For Diego Luna, ‘Andor' isn't about the future, but about the past
'Andor' star, Diego Luna, talks about the show's very modern, but historical, themes and how important it was for him to tell a story that meant something.
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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
How ‘Severance' creates Lumon's ‘manufactured perfection' through VFX
As sci-fi TV shows go, Severance certainly seems lighter on special effects than the likes of Andor. There are no alien planets or laser guns to be had here, after all — but the 'manufactured perfection' of Severance still takes a lot of work. Lumon Industries is determined to shape the world according to the corporate ethos of Kier Eagan, and putting that world on screen requires a variety of techniques. In a new interview with Gold Derby, Severance VFX supervisor Eric Leven of Industrial Light & Magic explains how various aspects of Season 2 were constructed. Alongside his commentary, you can watch the finished shots in the reel below. Severance has constructed massive sets for the labyrinthine white hallways of Lumon's office. But filming Season 2's dramatic opening scene, in which Mark S. (Adam Scott) runs paranoid through seemingly endless corridors in a single camera shot, required more than what the production could physically build. More from GoldDerby 'Say Nothing' star Anthony Boyle on playing IRA activist Brendan Hughes: We 'get to the humanity as opposed to the mythology' Final 2025 Tony Awards winner odds in all 26 categories, including last-minute Best Actress in a Musical flip to Audra McDonald 'Deliciously at odds': Zachary Quinto on embodying the brilliant yet flawed Dr. Oliver Wolf in 'Brilliant Minds' 'Ben [Stiller] really likes to shoot as much practically as possible, he wants to have as much reality as possible, but particularly for that opening scene, there was just no way to do that,' Leven says. 'So even for the very first shot, where they had envisioned this very precise mechanical movement around Mark's head so it makes this 540-degree circle and then moves out of the elevator and then swings all over the lobby and then runs down the hallways, there was no way to shoot that practically. There is no camera setup that can make that happen. So we started combining a bunch of different techniques, one of which was this big giant robot motion-controlled camera.' But a camera that size couldn't fit in the Lumon elevator, so then Leven's team had to figure out how to create a digital version of the elevator to make it work. Ultimately, that opening sequence involved a combination of real sets and CGI environments, blended together to look seamless — a process that took nearly six months to complete. 'There's a part where we're pushing with Mark, and then we do this 180 around him,' Leven says. 'What became the most feasible was, let's put him on a treadmill and build a CG environment around him. So he was running through real hallways for part of this shot, but the trick was, even with these endless stages, there's only so much he can actually run through. So we did have to do a bunch of stitches. "Ben was really adamant that audiences are more sophisticated now, they can see these stitches. We wanted to make sure to avoid that. We basically shuffled the deck and made new techniques. So for example, when Mark goes around a corner, you would think that normally that corner wall would be the stitch point, but we would back in to, say, his ankle so that if you watch really carefully, you'd see his foot never leaves the frame. And this keeps the audience guessing." READ: The Bell Labs complex in New Jersey stands in for Lumon's office building where Mark S. and his fellow innies report to work every day. But as anyone who attended the Severance event at Bell Labs back in April knows, there's still a big difference between our real world and Lumon. Leven and his team help create that difference. 'It was important for Ben to be on a real location that the actors can react to,' Leven says. 'But we want to make this place look isolated in the middle of nowhere, so we're getting rid of other houses, we're changing the trees. Everything has to be perfect, precise, and symmetrical. So we're changing the layout of some of the roadways and the surrounding environment. We're adding period cars, because Severance takes place in this nebulous world where, for some reason, a lot of the cars are from the '80s.' Leven credits Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle with the idea for the '80s cars. It's an aesthetic that Hindle personally likes, which also helps distinguish Severance's world. Meanwhile, the specific layout of the Bell Labs building posed its own problem. 'What's really interesting about the Bell Labs building is that it was the first building ever built with a mirrored exterior, the first mirrored building,' Leven says. 