Art & Crafts from The Ankler

In a conversation with Molly Shock, ACE, Emmy-nominated editors Eric Kissack, ACE Apple TV+’s The Studio, Jamie Martin, ACE MTV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race and Peggy Tachdjian Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story chat about how their work helps guide the audience in the direction they need to go. “That is ultimately what drives everything we do,” Shock says. “But you all have three very different vehicles by which you are telling your stories.” This episode, sponsored by Apple TV+, MTV and Netflix, was recorded at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles on Aug. 7.

In a conversation moderated by four-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer and director Michael Goi, ASC, three of the creators behind Disney+’s Andor — costume supervisor Kate O’Farrell, production designer Luke Hull and composer Brandon Roberts — detail how they collaborated with creator Tony Gilroy to build the world of his acclaimed Star Wars spinoff series. The two-season drama, set prior to the events of Rogue One, follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as he grows from smuggler to a stalwart of the rebellion. For O’Farrell and Roberts, working on a Star Wars show was a dream come true, while Hull was drawn in also by Gilroy’s desire to shake up storytelling in that universe. Hull’s memory of Gilroy’s initial pitch: Join up “if you want to be a pirate and do something different with it.”

In this episode recorded live on May 8 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, production designer François Audouyon (whose credits include A Complete Unknown) moderates a conversation with three of the creators behind Amazon Prime Video’s 'Étoile': production designer Bill Groom, choreographer Marguerite Derricks and director of photography M. David Mullen, ASC. For the comedy set in the rarefied world of professional ballet, the team cast 20 professional dancers in both Paris and New York — not to mention as many as 80 SAG-AFTRA dancers for company class scenes — and shot primarily on location and in real theaters in the two cities. "I said to our producer, if we can't go to Paris and find locations to shoot in, we should all be fired," Groom says. "But we ended up building so much there, because Paris is a really difficult place to shoot.

In this episode recorded live on May 8 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, ASC speaks with three of the creators behind Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal thriller series: director and executive producer Brian Kirk, costume designer Natalie Humphries and director of photography Christopher Ross. The series follows the cat-and-mouse saga of an assassin (Eddie Redmayne) and a British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch), a twisty tale that leans into the legacy of British spy novels but with a modern edge. When creator Ronan Bennett told Kirk he wanted to set the series "in a world where everybody lies about everything all the time,” Kirk recalls, “I was immediately attracted to the prospect.”

In this episode recorded live on November 12 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, Michael Ruscio, ACE, speaks with three of the creators behind director Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez: composers/songwriters Clément Ducol and Camille and editor Juliette Welfling. Netflix’s spectacular Spanish-language musical drama, which centers on a Mexican drug kingpin who transitions to live as a woman, is a genre-bending “phantasmagoria,” as Camille puts it. Welfling, a longtime Audiard collaborator, “learned that he was even more crazy than I thought,” she says. “Please, Jacques, stay crazy!”

In the first of four episodes recorded live on November 12 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, Michael Goi, ASC, leads a conversation with three of the creators behind The Wild Robot, the $300 million global blockbuster from DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures. Composer Kris Bowers, visual effects supervisor Jeff Budsberg, and supervising sound editor Leff Lefferts reveal how they conveyed the evolution of Roz — the film's titular robot — as she is "stepping beyond her programming and becoming more human," Bowers explains. Adds Lefferts, "We’re telling a lot of emotion and a lot of story."

In the third of four special episodes recorded live on August 1 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, Mona May — the costume designer behind iconic films including Clueless and The Wedding Singer — sits down with two of this year’s Emmy contenders in the category of outstanding period costumes for a limited or anthology series or movie: Lou Eyrich is nominated for her work on FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, and Safowa Bright Bitzelberger got the nod for Netflix’s Griselda. Eyrich shares how she recreated New York high-society looks from the 1950s to the ’80s, while Bitzelberger recalls conjuring the fashion aesthetic for a much grittier milieu during some of those same years: the Miami drug underworld.

In the first of four special episodes recorded live on August 1 at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, Nicole Hirsch Whitaker (Netflix’s One Piece) sits down with three of this year’s Emmy-nominated directors of photography. Dana Gonzales got the nod for FX’s Fargo; Richard Rutkowski for Apple TV+’s Sugar; and Gary Baum for Frasier from Paramount+ and CBS Studios. These three veterans share their career paths, creative inspirations, aesthetic hacks and the bond they share with directors. “You want to meet people that you could stay and make films with for the rest of your life,” says Gonzales. “Whatever you can do to create that kind of energy and synergy and shorthand, you're going to excel, and that's the dream.”