George & Tammy (Showtime) is already on the Emmy season radar with Jessica Chastain winning the SAG Award for her portrayal of Tammy Wynette. The limited series chronicles the country music power couple, Wynette and George Jones (played by Michael Shannon), who had a tumultuous romance and 30-plus chart-topping country songs between them. Big hits for Wynette and Jones included, respectively, “Stand by Your Man” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”
While he was drawn to what he described as “the tragic love story” and the cast headlined by Chastain and Shannon, director John Hillcoat--accomplished in features--still had reservations about taking on an assignment which entailed all the episodes of a limited TV series as well as serving as an exec producer. He had a one-off gig with an episode of Black Mirror but has generally found TV as lacking the cinematic feel he coveted.
“Television still has an over reliance on dialogue,” contended Hillcoat, paraphrasing Alfred Hitchcock’s observation that “dialogue should be a sound among other sounds, something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual tones.” Hillcoat felt that such “cinematic language” is decidedly different from the emphasis of TV where writers and producers traditionally run the proceedings.
Hillcoat ultimately decided to make his first deep dive into TV, knowing full well that Chastain and Shannon were expert at nuanced, expressive performances. Hillcoat was fascinated by Wynette and Jones. The former grew up listening to Jones. “She was obsessed with him,” related Hillcoat. “She wanted to go to Nashville to be a big star. She wanted to get to George--and she did. George was the opposite. He had an amazing gift, a powerful emotional voice just like Tammy. But George shunned success and fame. He ideally wanted to just be a gas station attendant, to be in the background of life, to not be in the spotlight. The differences between them were profound. When they got together, they ultimately couldn’t overcome those differences, their own issues and baggage. Still they became so enmeshed in each other’s lives, part of a fascinating world--where fans became swept up in this vortex of fame and success--and the addictions that go with it,” including the addiction to get number-one songs, let alone other physical dependencies.
Hillcoat is no stranger to the music world. He has a music video lineage, including a collaborative bond with Nick Cave. Originally teenage friends, the two have worked on a dozen-plus projects together--Hillcoat directing some of Cave’s music videos and Cave writing, composing and performing for many of Hillcoat’s most well-known films. Cave for instance wrote the screenplay for Hillcoat’s feature, The Proposition. Also on the music front, Hillcoat teamed with Jennifer Lebeau to direct the documentary Bob Dylan: Odds and Ends.
Hillcoat was additionally enthused over the prospect of working with Igor Martinovic, the prime cinematographer on George & Tammy. Hillcoat was favorably impressed with Martinovic’s body of high caliber TV work, including The Night Of and Outsider, which, assessed the director, “leaned into cinematic language more than other shows.”
Hillcoat approached George & Tammy much as he would a feature, tapping into his vast picture library to share images with Martinovic to help pinpoint a visual direction that would reflect Wynette and Jones’ emotional journey together. Hillcoat first wanted to attain “a very intimate experiential quality” so that viewers would feel that they are behind closed doors and up close and personal with the protagonists. In turn, he wanted to juxtapose that with an outside perception of these characters--from a distance akin to an audience POV, the way fans looked at famous celebrities in the past through photography, film and TV, listening to their voices on radio.
The director additionally looked to deploy reflections via mirrors and windows, lending an impressionistic view. He further envisioned fragments of these reflections as helping to convey an emotional state. Hillcoat noted that the fragments could at times connote Wynette and Jones being trapped--by their addictions, the trappings of fame as their private and public lives started to clash. Hillcoat and Martinovic used shadows, silhouettes, shot through doorways and windows to frame the subjects to get that kind of entrapped feeling which escalated as their lives went on and their fame grew. These visual motifs complemented the actors’ performances.
Another part of the visual language impacted the music and vocal performances. Hillcoat said that the start of the series was very much “like a heightened documentary” with the audience and musicians “almost on top of each other.” For the Grand Old Opry radio show, the fans were up on the edges of the stage. There was a real interaction, an exhilarating cross-pollination where the musicians are singing to their fans about experiences. “That mirrored the effect of speaking to an audience who really shared the kind of struggles that these musicians were going through. It was at a time when country music spoke to a kind of poverty, an underclass of people struggling with alcohol, domestic violence and other issues at that time in America. Back then there was a great emotional connection. The country stars came from poverty, They had the same kind of experiences that their audiences had.”
Then by the end of the series, those audiences are “abstracted silhouettes in the distance,” said Hillcoat, as the success of Jones and Wynette grew. “They played stadiums toward the end of their careers and the abstracted characters [watching them] had an almost threatening quality. We expressed visually the dynamic journey [of Wynette and Jones] that shaped their characters.”
