Marvel
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“Over-Coverge is the Enemy of Style”: DP Jules O’Loughlin on The Old Man and Ms. Marvel
In Disney’s Ms. Marvel, a teen in an exuberantly colored Jersey City discovers super powers after slipping a magical bangle on her wrist. In FX’s The Old Man, a septuagenarian dusts off a long-dormant aptitude for violence when his former life as a CIA operative catches up with him. In the overlapping Venn diagram of these seemingly disparate shows, you’ll find cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin. The Australian DP shot two episodes of each series, which also share critical flashbacks set on different continents than their main story, as well as shoots that were greatly affected by COVID. With both shows now […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jul 27, 2022 -
“If We were Doing Inserts, We Could Cut Them In as We Were Shooting”: 2nd Unit DP Ross Emery on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the Matrix Trilogy
A 2nd unit DP must be a chameleon who can bend their own style to the shape of the main unit cinematographer. For Australian DP Ross Emery, that can mean replicating the regimented classical approach of someone like William Fraker on one picture, then recreating the instinctual fluidity of Dariusz Wolski on the next. For his latest project, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Emery once again finds himself emulating main unit cinematographer Bill Pope, who he collaborated with on The Matrix trilogy two decades ago. Emery —whose career includes main unit DP credits on The Wolverine […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 5, 2021 -
“It’s My Job to Make Sure That the Viewer Looks at the Right Thing”: DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw on Loki
With two dozen films since 2008 and 60-odd years of comics, there’s a nearly infinite amount of source material to pull inspiration from when embarking on a new endeavor in the Marvel Universe. But what makes the new Disney+ series Loki such a visual delight is how it derives inspiration from beyond the bounds of that universe. Melding classic sci-fi and midcentury modern design, Loki is “Blade Runner meets Mad Men,” embedding the titular God of Mischief into a dystopian bureaucracy bent to the aesthetic peculiarities of Gilliam, Kubrick and Fincher. With the show’s entire first season now available on […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jul 29, 2021 -
Sitcom Boot Camp: Matt Shakman on WandaVision
In a world where most episodic directors tend to specialize in hour-long dramas or half-hour comedies—and some specialize even further within those formats, becoming known for procedurals or prestige dramas or multi-cam sitcoms—Matt Shakman might be the most versatile filmmaker working in television today. He has directed one of the funniest comedies on TV (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), one of the largest scale and most popular premium cable series (Game of Thrones) and was behind some of the best episodes of Succession, Fargo and Mad Men. As comfortable with network crowd-pleasers like The Good Wife as he is at the […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 27, 2021 -
“The Marvel Paradigm is to Come at It Like a Movie”: Kari Skogland on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Director Kari Skogland has long been a master of tonally complex television, having helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead and many other beloved series; she also executive produced and directed several episodes of one of the best limited series of the last ten years, the Showtime Roger Ailes drama The Loudest Voice. Yet the best work of her career is her most recent, as the director of all six episodes of Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. An extraordinarily ambitious expansion of the Marvel universe that takes full advantage of the opportunities television […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 25, 2021 -
“The Weather Doesn’t Care What Your Budget Is”: Captain Marvel Colorist Doug Delaney on the Marvel Cinematic Universe
When Avengers: Endgame hits theaters in a few weeks, it will conclude a chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that encompasses 22 films over more than a decade. Considering the disparate tones, settings and filmmakers involved in the “Infinity Saga,” the fact that the movies fit so seamlessly together and have been so consistently entertaining is a remarkable achievement. Part of the magic trick of integrating the superhero adventures into a cohesive whole comes from the work of colorists, who have been entrusted with ensuring the Tesseract glows the same shade of blue whether it appears in Thor, Infinity War or the […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 4, 2019 -
Production Designer Hannah Beachler on Building Black Panther
Hidden in the midst of a dense African forest, Wakanda’s opulent capital of Golden City is the centerpiece of production designer Hannah Beachler’s world building in Marvel’s Black Panther. However, Beachler’s work on the film extends well beyond that vibrant Afrofuturist utopia, stretching from an Oakland apartment complex to a tony London art museum to a lavish subterranean South Korean casino. Before landing the job — which reunited her with Fruitvale Station and Creed director Ryan Coogler — Beachler wasn’t particularly familiar with the titular Marvel superhero or his isolationist homeland of Wakanda. Luckily, she knew someone who was. “I’d […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 17, 2018 -
The Truth About Hollywood: On Ben Fritz’s The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies
Hollywood has been transformed. The six major studios — Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount — have all changed significantly. Few filmmakers understand how profound these changes have been and how they have altered their opportunities. What follows is my review of a recently published book, The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies, that opened my eyes to the new configuration of studio filmmaking. It was written by Ben Fritz, who has been covering the entertainment industry since 2004 for Variety, the Los Angeles Times and currently the Wall Street Journal. The goal of […]
by Peter Broderick on Jun 18, 2018 -
DP Rachel Morrison on Black Panther, Scaling Up for Marvel and 10-Hour Days
I’ve never interviewed a cinematographer who thought they had enough time or enough money — not once, no matter how big or how small the movie. With Black Panther, Rachel Morrison moved from the indie world to the gilded soundstages of the “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” a land of $150 million budgets and 100-day shooting schedules. So did the recent Oscar nominee feel like she had everything she needed? “No, not even close,” laughs Morrison, who earned the Marvel gig after her work on Fruitvale Station, Dope and Mudbound. “I had the naive expectation that once you get to that level […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 12, 2018 -
Cosmic Mash-Up: James Gunn Talks Making Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 With Bobcat Goldthwait
Sheer, unbridled glee — it’s not an emotion one would associate with today’s increasingly portentous blockbusters, their apocalyptic grimness ineffectively untempered by their series of rote one-liners. Indeed, while there is certainly a place for the adult-themed superhero movies following in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and a certain fascination to the interlocking narratives of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, too often in superhero movies one hopes for more of the out-there, the bizarre and, even, the childlike. All those qualities were what fueled the unexpected success of Marvel’s 2014 picture Guardians of the Galaxy, in which a misfit […]
by Bobcat Goldthwait on Apr 13, 2017
