Creative Inspiration
American Pastoral: Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow”
“It’s not capturing grand landscapes, but people who have very small lives.”
Creative Inspiration
Creative Inspiration
“You Should Have Left:” Using Light, Space and Time to Tell an Uneasy Story
“I think the idea of being trapped in a house that won’t let you leave is an experience that every single human being on...
Creative Inspiration
Meet Your Heroes: Making “John Lewis: Good Trouble”
“He’s kind of a living embodiment of the idea that our future will be better, and I think people need that right now.”
Creative Inspiration
“Relic:” How This Kind of Horror Hits Different
Director Natalie Erika James explains she wanted to use “a multigenerational story to create a character driven, emotionally resonant horror.”
Creative Inspiration
“Hamilton:” Getting It From the Stage to the Screen to the Stream
“ knew exactly what to do,” says “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail. “My job was to not get in the way of that.”
Creative Inspiration
“Tales from the Loop:” Making These Fantasies a Reality
“We didn’t know at the end of all of this whether or not there would be a place that would embrace the kind of...
Creative Inspiration
How “Little America” Captures the Immigrant Experience One Story at a Time
Inspired by true stories, Apple TV+ anthology series uses stylized, dramatized vignettes to go beyond the headlines.
Creative Inspiration
Making the Gorgeous Creep-Out That is “Shirley”
“When you’re in a Shirley Jackson story you sort of descend from a reality into a dream and you sort of don’t know when...
Creative Inspiration
How “Devs” Creator Alex Garland Fuses Tech, Tension and Apprehension Like Nobody Else
“It’s very clearly the case that technology and technological advances are happening at a rate that we are not able to keep up with.”
Creative Inspiration
“Da 5 Bloods:” How to Mix Materials and Deliver a Message That’s More Relevant Than Ever
“Only Spike will jump up and celebrate like the Knicks have scored when it’s a great edit.”
Creative Inspiration
“Hale County This Morning, This Evening:” When Your Film is Part Documentary, Part Poem
"The film closes the distance between people by inviting close looking, and in turn close feeling, and allows the audience the feeling of witnessing...
Creative Inspiration
Making “The Vast of Night,” a Micro-Budget Sci-Fi Miracle
“I wanted to signal that we are telling a familiar story. One you’ve probably seen before. But we’re going to be as inventive and...
Creative Inspiration
Boots Riley’s Bonkers/Brilliant Style on “Sorry to Bother You”
The revolution will be not be telemarketed.
Creative Inspiration
“Random Acts of Flyness:” Terence Nance Defines a New Visual Language
The HBO series "incorporates and commingles animation, documentary, confession, satire, music video, and magic-realist fantasia."
Creative Inspiration
“I Know This Much is True:” Shooting Derek Cianfrance’s Series Like a Documentary
Cianfrance brought his naturalistic approach to the series, eschewing rehearsals and much of the planning that often goes into narrative filmmaking in favor of...
Creative Inspiration
“Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered:” How to Make a Crime Documentary That’s More Than a Crime Documentary
Through many interviews and a trove of archival materials, the HBO series focuses on these murders, the victims and those they left behind.
Creative Inspiration
How Documentarian Matthew Wolf Tackled an Archive of 70,000 VHS Tapes for “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project”
A visionary media critic and public access television host, Marion Stokes sought to create a comprehensive archive of American television that would one day...
Creative Inspiration
“Charm City:” Three Years, Three Crews, Three Baltimore Communities, and A Lot of Questions
The film, director Marilyn Ness says, addresses "the most challenging questions facing police, citizens and the leaders tasked with protecting them."
Creative Inspiration
How That Eight-Minute, Single-Take Shot in “Homecoming” Happened
The complexity of the shot required detailed storyboards, a special set house built with removable walls, and a precisely timed choreography.
Consumption
View the Infinite Wonder of a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room
“A mirror-lined chamber populated with a dazzling and seemingly vast array of LED lights creating a disorienting sense of limitless space”
Creative Inspiration
All the Filmmaking Contests and Challenges We Can Find (Updated Daily)
Check back, create stuff, maybe win a thing!
Creative Inspiration
“The Painter and the Thief:” When the Story You’re Telling Takes All Kinds of Turns (and Just Keeps Going)
“Nothing beats reality. From the first day of shooting the subjects, we realized that we’d never know how the days would end up and...