In addition to the aforementioned The Proposition, Hillcoat’s feature filmography includes The Road. The director has also diversified successfully into the commercialmaking arena, making an auspicious debut with Levi’s “To Work” for Wieden+Kennedy and later helming a Super Bowl spot for Coca-Cola. Hillcoat too has stirringly meshed the feature and branding sectors with Corazón, a 48-minute film about organ donation for Montefiore hospital. Corazón depicts the real-life story of Elena Ramirez (portrayed by Ana de Armas), a young Dominican prostitute living in Santo Domingo who is selling her body to provide for her family--only Ramirez’s body is failing her. She has a bad heart. Elena meets Dr. Mario Garcia, who gives her a fighting chance to live via a mechanical heart surgery that he and his colleagues can only perform at Montefiore in the Bronx.
A story of chance, hope, courage, friendship, love and generosity, Corazón won the Cannes Lions Health & Wellness Grand Prix as well as an Entertainment Gold Lion in 2018. But more than the Cannes plaudits, Hillcoat remains most enthused over the film’s impact as it sparked thousands of new organ donors whose generosity has saved or improved numerous lives (considering that one person can donate up to eight vital organs). Corazón was produced via Serial Pictures, which continues to handle Hillcoat in the commercialmaking/branded content sector.
Eric Appel
Eric Appel has already made his mark during this awards season, garnering a DGA Award nomination for the tongue-in-cheek feature-length biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Roku). Appel also earned in tandem with Yankovic a Writers Guild Award nomination.
It all started some 10-plus years ago when Appel came up with the idea for a Funny or Die spoof trailer for a “Weird Al” Yankovic biopic. Appel thought he would play off the seemingly inherent biopic dynamic which played fast and loose with the facts--particularly when the subject of the biopic is long deceased. He thought it would be a hoot to do a trailer for such a biopic focused on a person still alive and kicking, namely Yankovic. Adding to the appeal was the irony of creating a parody trailer promoting a fake parody biopic of a guy who did parodies of hit songs.
However, Appel didn’t know Yankovic so he asked comedian Patton Oswalt to reach out to him. Appel had worked with Oswalt on a prior video and knew he was a friend of Yankovic.
The response from Yankovic was positive and immediate. Before he knew it, Appel was at a coffee shop with Yankovic, showing him biopic trailers on his laptop. They teamed on a bogus trailer which debuted online in 2013, carrying the hype promo line, “This film is sure to sweep next year’s Academy Awards.”
For years, Yankovic would screen that faux trailer during costume change intermissions at his concerts. Then in 2019, Yankovic emailed Appel about turning that trailer into a movie. As quick as Yankovic got back to him many moons ago, Appel immediately said “yes.”
Still, there were challenges. “The trap we didn’t want to fall into was that it would wind up feeling like a comedy sketch that was too long,” said Appel. “We were reverse engineering a movie from a fake trailer, trying to not make it feel like a joke and instead giving it a real story. We were telling a story that didn’t exist about a bizzaro ‘Weird Al’ character that we created for this movie. But we wanted it to feel like a serious biopic.”
The goal, continued Appel, was that “if you watched the movie on mute, it would look like some serious Academy Award-nominated biopic. But when you hear the words, the absurdity comes through. I always said that I wanted the biggest surprise for audiences to be that the movie is actually good, that the story works, that--as absurd as things get--you care about this fictional version of ‘Weird Al,’ you root for him to succeed. Our tightrope act was to make this absurd, satirical piece but with emotional moments that work for the audience.”
Towards that ambitious end, Appel enlisted the support of artisans including cinematographer Ross Riege and editor Jamie Kennedy. Appel was first struck by Riege’s lensing of director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ The Kings of Summer, which made its initial mark at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. “I’m a big fan of that movie and the photography is gorgeous,” assessed Appel who then went on to work with Riege on episodes of the sitcom Selfie. “I hit it off with him. He has an incredible eye, knows how to shoot comedy. He can walk that line between comedy and drama which is what I was looking for. He brought so much to the look of Weird, shooting anamorphic, giving it a lot of character.”
As for Kennedy, she edited Die Hart, a series helmed by Appel for the short-form programming platform Quibi which itself turned out to be short-lived. “I had never met her before but she came highly recommended by a couple of editors I knew.” After a favorable experience collaborating with her on comedy thriller Die Hart starring Kevin Hart and John Travolta, Appel again gravitated towards Kennedy for Weird, which became the first feature she ever cut. “Neither of us had made a feature before,” said Appel. Die Hart was the closest thing--bizarre chapters or chunks that added up to a movie. “Jamie was good at cutting TV comedy, is a huge movie fan and movie nerd, and a major ‘Weird Al’ fan. She wound up bringing a lot to the film.”
