how they did it

  • Movie News

The Northman DP Jarin Blaschke on Staging the ‘Land of the Rus’ Battle Sequence

Early in The Northman, a team of elite warriors, which co-writer Sjón describes as “like a SEAL team,” raid a…

2 years ago
  • Movie News

Jackass Forever Director Jeff Tremaine on Its Nuttiest Stunt: The Cup Test

“Is it going to be as funny to watch middle-aged men get hit in the nuts?” asks Jackass Forever director…

2 years ago
  • Movie News

Clean Star Adrien Brody Shares How Life Experience Inspired His Vigilante Hero Story

Adrien Brody has always wanted to bring his childhood to life on screen. His upbringing amid the hustle and bustle…

2 years ago
  • Movie News

The Idea of a Castle: The Tragedy of Macbeth Production Designer Stefan Dechant on Carving Sets ‘Out of Light and Shadow’

Production designer Stefan Dechant has worked on films including The Call of the Wild, Kong: Skull Island and Jarhead —…

2 years ago
  • Directing

How They Did It: Recording Live Musical Performances Added Sonic Realism to The House of Tomorrow

My first feature film The House of Tomorrow was shot in a small town in Minnesota called North Branch, as…

6 years ago
  • Directing

How They Did It: Breaking Down the First Film to Cover Pioneering Feminist Intellectual Lou Andreas-Salomé

For years I have been fascinated by people with fractured and contradictory biographies, so-called enfants terribles. Writer, philosopher, and psychoanalyst…

6 years ago
  • Directing

So, You Want to Shoot in a War Zone? The Director of Scorched Earth Has Your Survival Guide

I stood on a precipice and surveyed the blackened, bombed-out, bullet-riddled village before me. As I leaned into the breeze (more of…

6 years ago
  • Producing

How They Did It: Juggling Three Hats to Make the 12-Day, Five-City Feature Toss It

How did Michele Remsen write, direct, produce, and act in her first feature film Toss It? Not a big enough question. How…

6 years ago
  • Directing

How They Did It: 24 Set-Ups + 12 Hours A Day x Three Days = A 22-Minute Short, “Kill the Light”

Shooting a short takes longer than you'd think. That is, unless, you utilize the wonderful world of preproduction to its…

6 years ago
  • Directing

How They Did It: The Director of Naples ’44 on Blending Adaptation, Documentary, and Fiction

Working on Naples ’44 was definitely one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in my brief moviemaking career. When you…

6 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: Shooting Mr. Roosevelt in 16MM Was Masochistic, But Paid Off, Says Its First-Time Director

When I turned in the feature script I had written and planned to star and direct, I think a few people…

6 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: A Spread-Out Schedule and Streamlined Crew Helped Negative Make Its Days

It was the middle of the night. We were out in the high desert of the Antelope Valley, north of…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: Shooting a Flashlit Prison Horror Movie, Against the Night, on the Sony a7S

From conception, my feature Against the Night, about a group of friends who sneak into an abandoned prison, was always…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: This Director Braved Wasps and Morning Sickness to Shoot Moko Jumbie in Trinidad While Pregnant

My first feature, Moko Jumbie, is a Gothic Caribbean love story set in rural Trinidad. Its protagonist is Asha, a young girl…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

Knowing When to End It: Our Doc On a Knife Edge Took Seven Years to Make. Here’s What We Learned on the Way

For several years, our documentary On a Knife Edge had a great beginning and a wonderful middle, but no end…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: The Director of One Less God Used "Re-Voicing" Tricks to Fine-Tune Foreign-Language Performances

The attacks of November 2008 in Mumbai brought India and much of the world to a standstill. Although India has…

7 years ago
  • Moviemaking

How They Did It: To Juice Its UFO Scenes, Phoenix Forgotten Used Air Vacuums, Taxidermied Animals and Other Practical FX

Before directing Phoenix Forgotten, I started out my career as a graphics guy, doing titles and animation with Adobe After…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: All Nighter Crams 35 Locations Into A 22-Day Shoot to Capture All of L.A. (Exclusive BTS Photos)

The biggest trick we had to pull off in making All Nighter was telling a story that takes place as…

7 years ago
  • Moviemaking

How They Did It: Cameras Fried Under the Heat as the Cannibal Desert Thriller Drifter Ate Its Rookie Director Alive

Making a post-apocalyptic, comic book-inspired, cannibal desert thriller on a ridiculously micro-budget for my first feature was a very traumatizing…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: Watch This Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Clip From Thriller Cut to the Chase (Video)

Cut to the Chase is a "Southern noir" crime thriller, the fourth from writer-director-star Blayne Weaver—whose ex-con character sometimes hits…

7 years ago
  • Directing

Only A Flesh Wound: How Being Stabbed While Shooting My Short Film Tested My Directing Skills Under Pressure

Here I was, at the young age of 24, about to shoot my passion project, a psychological thriller called Just One…

7 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: Pulling off an Icelandic Co-Production with Autumn Lights

Autumn Lights is the first independent American-Icelandic co-production in history to be both shot and completed in Iceland. Producer and…

8 years ago
  • How They Did It

How They Did It: Creating a Realistic Drop House Setting in Immigration Drama Kidnap Capital

My film Kidnap Capital is based on a hard-to-digest reality: Central Americans get kidnapped in the desert after crossing illegally…

8 years ago
  • Fall 2016

Shooting (for) the Moon: How Operation Avalanche Pulled Off a Reanimated Kubrick and a Tricky Legal Argument

“Do you think we could get the real Kubrick for this?” That was the question I asked my producer Matthew…

8 years ago