Although the future of television has never been more uncertain, the need for fresh, creative voices has never been stronger. Even with threats of artificial intelligence and the…
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Although the future of television has never been more uncertain, the need for fresh, creative voices has never been stronger. Even with threats of artificial intelligence and the aftershocks of industry-wide strikes looming overhead, 2024 has been a knockout year for TV thanks to the work of so many talented artisans behind the scenes.
At the Creative Collaborators panel during this year’s Variety’s A Night With Artisans, hosted by Variety’s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay, the industry’s most revered casting directors, editors, composers and production designers came together to discuss how they brought some of the biggest shows of 2024 to life.
Panel guests included casting director of “Masters of the Air” Lucy Bevan; supervising sound editor of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” Ben Cook; set decorator of “Palm Royale” Ellen Reede; production designer of “3 Body Problem” Deborah Riley; composer of the “Tattooist of Auschwitz” Kara Talve; production designer of “Hacks” Rob Tokarz’ and lead visual effects supervisor of “Star Trek Discovery” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” Jason Zimmerman.
Bevan was lucky enough to land two of the hottest stars in Hollywood in Barry Keoghan and Austin Butler for “Masters of the Air”. In the case of Butler, Bevan managed to cast him as Maj. Gale Cleven before he exploded to worldwide recognition as The King of Rock and Roll in Baz Lurhmann’s “Elvis.”
“He was in the early stages of ‘Elvis.’ He was…rehearsing [when] he auditioned. We read him, we read Callum [Turner] and we started with them,” Bevan explained. “Callum had already done quite a bit of work in the U.K. very well and he was coming up and we knew Austin had got this “Elvis” job, and [they] auditioned. We started with those two and then we built the ensemble around them.”
Reede had similar luck with the talent on “Palm Royale,” with the all-star cast including Kristen Wiig, Carol Burnett, Laura Dern, Ricky Martin and Allison Janney. With the players set in their roles, Reede’s job was to turn Hollywood’s Paramount Studios into 1960s Florida. One of the most complex set builds of the show was creating the massive outdoor tent for the grand finale, which takes at the most exclusive party in Palm Beach: “The Beach Ball.”
“It literally started on the pipes that were coming from the perms at Paramount and then it was hand-draped, old-school Hollywood style. We used over 7,000 yards of fabric, which we donated afterward,” Reede explained. “And then it started with a sketch with the production designer, Jon Carlos. He really sketched out the whole tent and came up with what the tent would look like.”
“The entire episode was in this tent, so it couldn’t just be in one room, so we had multiple rooms off of the tent,” Reede added. “So there were these beautiful side areas that they would go into and have different scenes in, one of which looked out at the beach.”
Fellow set designer Riley had a different set of challenges for Netflix’s adaptation of “3 Body Problem.” With so many alien worlds to create, she had to depend on her showrunners to help bring the story to television in an authentic way.
“I really had to rely on the fact that I knew [David Benioff and D.B. Weiss], our showrunners, from ‘Game of Thrones,’ and what I learned from them about the world of dragons applied directly to the world of science fiction. And the secret to ‘Thrones’ was treating the dragons like they were dogs,” Riely said. “We had to really believe that these things could exist and believe in the world, so you could believe in dragons. And in the case of ‘3 Body Problem,’ it was you have to believe in the science in order to believe in the show.”
“So in that way, science fiction in my head became science fact,” Riley added. “And if I could sell that aspect of the show, it felt to me like everything else would follow.”
Tokarz relished discussing the Christmas episode of “Hacks.” After three seasons, Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) love for the holiday paid off. Her Vegas mansion was turned into a Winter Wonderland.
Tokarz said, “We were able to do is call back to previous seasons. We used the Nutcrackers from season one. We had a Christmas room full of Deborah’s decorations that we folded into it.” He continued, “What made it incredibly challenging though is the schedule that we had. We would dress our permanent set, undress the permanent set, redress the set for Christmas, and then move to our mansion location where we would dress the mansion location to match and then see the exterior of the mansion with snow machines.” In the middle of it all, the writers strike happened, but in the end it all came together. He added, “I feel it was a testament to Deb’s love of Christmas.”
Talve shared the collaborative process of working with Hans Zimmer on the score for “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.” The key was not to anchor it in sentimentality.
Talve shared a story about her grandmother’s piano which was the heart of the show’s music. She said, “When she was nine years old, the Nazis came and arrested her entire family in Paris. And when they arrived at her family’s flat, she wasn’t on the list. So somehow miraculously she wasn’t to be arrested. Of course, the officers looked at her and said, “Well, who’s that?” And her mother pushed her out of the way, and in that moment, she fled through the fire escape to her piano teacher’s flat and her piano teacher hid her for the duration of the war.” Talve added, “That piano is sitting in my studio now.”
Watch the full conversation above.