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story marks a turning point for Appel. “I’m originally from the sketch comedy world. I spent years directing half-hour comedy shows while also wanting to make movies. Making this movie showed me I could do it, gave me the confidence to step into what is hopefully the next phase of my career.”
The response to this film in terms of positive audience feedback, critical acclaim and the DGA nomination affirmed for Appel the value of trusting one’s instincts even when unsure about how people will react. “So much of directing is about confidence--being confident in the decisions you are making.”
Helping to hone those instincts and that confidence, observed Appel, was his extensive experience with “the run-and-gun style of doing short-form comedy, especially internet comedy for Funny or Die, without big budgets. “I also did a lot of Adult Swim shows, 11-minute episodes with two days to shoot them yet very ambitious. It helped me to work in a really nimble way, knowing what I need to get, being economical, not over-shooting. We shot Weird in 18 days, which is insane. Without all those years of doing short-format work, I couldn’t have pulled it off.”
Appel recently talked to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka the directorial duo The Daniels, on the awards show circuit. “These guys came from the short-form and music video world, creating [Best Picture Oscar winner] Everything Everywhere All at Once. Everyone was shocked to find out how much that film cost to make. How could they have made it on that budget? In sort of the same way people were shocked to hear that Weird was shot in 18 days. It comes down to having been in the short-form world, you learn valuable filmmaking lessons.”
As for what’s potentially next, Appel’s slate includes Stepdude, a comedy feature starring Jack Black
Stuart Howell
Our Road To Emmy journey goes from the absurdity of Weird to the stark reality of A Small Light (National Geographic), an eight-part limited series based on the inspiring true story of Miep Gies (portrayed by Bel Powley), who helped to hide the family of Anne Frank (Billie Boulet) from the Nazis during World War II. Gies and her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), along with several other everyday heroes, watched over the Frank, van Pels and Pfeffer families hiding in a secret annex.
Cinematographer Stuart Howell, a BSC Award nominee for his lensing of a season two episode of The Crown, was brought into shoot six episodes of A Small Light--the first three, which were directed by Susanna Fogel, and the last three helmed by Tony Phelan. DP Azul Serra did the other two, directed by Leslie Hope.
Howell noted that director/executive producer/writer Phelan, writer/exec producer Joan Rater and Fogel, who also served as an executive producer on A Small Light, didn’t want a straight period drama approach. They wanted to avoid the feel of looking at characters through, said Howell, “a reverse telescope into history.” While period elements would be part of the series fabric, it was also important that there be a contemporary feel so that viewers could better relate to the characters, underscoring the ongoing relevance of this story to our world today.
Relative to that relevance, the story almost asks us what we would have done in Gies’ shoes. And in modern times, would we have the courage to push back against hatred? While many stood by, Gies stood up and stood tall.
“While it is an ensemble piece in a way, it’s always from Miep’s perspective,” related Howell. “In planning shots, we talked about the flow of her character, her emotional ride through the story, using framing mechanisms and lighting to try to get a sense of the world around her from her perspective.”
Howell also collaborated with cinematographer Serra to help maintain continuity and consistency. “You’re not making individual stories but rather there’s one arc, one story, from start to finish--which is especially true given how audiences view things now [multiple episodes at a time; binge watching of an entire series in one sitting]. Azul is a fantastic artist. We spent time together talking lighting, style, approaches to scenes. He was on set watching [Howell’s episodes]. He and Leslie [director Hope] worked to carry the story through their two episodes, to make it as seamless as possible.”
The DPs deployed the Sony VENICE camera and opted to shoot anamorphic. Howell has a comfort level with the VENICE, relating that the camera “sees the way my eye sees things.” As for going the anamorphic route, Howell explained that he was drawn to its ability to help lend “a claustrophobic atmosphere” to the attic setting. “In confined spaces, it gives you a slightly more claustrophobic feel--but once you get outside, it opens up the world. I love what anamorphic does to the light and the image.”
At the same time, continued Howell, the challenge inherent in a claustrophobic setting is dealing with “a lot of people in a very small space. You have to give each character their due space. A small box with 16 people in it in hiding carries the challenge for a cinematographer to somehow make it visual while telling the story.” Helping immeasurably on this front was the set work from production designer Marc Homes.
In addition to Powley, Boulet and Cole, the cast for A Small Light includes Liev Schreiber who plays Otto Frank, husband to Edith (Amira Casar) and father to Margot (Ashley Brooke) and Anne; Andy Nyman as Hermann van Pels; Caroline Catz as Auguste van Pels; Rudy Goodman as Peter van Pels; and Noah Taylor as Dr. Fritz Pfeffer, who all hid in the annex with the Frank family.
