Crafts Spotlight – Below the Line

Awards

Below the Line’s Awards Season Film, Television Craft Interview Round-Up

December 24, 2022 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Now that it’s late December, we’re fully into the awards season where crafts people in the industry get to nominate their colleagues in various below-the-line categories. Unlike the past few years, we’re including both television and film craft here, because many of the guilds and societies will be nominating for their annual awards, which include both film and television. You can also get a quick reminder of some of our […]

Below the Line’s 2022 Television Craft Awards Round-Up

August 15, 2022 Staff Comments Off

We are currently in the voting phase for this year’s Emmy Awards, which continues through August 22, and Below the Line wants to make sure all our readers that are also Emmy voters have a single page to quickly learn about a particular show or some of the crafts people they might want to learn more about before filling out their Emmy ballot. This year’s 74th Emmys will take place […]

Elvis Producer Catherine Martin, Who Also Served as Costume and Production Designer, on Helping Her Husband Baz Luhrmann Bring an Icon Back to Life

June 23, 2022 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Catherine Martin is just an incredible craftsperson, an amazing woman who has won four Oscars for her work with her husband, director Baz Luhrmann — two each for her costumes and production design for Moulin Rouge! in 2001 and The Great Gatsby in 2013. She has been Luhrmann’s production designer going back to Strictly Ballroom in 1992, and she has designed the costumes for all of his films with the exception […]

Crafts Spotlight: Creating Jared Leto’s Prosthetics for House of Gucci

December 3, 2021 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

Jared Leto’s over-the-top performance as heir to a fashion fortune in House of Gucci garnered mixed reactions from critics, but one thing that is undeniable is that his look is memorable. In the film, he has to look like the bombastic Paolo Gucci did—balding, with long side chops on his face, a pudgy nose, and a big belly. The naturally handsome Leto obviously looks nothing like Paolo Gucci in real […]

The Conners Production Designer Jerry Dunn Gives Sitcom Homes A Familiar Comfort

November 18, 2021 Robin Milling Comments Off

For the last four seasons, ABC‘s The Conners have been welcomed into our living rooms from theirs, situated in a modest home in Lanford, Illinois, that resembles your average Midwestern household. Most of the drama and laughter involving Dan (John Goodman) and his new bride Louise (Katy Segal), Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), Becky (Lecy Goranson), Darlene (Sara Gilbert), and extended Conners relations, is centered around the iconic set of the Conners family […]

Dune Editor Joe Walker on Creating the Film’s Most Exciting Moments

November 5, 2021 Daniel Eagan Comments Off

Adapted from Frank Herbert‘s science-fiction novel, Dune sets in motion an intergalactic war that will determine the fates of several planets. Featuring an all-star cast, the movie has dominated box-offices to the extent that a sequel has already been announced. Director and co-writer Denis Villenueve first worked with editor Joe Walker on the 2015 film Sicario. They have since collaborated on Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. Walker has also forged […]

Crafts Spotlight: RBG and Julia Editor Carla Gutierrez on Latinas Behind the Scenes In Film

October 11, 2021 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

RBG, the 2018 award-winning documentary about the life of only the second woman ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court was a testament to the important influence of women in our society in more ways than one. Not only was the film’s focus—the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a pioneer with her own life story, she worked tirelessly to advance gender equality in the law everywhere. Behind the scenes, two […]

Artist Profile: The Nevers Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey

May 14, 2021 Daniel Eagan Comments Off

In an alternate Victorian England, a mysterious phenomenon has given the “Touched” spectral gifts: superhuman strength, visions into the future, speaking in tongues. In The Nevers, streaming on HBO, Amalia (played by Laura Donnelly) searches for answers to the Touched before authorities can imprison them. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey shot the first two episodes of the series, establishing the look and tone of a nineteenth-century London filled with fog, gas lights, […]

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Production Designer Mark Ricker on Constructing a Split-Level Recording Studio

February 16, 2021 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the Denzel Washington-produced film based on the August Wilson play, is a technical delight in addition to an acting powerhouse. As previously reported, the film covers a particular episode in the famed singer’s life (played by Viola Davis), as she was trying to make a record in a Chicago studio in the summer of 1927, although the movie was actually shot in Pittsburgh. To help, she enlists […]

Craft Spotlight on the Artisans of Greyhound

February 10, 2021 Sarah Musnicky Comments Off

In Greyhound, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ernest Krause is assigned to lead an Allied convoy across the Atlantic during World War II. As a first-time captain, the pressure is on. Heightening the pressure, however, is that his convoy is being pursued by German U-boats. Little does Krause know that his first wartime mission is something much more. His mission is one of many that would come to be known as the […]