Contender Portfolios – Below the Line

Composer Series: Carter Burwell on Scoring The Morning Show… and Macbeth

December 6, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

If you’re a fan of the Coen Brothers’ multitude of movies, you’re likely to be intimately familiar with the music of Carter Burwell, who has been scoring the brothers’ movies going right back to their 1984 debut, Blood Simple. Most recently, Burwell provided the ominous and haunting score for Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, which stars Denzel Washington as the title character and (Joel’s own wife) Frances McDormand as […]

Below the Line’s 2021 Television Craft Awards Round-Up

August 21, 2021 Staff Comments Off

Emmy Awards nominations are well under away for the next week, and as Below the Line did with the film-related crafts during Oscar season, we want to give our Emmy voter readers one single page they can bookmark in order to quickly learn about a particular show or some of the crafts people that they might want to learn more about before filling out that Emmy ballot by June 28. Emmy […]

Ratched Production Designer Judy Becker Channels Old Postcards for Ryan Murphy Series

June 26, 2021 Sarah Musnicky Comments Off

Netflix’s Ratched series explores Nurse Ratched’s life prior to the events of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. In this visual splendor of a series, viewers are taken to post-World War II Northern California, where we are introduced to Mildred Ratched (played by Sarah Paulson). While the character is very much the focus of the series, the production design is one of many highlights that draws the viewer in. From the glamorous psychiatric […]

Contender Profile: Star Trek: Discovery Editor Jon Dudkowski

June 24, 2021 Daniel Eagan Comments Off

Over three seasons, the crew of the starship Discovery has traveled through galaxies and centuries, stopping wars, ending tyrannies, battling enemies from across more than one universe. In each encounter, they adhere to the principles laid out by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. As the third season starts, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) has been separated from her ship and flung through a wormhole hundreds of years into the future. The […]

Small Axe Music Supervisor Ed Bailie Helps Create the Perfect Soundtrack for the Steve McQueen Limited Series

June 23, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Every once in a while, an interview gets away from us, and that is definitely the case with this interview with Music Supervisor Ed Bailie, which was conducted way back in January when Steve McQueen’s Small Axe Anthology first streamed on Amazon Prime Video. But it was a great interview. In fact, if you were ever interested in the job of music supervisor, what they do and how they do […]

Contender Profile: The Real World Homecoming: New York Editor Jacob Lane

June 21, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

If you were of a certain age in 1992, then you remember watching the first season of MTV’s The Real World, but we were all probably too young to realize at the time that the show would start a wave of what would later be called “reality TV.” The first season, which brought a group of young people from all over the country and put them up in a luxurious Soho […]

Girls5eva Costume Designer Tina Nigro Mixes ’90s Girl Group Getups With Real Clothes

June 18, 2021 Robin Milling Comments Off

The Peacock series, Girls5eva, is named for the one-hit-wonder girl group from the ’90s. In the series, their members are made up of Grammy winners Sara Bareilles and Renée Elise Goldsberry, comedienne Paula Pell, and actress Busy Philipps. When an inopportune gig to back up a young rapper on The Jimmy Fallon Show gets the girls back together over a decade later, they reunite despite growing out of their popstar getups. […]

Contender Profile: Servant Production Designer Naaman Marshall

June 18, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Production Designer Naaman Marshall, ADG, has worked up through the ranks of the art department beginning 20 years ago working in the art department for Mission: Impossible II. Since then, he’s worked on a number of high-profile movies as either Art Director (The Dark Knight, After Earth) or Production Designer (Don’t Breathe, The Visitor). In fact, Marshall only transitioned to television in recent years as Art Director on HBO’s Westworld, […]

Contender Profile: WWE Production Designer Jason Robinson on Creating Big Fan Experiences During Pandemic

June 17, 2021 Edward Douglas Comments Off

When you talk to almost any production designer working in movies or television, almost 90% of the time, their interest in designing sets goes back to their initial work in theater, even if it’s just in school or at a community theater. Although we frequently run interviews with production designers who work in the realm of film and television, there’s one avenue of television that just hasn’t gotten the amount […]

Mare of Easttown Director Craig Zobel Talks About Making the Haunting HBO Thriller

June 16, 2021 Daniel Eagan Comments Off

In trying to solve the murder of a local teen, Detective Sergeant Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is forced to confront a past she has tried to avoid. What Mare uncovers might threaten her close friends as well as her enemies. And it’s hard to keep secrets in a tight-knit community where everyone seems to be related. Created and written by Brad Ingelsby, Mare of Easttown is an HBO limited series […]