'So when the camera is looking away from Bell Labs in the parking lot, we obviously have a lot of work to do, like I said: Making the symmetrical roadways, making everything perfect, adding all these cars, changing the trees. But then, when you point the camera towards the building, you may think it's practical and we don't have to change anything in visual effects, but because there's a big giant mirror, we are now reflecting all of this stuff that also needs to be changed. So now we're adding the reflection of the period cars, the reflection of the symmetrical roadway. Just about every shot is, if not completely digital, almost 80 percent replaced in CG.' Special effects work best when they are a vehicle for storytelling, and all this work by Leven and his team does have a resonance with the show's big themes. It takes a lot of work to make things seem so perfect. Lumon often appears to have total control over their severed employees, but the past two seasons have shown that such control takes a lot of work, and can break down easily. 'It's a manufactured perfection that is never really achievable,' Leven says. 'That is one of the things Lumon is trying to do, but it feels like whenever mankind tries to do that, it always backfires.' Hindle also told Leven that one of his big aesthetic touchpoints for Severance, in addition to '80s cars, was a shot from the Joel and Ethan Coen's film Fargo, where a character is alone in a big wintry field, surrounded by snow that makes them seem like a small, insignificant speck. That's what Severance creatives want Lumon employees to feel like. Unfortunately, snow is hard to control. 'That's where a lot of that idea that there should be this constant snowfall comes from, and they schedule the shoot to happen in the winter,' Leven says. 'They're shooting in New York, they go to places like upstate New York and Newfoundland, and then the weather does what it does, and frequently it just doesn't snow. Or if it does snow, it's not enough snow or it snows and immediately melts the next day or whatever.' Once again, reality must be massaged by the magic of VFX in order to give Severance the required look of endless winter. 'There's a constant visual effects presence to make this snow a character throughout the series,' Leven says. 'Because Ben likes to shoot as much real as possible, we try to have some practical snow on set, but even when they have these big piles of snow that they shovel into the location, that snow is too chunky or it's not the right shape or not the right design. So even the practical snow is changed by visual effects to give the perfection of Lumon and the town of Kier. Everything has to be just so.' READ: One of the most dramatic moments in the Severance Season 2 finale comes when Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) summons a marching band to MDR to celebrate Mark's achievement with the 'Cold Harbor' project. As you might expect, the band was mostly cast with real actors in costumes — but VFX helped swell their ranks. 'They had a band there, and they really wanted the band to crowd MDR,' Leven syas. 'But MDR is a really big space, so it was like, how many band members can we get? Because every additional band member is another costume and another instrument. So they got a certain number of band members, but then it was like, well, this area feels a little bit empty over here. Can you fill that in with extra band members? So we would do some of that. We'd fill in with extra band members where it felt a little empty.' But the biggest challenge of this sequence was the overhead shot where the band members hold up cards forming Mark's face and 100 percent completion of Cold Harbor. 'Ben and I thought, we really need to do this as practically as possible,' Leven says. 'The issue was that the real MDR set has a ceiling, and you just couldn't get a camera high enough to get that shot. So we actually had to shoot that one shot on a different stage, on a different day, with the whole band. But even then, the camera could only get so high. I think we only saw maybe 16 or 18 band members in the practical high shot. So then we were adding all the additional band members digitally, adding CG walls of MDR, and then all of the cards are CG. It was a really great use of having that practical base to work from.' Watch Gold Derby's exclusive roundtable with the cast and creators of Severance: Best of GoldDerby 'Say Nothing' star Anthony Boyle on playing IRA activist Brendan Hughes: We 'get to the humanity as opposed to the mythology' The Making of 'The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day': PBS variety special 'comes from the heart' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Olivia Williams was more than happy to be ‘the wise old bird' on the ‘Dune: Prophecy' set
The first season of Dune: Prophecy led to a revelation that redefined HBO series core relationship and shed new light on the origin of its central villain. Throughout the first six episodes of the series, which was renewed for a second season at the end of last year, viewers watched a Tula Harkonnen (Olivia Williams), dedicated member of the Sisterhood and literal sister to Valya (Emily Watson), played surrogate mother to the young acolytes of her order. More from GoldDerby 'Andor' star Genevieve O'Reilly on her unlikely two-decade Mon Mothma journey: 'I've closed the circle on her' 'Forever' star Lovie Simone on traveling back to a 'nostalgic' time for Netflix's teenage romance show 'Severance' star Tramell Tillman could make Emmy history as the first Black Best Drama Supporting Actor winner And there was a very good reason for that. Toward the end of the season, a flashback revealed that not only did Tula give birth to the child of a Atreides, but the fire-wielding Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) was that baby. The