Westworld
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Evil Star Katja Herbers on Over-Directing: I Know How Not to Listen” (Back to One, Episode 216)
Dutch actor Katja Herbers plays forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard on the hit series Evil, which just finished its third season at Paramount+. On this episode, she talks about how saying no to the audition actually secured her the role, and hitting it off with “the Kings” (show runners Robert and Michelle King) helped her feel ownership of it. We get into the beautiful weeds about the pitfalls of over-directing and how she often simply ignores direction or translates it into something she can use. She explains why laboring over an emotional through-line is unnecessary, how working with the girls that […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Aug 16, 2022 -
Trumpian Images
“Baby, there’s no storm outside.” —from Take Shelter In his now classic book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Siegfried Kracauer looked for cinematic hints, clues and warnings about the rise of Naziism and Hitler in pre-War Germany. Published by Princeton University Press in 1947 — just two years after the end of the war — his book was among the first to interrogate the deep architecture of film as a psychological state, one that does not directly mirror but rather reflects in a distorted way the “secret history” of mass psychology that, in his […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Jan 18, 2017 -
Podcast: Alix Lambert Interviews Westworld Stunt Coordinator Mike Watson
In one of our occasional Filmmaker podcasts, director, artist and writer Alix Lambert interviews here stunt coordinator Mike Watson, whose work can be seen on HBO’s Westworld, which has its season finale tomorrow night. In addition to Westworld, Watson’s over 70 credits include films like Django Unchained, Hail Caesar!, Lost Highway, Rambo 3 and Silverardo. He was also the stunt coordinator for HBO’s Deadworld, which Lambert wrote for, and for the network’s subsequent David Milch series, John from Cincinnati, on which Lambert was an associate producer. In this wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss Watson’s background, what makes a good fight […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 3, 2016 -
Shooting Film Against the Digital Wave: DP Paul Cameron on Westworld
Considering cinematographer Paul Cameron is responsible for a portion of the seminal digital photography in Michael Mann’s Collateral, one might assume Cameron is a proselytizer of the digital revolution. Not so — Cameron remains an ardent devotee of celluloid, extolling its virtues as an “elegant, eloquent” medium. With the blessing of series co-creator Jonathan Nolan, Cameron sped film through the gate on the HBO pilot for Westworld. An extension of Michael Crichton’s taut 1973 sci-fi thriller about an Old West theme park where “guests” indulge their baser desires through interactions with robot “hosts,” this new Westworld digs its spurs into […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 3, 2016
