IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit

Acclaimed cinematographer Mandy Walker sat down with us to talk about filming the life and art of one of the most iconic performers of all time. Mandy reflects on her long partnership with director Baz Luhrmann, and gives an inside look at what it takes to bring a massive crew in line with his unique creative vision. Capturing Elvis on film the way Baz envisioned meant extensive research into period-accurate cameras and lighting, developing a way to track the story through changing film stocks, and even teaching her camera operators Elvis's dance choreography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The seminal teenage hangout movie is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and Criterion has released a 4K restoration packed with insight into the making of this classic. To celebrate, we sat down with Linklater and discussed what exactly makes Dazed and Confused so endearing and enduring to audiences a generation later. From stories of casting, struggling with the structure of the script, and battles for the rights to the iconic soundtrack, hear the now established director reflect back on being a young filmmaker looking to find his voice in the face of the hollywood system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The body-horror satire Infinity Pool is one of the best films to premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and Cronenberg sat down with Toolkit to get into all the grisly details. Hear about the difficulty directing actors when the basic nature of the scenes may be up to interpretation, and the many creative challenges that come from making an ambiguous movie that still has an impact on the audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director of the newest horror film from Blumhouse joined us to discuss her disturbing tale of the intense impact children have on a relationship. Banjamin breaks down her strategies for directing the child actors in terrifying scenes, how her story fits into the legacy of scary child movies, and why it was important to make a great movie about relationships before the horror even began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Diop, director of "Saint Omer," discusses why the film sits at an intersection between fiction and documentary, how sound and editing each influence the way the viewer understands what happens and connects the film's two protagonists, and the powerful, political impact of centering black women in the camera frame. Note: a French version of this conversation with Diop's answers presented without translation begins at 16:03. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a double interview this week, as we go deep with the Director and Editor of the box office sensation. With the actors and action all happening for real in fighter jets thousands of feet in the air, hear how the filmmaking team managed to direct the action from the ground, and how they turned hundreds of hours of cockpit footage into some of the most thrilling sequences of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and Director Damien Chazelle sits down with us to explain how he pulled off the huge swing that is Babylon. Hear which silent filmmakers and stars most influenced his epic of Hollywood excess, what it was like working with lead actors with wildly different levels of fame, and how he managed to make that ambitious ending a reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and Director Rian Johnson joins us to chat about crafting the second cinematic mystery in the Knives Out series. Rian discusses the pressures of delivering on the satisfaction of the original while striking out in new thematic directions with Glass Onion, and how he tackled the challenge of developing another group of memorable characters while balancing the on-set staging and blocking of the all-star cast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luca Guadagnino returns to talk with us about his entrancing new film, the coming-of-age cannibal romance Bones and All. Luca opens up about his experiences on the road in the American midwest, and why this tale of disenfranchised youth was a perfect beginning to him making films in the States. Also hear how he deepened his creative partnership with lead actor Timothée Chalamet, and how his performance became an even more vital part of the filmmaking process than their collaboration on Call Me By Your Name. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Academy Award winning director of The Revenant sat down with us to discuss his return to Mexico, and how he delved into his character's subconscious to create an intimate epic of the mind. Iñárritu explains how making radical decisions in every department was key to capturing the feeling of a dream that resists literal interpretation, and why it was crucial to embrace fiction as a way of unpacking personal reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our discussion with visionary filmmaker James Cameron as he walks us through the cutting edge technology he and his team developed for this long awaited return to the world of Avatar. Learn how he once again pioneered new performance capture technology, allowing actors to perform underwater and giving them much more creative freedom than a live action filmmaking approach. Cameron unpacks how motion capture shapes the creative process at every step, impacting the writing and editing as much as what happens on set. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the making of one of the year's most powerful films from Laura Poitras, the award winning director of Citezenfour, and her editor Amy Foote. The two filmmakers explain how they met photographer Nan Goldin, and how they combined her voice with her incredible photographs to tell the story of her challenging the powerful Sackler family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert discuss the collaboration that allowed them to make "Everything Everywhere All At Once" maximalist AF. From the summer camp vibes on their set to their poetic relationship with sound design, hear how this duo crafted their incredible journey through the multiverse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The crafts team behind Prime Video's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" discuss the creative choices that went into making a series that is by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Daniel Roher takes us behind the scenes of making his thrilling documentary, the story of the fearless opposition leader to Vladimir Putin's oppressive regime. A social media master and fierce public speaker, Alexei Navalny was so effective at rallying the people of Russia against the Kremlin, they attempted to assassinate him in the summer of 2020. Roher describes what it was like to film Navalny while he recovered in Germany and planned his fateful return, and why making this movie felt as much like a thriller as his subject's life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creator Tony Gilroy and editor John Gilroy join Toolkit to discuss the joys of worldbuilding inside the