two were eventually reunited, but under terrible conditions. Hart ordered Tula's arrest, no doubt setting up more confrontation in Season Two. Gold Derby caught up with Williams to discuss how she worked her character's secret into her performance and how the dynamics between the characters of the Sisterhood were reflected between the actors on set. Gold Derby: How familiar were you with the world of before the show? Olivia Williams: I have to be completely honest with you — or, I don't have to be, but I'm going to be—I didn't know anything about it at all. But I had a very quick crash course as soon as I was up for the job. And [showrunner] Alison Schapker is very good at explaining it. What were your first impressions of Tula once you got your hands on the script and got to know her a bit? It's an absolute bloody gift, isn't it? I had a teacher at drama school, and he was old enough to be Prussian. I don't know how old you were, but that's a country that's only in the history books now. He used to say to us, "Ducky, your subtext is showing," which was a warning that set me up very well for Tula. All you want as an actor is to be playing someone who has a massive secret that they cannot divulge with a nod or a wink. You have to absolutely play it as secretive. It was wonderful to carry around that secret until the amazing actress playing younger me got to enact what my big secret was. Something that's true across the show's two timelines is great casting for the younger version of the characters. Yes! It's so weird in movies, this six degrees of separation, but Jess[ica Barden, who plays younger Valya] had played my daughter in Hanna with Saoirse Ronan a million years ago. So she and I knew each other, and we're weirdly sisters across the universe, having played mother and daughter. She and I filmed Hanna in North Africa in Marrakech and in Hamburg the year of the volcano in Iceland, which grounded all the airplanes in Europe. She and I had been in a small people-carrier, driving from Marrakech to London a decade ago or even more, when she was a recalcitrant 15-year-old and I was a slightly haggard mother of young children. And now she's a slightly haggard mother of young children and I'm a wise old bird. And we're reunited! ... I think they did a really great job finding our younger selves. Emma Canning [who plays younger Tula] just nailed it. She was cast after me, so I had a chance to establish the character. She was studying my tells and habits and twitches and ticks. What was it like finally getting to see her performance? I was glued to telly, watching her every move. I wanted to say, "Oh, I wouldn't have done it like that," but I really couldn't. I was like, "No, actually, I really would have done it like that." The likeness is extraordinary. She's brilliant and a very lovely person. Did you know from the start of the job what Tula's secret was? I'm a cynical old bird, and I don't get involved in these things unless I've got something to do. There was a definite sense that closer to the finish of my career—though, not the end — I'm not wasting my time standing around for background action. I'd rather be in something small and have something to do than be in Hungary for six months on a big show with nothing to do. I made it very clear that I wanted to know whether this was going to be worth the time away from my family and dramatically, I wanted something to do. ... [The showrunners] were gloriously honest with me about what I was involved in, and I loved it from the beginning. ... Nothing is accidental. Everything that happened to me was present when we started shooting. Your readers might be astounded to learn how rarely that is the case with long-running series. What is it like going into a scene like the meeting between Tula and Desmond Hart? It can be many thing depending on the actor and how they work and how much contact you've had. If you were doing a play, you'd have sat down and talked about it like having therapy. But the way this was it was like having that real encounter. I don't know if you've watched any reality shows were people are reunited or united with their long-lost parent, and it doesn't go as either of them expect. In Travis' head, which I'm sure was born of the preparation he had done, he was absolutely driven with anger and resentment. And I went into it thinking, "My darling, dear lost child." That so often happens with family encounters. Each person goes into it assuming the other person thinks like they do, and there's that appalling realization that you come at something from polar-opposite positions. It was a sort of body blow, both real and metaphorical, that he wasn't pleased to see me and put me under arrest. We just went with the truth of that. I literally reached out my hands to embrace him, and he clamped me in irons. It was pretty shocking. We were in this exterior set, in the dying days of the shoot in Hungary, as Hungary plunged into a cold and bitter winter. The weather really reflected what was going on emotionally. It was tough shooting conditions and a tough scene to shoot emotionally as well. What was the experience of filming the scene in which Tula guides the acolytes through their dream? It's this appalling delusion of increasing age that I still think of myself as the youngest person on set. But I end up looking on in horror as these amazing young actors came up and said, "It's so amazing to work with someone with so much experience," which is a euphemism for "You're so old." But it was amazing as a different role to be cast in. Emily [Watson] and I were the wise old birds of the set, and once I got used to being a wise old bird, I settled sort of comfortably into that role and was prepared to give everyone the benefit of my wisdom whenever they were prepared to listen to it. To watch Chloe [Lea, who plays Sister Lila], in particular because our characters had a connection, she actually turned 18 as we were shooting and graduated from needing her grandmother there to be a chaperone to being a young woman free to roam as she pleased. We were a very sociable group who cooperated. That's a beautiful thing about acting. There isn't an age hierarchy, where a young actor usually leads the show. When you were acting, you're all equal. There's a beautiful evenness to it. Outside of that, Jade Anouka [who plays Sister Theodosia] was raising a young child, and I've had two kids. So anybody with kids was coming to Emily and me and going, "How do you mix filming with motherhood and being a good spouse?" I'm afraid I fall into the giving of advice only too easily. Best of GoldDerby 'Say Nothing' star Anthony Boyle on playing IRA activist Brendan Hughes: We 'get to the humanity as opposed to the mythology' The Making of 'The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day': PBS variety special 'comes from the heart' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
New York Post
14 hours ago
- New York Post
Disney+ series showrunner denies hit ‘Star Wars' show is a ‘left-wing' political story
'Andor' series showrunner Tony Gilroy said Thursday he does not believe his 'Star Wars' series is 'left-wing.' In an interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on his podcast 'Interesting Times,' Gilroy denied that he wrote the show to represent a left-wing revolution against fascist authoritarians. Advertisement 'I never think about it that way. It was never- I mean, I never do. I don't,' Gilroy declared in response to Douthat asking if he agreed the show is a 'left-wing work of art.' The second season of the critically acclaimed series debuted on Disney+ in April. It follows the adventures of Cassian Andor, a key player in the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. He was a main character in the hit 2016 movie 'Rogue One.' Advertisement The show, which lasted two seasons, provides a dark and realistic depiction about how individuals band together to resist a creeping authoritarian government that uses deception, censorship and violence to cement its own power. 4 The second season of 'Star Wars' series 'Andor' released on Disney+ in April. The cast of the 2nd season sat down for an interview on April 14th. Getty Images for Disney In the interview, Douthat said he believes Gilroy's depiction of the rebellion against the empire in the series is distinctly left-wing. While introducing his guest, he said, 'The 'Star Wars' serial 'Andor' has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise, pleasing obsessive fans and critics alike. Part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political and, to my mind, left-wing perspective on its world, without feeling at all like tedious propaganda.' Advertisement Gilroy admitted the work was political in that it was inspired by his fascination with revolutions in world history. 4 Tony Gilroy (left) told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that his show is not explicitly 'left-wing.' Interesting Times with Ross Douthat 'The canvas that was being offered was just a wildly abundant opportunity to use all of the nonfiction and all the history and all the amateur reading that I'd done over the past 40 years and all the things I was fascinated by, all the revolution stuff that not only I would never have a chance to do again, but I really wondered if anybody else would ever have a chance to do again,' he said. Elsewhere, he told Douthat that he was particularly inspired by dictatorships throughout history, like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's regime. Advertisement 'I want to pay as much attention to the authoritarian side of this, the people who've cast their lot with the empire, who get burned by it all,' he said. 4 The ''Andor' showrunner revealed the inspiration behind the show in an onstage interview. Getty Images for Disney 4 Andor characters Alastair Mackenzie as Perrin Fertha (left), Genevieve O'Reilly, as Mon Mothma (middle), Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael (right). ©Disney+/Courtesy Everett Collection However, the showrunner denied he meant to portray the empire as a right-wing authoritarian government being undone by left-wing freedom fighters. 'But it's a story, but it's a political story about revolutionary ––' the conservative columnist protested. Gilroy interjected, 'Do you identify with the Empire? Do you identify with the Empire?' 'No, I don't,' Douthat said. 'But I don't think that you have to be left-wing to resist authoritarianism. I see the Empire as you just described it: It's presented as a fascist institution that doesn't have any sort of communist pretense to solidarity or anything like that. It's fascist and authoritarian, and you're meditating on what revolutionary politics looks like in the shadow of all that.'