Creative Inspiration
Once Upon a Time in “Hollywood:” The Lights, Camera(s) and Action for the Netflix Series
“Ryan wanted the obvious glitz and glamour but also to pull back the gilded curtain of Hollywood and expose the darker side of sex...
Creative Inspiration
What You Can’t See: Negative Space and Cinematography for “The Invisible Man”
“Leigh and I really loved how artificial and austere the motion control camera moves were,” says cinematographer Stefan Duscio
Creative Inspiration
“The Plot Against America:” Philip Roth’s “What If..?” Is David Simon’s “What Now?”
“Staying true to the intent of the book, while also doing the things necessary to make it a viable miniseries, it was kind of...
Creative Inspiration
“Spaceship Earth:” When the Story You’re Telling is True… and Also Science Fiction
“I assumed these images were staged for a science fiction film, but when I learned that this is in fact a real structure, and...
Creative Inspiration
First Dispatches from “The French Dispatch”
“Many times he will describe what he wants to shoot and I will think ‘that’s going to be really difficult,’ but somehow we always...
Creative Inspiration
How “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (and M. David Mullen) Locked Down the Long Take
Series DP David Mullen discusses the cinematography behind the Emmy-winning series, now in its third season on Amazon Prime.
Creative Inspiration
Achieving the Poetic Visuals for “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
“Believe the hype: The film is beautiful and shattering, a paean to the female gaze that’s shot by women, directed by a woman, and...
Creative Inspiration
A Day in the Life: “The Assistant” and How to Skillfully Tell a Terrible Story
“Condensing the action of one day in the life of someone at the lowest rung of the power hierarchy into an hour-and-a-half cinematic experience...
Creative Inspiration
Benh Zeitlin’s “Wendy” and How to Make Your Own Mythology
Director Benh Zeitlin: “Life should be a great adventure!”
Creative Inspiration
Fever Dreams: How Pablo Larraín Invents a Whole New Filmic Structure With “Ema”
“The film isn’t a closed-off piece; it allows for a space, a crack through which the spectator can enter and exit.”
Creative Inspiration
“Beastie Boys Story” and the Kind of Genius Concept of a “Live Documentary”
“More like an avant-garde comedy special or a particularly cool TED Talk than a traditional doc”
Creative Inspiration
True Detective: How “Home Before Dark” Is Something That Hasn’t Really Been Made Before
“It just felt like an amazing challenge, to make this world about a young woman that needs to be taken seriously."
Creative Inspiration
“Selah and the Spades:” How to Subvert a Genre and Make It Your Own
"It’s not about you having all the right ideas. As a director, it’s about how can we have the same goal and collaborate on...
Creative Inspiration
“Tiger King:” Obviously, We’re Going to Talk About This Bonkers Production
“The challenge was to create a new type of series that looks at the pathology of animal people and the ethics of keeping exotic...
Creative Inspiration
How Alan Yang’s “Tigertail” is Both an Immigrant Story… and a Very American One
“My editor was like, ‘Man, you bit off a lot with this one. It's in a different language, it's period, it's a...
Creative Inspiration
“Crip Camp:” How to Make the Personal Political (and Political Personal)
“You see that a group of folks with disabilities can rally around and be incredibly savvy and make some incredible decisions and plans and...
Creative Inspiration
“Emma.” and How to Make Your Movie a Tasty Treat
“I told all my departments,” explains “Emma.” director Autumn de Wilde, “the colors need to feel edible.”
Creative Inspiration
“Blow the Man Down:” It’s a Maine Murder Mystery Mashup
“We liked the idea of small-town Maine as a kind of ‘alternative Wild West’—a remote, on-the-fringe place with its own rules, familiar but still...
Creative Inspiration
One Big Score: Capturing the Frenetic Pace of The Safdie Bros.’ “Uncut Gems”
Filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie team with acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji for a high stakes thriller set in the Diamond District of New York...
Creative Inspiration
Stay Indoors Inspiration: Watch These 30 Amazing Music Videos (Possibly the Most Amazing of All Time)
Go inside the imaginations of directors like Spike Jonze, Michael Gondry, Dave Meyers, Dom & Nic, and OK Go’s resident genius Trish Sie