Star Wars universe, structuring the first season of "Andor," and how score influenced the show's writing and editing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Ryan White takes us inside the making of this delightful documentary chronicling the journey of Mars rover Opportunity, which had a planned 90 day mission but ended up surviving fifteen years. Hear how the crew brought Oppy's groundbreaking mission to life using hundreds of hours of archival footage from NASA, and partnering with the VFX powerhouse Industrial Light and Magic to create a digital Mars from scratch. And learn about the deep bonds that formed between this intrepid rover and her human operators millions of miles away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Mark Mylod discusses channeling Ralph Fiennes' character to create the look and feel of his "eat the rich" satirical thriller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director of the Netflix limited series “Unorthodox” talks about adapting New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book to the big screen. Schrader discuss how her experience telling the real life story of “Unorthodox” and being an actress in Germany helped her tackle the all-too-real story of reporting the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, and why she doesn’t buy the media’s comparisons between “She Said” and other journalist classics like “All The Presidents Men” and “Spotlight.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Shaunak Sen goes inside how he found and created the most innovative visual language of any film this year. A process that involved throwing away a year’s worth of footage, and starting over, all in an effort the avoid to pitfalls that so many films with touch upon ecological or political issues fall into. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Sara Dosa and producer Shane Boris join Filmmaker Toolkit to discuss the formal and tonal choices they made in order to capture the adventurous spirits of Katia and Maurice Krafft in "Fire of Love." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Film scholar and public radio fixture Elvis Mitchell speaks about directing "Is That Black Enough for You?!?" and why the 1970s were the greatest decade ever for Black film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes join Toolkit discuss the creative pillars holding up their documentary "The Janes," why it was important to make Chicago a character in the story, the extensive challenge and surprising finds of using archive material from the period, and their and the film's relationship to the modern politics of abortion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, Field talks about how he turned his unusual script about a famous conductor in personal and professional free fall into a riveting character study, with help from star Cate Blanchett, collaborating during the height of the pandemic, thematic ideas like the corrupting nature of power and practical concerns like casting the other parts, and both Field's and Blanchett's delight in sharing their growing excitement about the milieu in which the film takes place. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"DIG!" and "We Live in Public" director Ondi Timoner joins Toolkit to discuss the unintentional road to "Last Flight Home" and the work of making the cameras that documented her father's last days as invisible as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In James Gray's new film "Armageddon Time," he returns to the kind of intimate, precise character study with which he made his name. Gray speaks about visual style, memory, and why he loves movies to begin with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Margaret Brown discusses the cinematic and narrative choices that helped shape the story of "Descendant" – from building the sounds of the South to collaborating with the film's subjects to resurfacing the filmmaking of Zora Neale Hurston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlotte Wells joins the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about the evolution of her first feature: creating anchor points for memory within the story of the film, the joys of working with DV camcoder footage and the liminal place it sits between objective and subjective points of view, refining perspective and the sense of memory in editing "Aftersun" together, finding immediacy within a specific time period through the look of the film, and even more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Series creator Armando Iannucci discusses the benefits of satire while working in genre, building a future out of our ridiculous present, and how the pandemic influenced the HBO comedy's second season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were an action fan in the 1970s, ’80s, or ’90s, one of the great pleasures of filmgoing was the experience, every year or two, of a new Walter Hill movie. No one else was really making movies like him, and no one had before; Hill created a body of work that spoke to American culture both past and present where the jokes are funny but the bullets are real. On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Hill speaks about returning to his favorite genre, the Western with his new film "Dead for a Dollar." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Nicholas Stoller, of "Neighbors" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" fame, joins Filmmaker Toolkit to discuss his process developed on some of the best comedy films of the last couple decades and how he applied it to his latest film, 'Bros.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer-director Andrew Dominik wrote his adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel "Blonde" in about four weeks — and then waited 12 years for the opportunity to bring it to the screen. The "Killing Them Softly" director joins Filmmaker Toolkit to talk about his decade-plus-long journey to bring Joyce Carol Oates' fictionalized portrait of Marilyn Monroe to the screen, and the epic study of trauma and Hollywood's exploitation of it that he created. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ti West, director of "X" and "Pearl," stops by Toolkit to discuss how he landed on the golden age of Hollywood aesthetic he captured for his horror prequel, how he achieved the film's singular look, and how he tapped into a more formal style of filmmaking where blocking and framing can tell the entire story of a family and lead us to understand Pearl herself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, creator and star of 'Mo', Mo Amer discusses how he and his team built a series that juggles a tone that can fuse comedy and drama, how they built the show's hip and absurd sense of humor, and how they made filmmaking choices that spotlight the city (Houston) and the culture (the Palestinian diaspora) at the show's heart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director George Miller joins this week’s episode of Toolkit to talk about the making of his latest film, “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” Miller discusses the film’s place in his career as a “palate cleanser” after the high-octane “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the philosophical underpinnings of the script, and why working with actors who are also filmmakers - in this case Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba - yields the best work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Executive producer and director Jamie Babbit discusses how the new Amazon Prime Video series "A League of Their Own" uses its camera to turn the show's large cast into a team and breaks down the cinematic language she found to highlight both the joys of playing baseball and of falling in love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jerrod Carmichael joins this week to talk about the creation of "Rothaniel," the ways in which it's changed his approach to telling stories for an audience, and some of the filmmaking choices that helped make the special as natural and also as elegant as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Succession" executive producer and director Mark Mylod joins this episode of Toolkit to discuss putting together the show's third season and discusses the extra charge the series got from shooting in Italy, how "Succession" organizes scenes in order to capture the most impactful performances, the ways in which the show uses its opulent backup to keep the characters in perspective, and even more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a young screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan saw the special effects magicians at Industrial Light & Magic bring his most spectacular acts of imagination to life. Over 40 years after his work on “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Kasdan returned to the world of ILM for “Light & Magic,” a six-part documentary series chronicling the biggest effects developments of the 20th century through the stories of the men and women responsible for them – most of all Kasdan’s first employer, George Lucas. In this episode Kasdan talks about why he left fiction filmmaking behind for documentaries, how Lucas changed the movies forever, the mistakes Kasdan made on his own special effects extravaganza “Dreamcatcher,” and why “Top Gun: Maverick” made him excited about the movies again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peele knows you'll have questions after seeing 'Nope,' but to what degree did he figure out the the life and history of his new film's alien life form? Peele answers that question, as he breaks down the process of making his UFO cinematically real, and what he learned from filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. 'Nope' is a masterpiece of sound, and in second half of the podcast [19:40], we interview the films sound designer Johnnie Burn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, showrunner Peter Gould and executive producer Vince Gilligan join to talk about the ending of "Better Call Saul." No Season 6 spoilers here, but they discuss the show's writing process, the personnel decisions that have helped elevate the series, how the camerawork has evolved over the course of the show, and some of the storytelling philosophy that has stood them in good stead since "Breaking Bad." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, creator Danny McBride discusses the latest season of "The Righteous Gemstones" and his philosophy for everything from where the humor needs to come from, shooting action comedy, and maximizing his resources on a television schedule and budget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, we speak with show creator David Jenkins and director/star Taika Waititi about their collaboration creating this ambitious comedy for HBO Max. The pair discuss everything from the visual influences that help "Our Flag Means Death" walk a tonal tightrope to the visual effects innovations that made shooting on television schedule possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this edition of IndieWire's Deep Dive: Station Eleven creator Patrick Somerville joins director Jeremy Podeswa, the crafts team, and cast to discuss how the show's timelines and themes come together in Episode 10, "Unbroken Circle" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcsat, Natasha Lyonne discusses the games that "Russian Doll" Season 2 is playing (of which time-travel via the 6 Train is only one), why this was a Pink Floyd season, how she refined her preparation as both a director and an actor over the pandemic, plus a little love for Sergio Leone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Bill Hader discusses the latest season of Barry and digs into his directing work on Episode 6, "710N". Hader talks about when and why he embraces generic conventions (and when he doesn't), what he likes about long takes, the benefits of eschewing coverage, and how he constructed a chase sequence in the spirit of Jacques Tati. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, we speak with Peter Jackson and his longtime collaborator, editor Jabez Olssen about their work distilling hundreds of hours of audio, dozens of hours of video, and 40 years of mythology about the Beatles' Get Back sessions into a documentary that tries, going day by day, to lay out the experience of the sessions that led to the Beatles' last live performance. Jackson and Olssen discuss what putting visuals to familiar audio changed, how they found ways around seemingly inaudible or unusable material, and why they set out to make a documentary that wasn't a Beatles break up story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Filmmaker’s Toolkit podcast, showrunner Sterlin Harjo talks about why he could only make (this version) of "Reservation Dogs" in his native Oklahoma, and what opportunities open up to a series when rooting it in a specific place that TV hasn't really seen before – and certainly not from a Native perspective. That, plus the steps in teaching an audience how to laugh at survival humor, the benefits of taking an epic approach to outwardly small stories, the trouble with manufacturing hail, and why the show's mythological elements live very matter-of-factly alongside its teen comedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kogonada discusses the cinematic components of "After Yang" from how memory relates to the processof filmmaking to the importance of a science fiction story with domestic stakes. All of that, plus: the importance of spaces that can tell their own stories, the differences between film and short story, how the quality of light impacts the film, and a little bit of love for Robert Bresson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creator and executive producer Soo Hugh discusses how she tackled the globe and time-spanning 'Pachinko' by thinking about was the show wasn't and then discovering what the show was. All of that, plus: challenges of creating characterization in translation, the different visual styles of the show, and what a historical epic that isn't fetishizing period can look like. Slightly spoiler-y conversation about Episode 7 from 19:30 - 21:27. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices