The Imitation Game‘s Production Designer Maria Djurkovic – Part I
All the buzz for The Imitation Game is surrounding the phenomenal performance of Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Alan Turing, the mathematician and logistician who, along with a team of linguists, chess players and logicians helped break Germany’s Enigma code during World War II. Turing was a genius, and a difficult, unusual man, and Cumberbatch’s performance is indeed a marvel, bringing this still relatively unknown enigma (to American audiences) to vivid life.
At Long Last Filmgoers Will Head Into the Woods
Into the Woods began its life as a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, debuting on Broadway on November 5, 1987 at the Martin Beck Theater. Former New York Times' theater critic Frank Rich (later an Op-Ed writer, now an editor-at-large at New York Magazine) wrote in his review, "The characters of ''Into the Woods" may be figures from children's literature, but their journey is the same painful,
Harsh Conditions Bring out the Best in The Homesman‘s Crew
When we interviewed Marco Beltrami, he was particularly jazzed up about the work he did for Tommy Lee Jones’ upcoming film The Homesman. Beltrami is the type of composer who seeks out directors (as he did with Joon-ho Bong for Snowpiercer) and he was excited about Jones’ second directorial effort. The film’s set in the punishing Nebraska frontier in the middle of the 19th century. This inspired Beltrami to record a lot of his score outdoors,
Interstellar’s Out of This World Crew
In a little over two weeks, on November 7, Christopher Nolan’s long awaited Interstellar will finally hit screens across the country. Jeff Jensen’s cover story for Entertainment Weekly uncovered a lot of juicy details which add up to what sounds like the director's most personal, and possibly ambitious, film yet. When Jensen was on set in October of 2013, the film's code name was Flora's Letter. As Jessica Chastain told Jensen at the time,
Longtime Collaborators Helped David Fincher Find Gone Girl
The New York Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of David Fincher’s Gone Girl last Friday, and boy, did it deliver. Fincher’s directing chops are never in question, and Gillian Flynn’s novel is perhaps perfectly suited for his particular skill set. Gone Girl combines his instinctual way around pitch-black thrillers (Se7en, Zodiac, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), and offbeat, grimy comedies (Fight Club) and delivers 148 compelling minutes without any evident lull.
Building the Sensational Sets of The Maze Runner
One way to jumpstart your film career is to create your own mini-masterpiece, have it blow up on YouTube, and force Hollywood to come knocking. This was the case for animator/director Wes Ball, whose 2012 short film Ruin grabbed the attention of 20th Century Fox. Ball was called to a meeting where the longtime animator was asked to take the reigns on an adaptation of a popular 2009 sci-fi YA novel. While there, he successfully pitched them to turn
Into the Storm Brews a Mighty Economic Wind in Michigan
The premise of Into the Storm is simple and terrifying; a series of tornados, each more violent than the next, lays waste to a small town. These freakish storm systems (achieving EF5 status—the highest metric on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds of more than 200 miles per hour) behave erratically and do things they haven’t done before, sending terrified residents under ground (if they’re lucky) and confuse and humble the storm chasers who follow and film them.
Space Creators: Building the Guardians of the Galaxy
James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy opens on Earth, where a young Peter Quill sits alone in a hospital corridor, listening to his walkman. Prop master Barry Gibbs lead the search for the perfect cassette player, which took four months of internet searching and yielded only 16 cassette players in various states of disrepair that would be suitable for the film. Every detail in the film was chosen on purpose, often at great effort. In our opening scene,
Comic-Con 2014: A Snapshot of Films, Panels & Events
Comic-Con and its overflowing abundance is upon us once again. We’ll help guide you through the costumed chaos with a selection of offerings from top movie studios, the “only at Comic-Con” events, and our own wish list of events.
Major Studio Showings:
Thursday, July 24
11:15am Toy Story That Time Forgot (Disney)
If the words “you’ve got a friend in me” set your heart aflutter,
How Transformers Construction Coordinator Jonas Kirk Managed a Crew of 200
The role of the construction coordinator is a massive one. For Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, Jonas Kirk was the man responsible for the building and manufacturing of the massive sets the film required, which meant bringing in all the equipment, building and moving massive structures, managing the production budget and keeping his 200-man crew on schedule and on budget.
