such film—“why do we need this film?” As far as origin stories go, Disney’s upcoming Cruella, starring Emma Stone as the younger, hipper version of the puppy-napping baddie, does not quite answer that question. But what it lacks in philosophical […]