What does it take to make a great scene possible? A whole lot of attention to detail, for starters. In our Making a Scene series we talk to a wide range of the people who help a scene come together, from the actors and writers to the costumers and production designers. Everyone says it takes a village to make a movie happen, but that’s never clearer than when you learn, say, how it takes a combination of death metal, Styrofoam walls, and a very committed performer to make a climactic season finale happen.
I’m Katey Rich and I loved learning about how that specific combination went into the season four finale of What We Do in the Shadows, specifically the moment in which the energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) resumes his adult, deeply annoying form. Whitney Friedlander talked to Proksch, episode director Kyle Newacheck, and others about the transformation, which involved Robinson discovering a secret hidden hallway in his home. It’s a moment of cinematic magic—and the craftspeople are literally the ones who make the magic happen.
As Emmy voting nears (ballots are out June 15!) we’re having an excellent time here at Awards Insider talking to the people who make these shows, on all sides of the camera. Derek Lawrence got on the horn with John Lithgow and Jeff Bridges, two veteran actors whose bond was palpable even on a Zoom screen (sample quote from Bridges: “It’s all been such a gas, John. Playing with you is so much fun.”). On the Little Gold Men podcast, David Canfield talked to Swarm star Dominique Fishback, and Rebecca Ford talked to Black Bird star Paul Walter Hauser, two actors whose horizons have been forever broadened by their latest roles. And in the June issue of Vanity Fair, my colleague Anthony Breznican and I spoke to the creators and production designers who created four of the most indelible, unsung heroes of the past year of television: the props.
If you’re already looking a bit past Emmy season, Anthony has you covered there as well with an exclusive first look at Zack Snyder’s ambitious new film Rebel Moon, coming to Netflix December 22. An entirely original sci-fi world “full of cyborg warriors with molten-metal swords, giant half-humanoid arachnids, and ancient robots,” as Anthony puts it, it’s a film with plenty of its own stories to tell about how its best scenes got made.