This was a tall order considering the production took place in Texas,
The Grand Budapest Hotel Production Designer Adam Stockhausen Goes Handmade
Seven years ago, a young art director was given an appropriately quirky assignment on the set of The Darjeeling Limited: design the dishes for the dining cabin of Wes Anderson’s India-traversing train. It took “an awful lot of versions” to win over the discerning director, but Adam Stockhausen must have made a good impression—since then, he has served as production designer on Anderson’s last two films, Moonrise Kingdom and The
Building a Plane From Scratch With the Production Designer of Non-Stop
Have you ever walked through a missile silo? What about into the Oval Office or onto an alien planet? We didn’t think so. But chances are each of the millions of moviegoers who have flocked to see Non-Stop know what the inside of an airplane looks like. And since he was charged with creating an interior that looked totally realistic and doubled as a functional movie set, that posed a pretty big challenge for production designer Alec Hammond.
In Their Words: Some of This Year’s Oscar Nominees on Their Craft, Part I
One of the strongest years in recent cinema history will officially come to a close this Sunday at the 86th annual Academy Awards. What just about everyone agrees on is that, with a few exceptions (most people seem fairly convinced Cate Blanchett has Best Actress locked up, for example), it’s anyone’s guess (including our social awards season app, the DataViz—but it's doing just a little bit more than guessing) who might take home Oscar.
The Monuments Men Production Designer Jim Bissell Re-Creates a Ruined Europe
In The Monuments Men, art experts weave through battlefields and behind enemy lines in order to find art looted by the Nazis. Before he was a dictator, Adolf Hitler was an art student, and he planned to take the best art from the countries he conquered and assemble it in a museum that would rival the Louvre in Paris. It was the act of a lunatic, and The Monuments Men had to capture that scope.
Production Designer K.K. Barrett on Creating Her’s Beautiful Future
One walks out of the theater after seeing writer/director Spike Jonze’s Her with lots of different feelings. First, and perhaps foremost, is a kind of bittersweet hope—similar to the way Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes you feel when it ends. These are films about love, warts and all, and what we’ll put ourselves through in pursuit of it.
In Sunshine,
The Many Moving Parts to The LEGO Movie
The toys and games of our youth have long been fodder for filmmakers. There have been six films (all direct-to-video, it should be noted) made from Mattel’s ‘American Girls’ line. Dungeons & Dragons was made into a feature film in 2000 and starred Oscar winning actor Jeremy Irons. G.I. Joe has been called into duty twice, in 2009 and just this year, in monster big budget spectacles. Transformers have been clanging their multi-purpose parts together since 2007 in three films,
Star Wars: Episode VII’s Galaxy of Talent Behind J.J. Abrams
As useful as IMDBpro is, it’s recommendable to take the “projects in development” rubric with at least a grain or two of salt. Because really, how could one man have 28 projects in development, including the next Star Trek and Mission Impossible, while also working on a little film franchise called Star Wars?
If it were any one other than J.J. Abrams, you’d be right to assume that most of these would fall through,
Breaking Down Rom-Com Master Richard Curtis’s About Time
Richard Curtis wrote three of the most beloved romantic comedies of the mid 90s and early 2000s—in a remarkable string, he penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary (which he co-wrote with Helen Fielding and Andrew Davies). His directorial debut in 2003, Love Actually, which he also wrote, was an international success and helped create cross-pond love for fantastic actors like Bill Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor (now poised for an Oscar nomination for his starring role in 12 Years a Slave),
Building the Perfect Engine: The Filmmakers Behind Universal’s Rush
Ron Howard’s Rush hits theaters September 20, and early reviews are hailing it as one of the greatest racing movies of all time. Centered on the intense, often brutal rivalry between Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) during the 1976 Formula 1 season, Rush itself was built with the scrutiny and care of a great race car team. Once Peter Morgan's script made the rounds, an incredible team of filmmakers was assembled to create one of the year's most exciting films,
From Return of the Jedi to Jack the Giant Slayer, the Worlds of Production Designer Gavin Bocquet
Starting out as a draftsman on Return of the Jedi (1983), Gavin Bocquet’s career as a production designer coincided with the development and implementation of CGI technology into all spheres of the movie business. Bocquet was at the forefront of that revolution, working regularly for George Lucas, honing his craft on the TV show The Young Indiana Jones Adventures and the trilogy of Star Wars prequels. His career reflects the developing integration between practical production design and ever evolving CGI technology.