A Small Light had a multi-network launch on May 1, with a simulcast across National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Lifetime of the first two episodes. On May 6, Freeform had an encore presentation of the premiere episodes. For the full season run, two episodes debuted every Monday on National Geographic, streamed the next day on Disney+ and Hulu, and became available on the Nat Geo TV and ABC apps.
“When we first heard the remarkable story of Miep Gies, we were gripped and deeply moved. We were also convinced that this limited series about an everyday superhero--one that most people around the world have never heard of--needed an unprecedented rollout,” said Carolyn Bernstein, EVP, scripted and documentary films, National Geographic. “We are determined to bring A Small Light to the largest global audience possible and hope this ambitious rollout across multiple networks and streaming platforms allows audiences to fall in love with and be inspired by Miep just as we have.”
John M. Valerio, ACE
Last year, John M. Valerio, ACE won an Emmy in the Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category on the strength of the “Departures” episode of The White Lotus (HBO). That same episode additionally garnered him an ACE Eddie Award nomination for Best Edited Limited Series.
Fast forward to this year and Valerio’s cutting of the “Arrivederci” episode of The White Lotus won the Best Edited Limited Series Eddie Award, positioning him once again as a leading Emmy contender.
The White Lotus continues an enlightening collaboration for Valerio with series creator, writer and director Mike White that began with HBO’s Enlightened. Valerio edited a couple of White-directed Enlightened episodes. It was on that series that Valerio struck up a rapport with White and his producing colleague, David Bernad.
Valerio described Bernad as “a big champion of mine,” regularly reaching out for prospective projects. Unfortunately, Valerio was seemingly always busy, including when The White Lotus first came along. Valerio at the time was working on The Old Man and was fully committed to its first season.
However, after Valerio’s agent, Craig Mizrahi of Innovative Artists, got the call about The White Lotus, later that same day came the news that The Old Man had to shut down since lead actor Jeff Bridges was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to undergo chemotherapy. Thankfully Bridges has since recovered. Still the timing meant that the once closed door had opened up for Valerio to take on The White Lotus.
Valerio said he loves working with White, noting, “He trusts me so much, as much as anyone I’ve ever worked with. He gives me creative autonomy to try things. I feel like we complement each other. He’s such a smart writer. He writes amazing stories and characters--characters who feel real but at the same time are funny. He tells a story that takes you places where you feel, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this,’ but he does it in a way that feels so real.”
Valerio added that even the locations in The White Lotus “sort of feel like they’re real characters.” And in the case of season two, the setting turns to Sicily.
Episodes were longer in season two as compared to season one. The second season also had more pressing airdates. Longer episodes with compressed schedules made season two trickier and more difficult. And for the second season, Valerio noted that an even greater volume of high-quality material had to be left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Figuring out what to eliminate from choice content was a challenge in and of itself--perhaps even more challenging was striking the right balance between telling a new story while retaining The White Lotus style and distinctive brand.
“People sort of recognized there was this sort of tone and style with the music, the transitions,” said Valerio. “You try to keep that while introducing a new version in Sicily. What should this new chapter or version be like? We had totally different locations with different characters and a new story but still needed to keep that familiarity with the tone and style of the first season.”
Still, in the big picture, Valerio feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude. “It’s such a pleasure when you work with such wonderful people like Mike. You don’t always get these opportunities to share something with someone so smart, so generous, so talented--and to have so much fun along with such rich material. I remember walking away from season one feeling all that--and even more so in season two.”
Beyond his collaborations with White, Valerio’s body of work spans such series as Parks and Recreation, Men of a Certain Age, Shameless, Jack Ryan and Banshee. Starting out with a strong reputation in comedy, Men of a Certain Age had Valerio dipping his toes in dramatic waters, with Banshee later placing him in his first real heavy drama.
Matthew Flood Ferguson
Production designer Matthew Flood Ferguson has enjoyed a deep collaborative bond with series creator Ryan Murphy. It’s a relationship that dates back to Ferguson’s days as a set decorator when he worked in that capacity on the Murphy-directed film Running With Scissors and then such Murphy series as American Crime Story and Ratched, as well as the pilot for Pretty/Handsome. Ferguson got to team with acclaimed production designer Judy Becker on American Crime Story and Ratched. On the latter, Becker had to move onto another project with Ferguson stepping in for her as production designer on the last three episodes. On the heels of that came Ferguson’s first full-fledged production design gig on Murphy’s limited series, Hollywood. In 2020 Hollywood landed Ferguson his first career nominations for an Emmy and an Art Directors Guild (ADG) Excellence in Production Design Award.
Now Ferguson is in the running for more awards show recognition on the strength of Murphy’s Dahmer--Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix), which recently won the BAFTA Television Award in the International category. Evan Peters portrays real-life serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer in the series which tells a story of a case fraught with racism and homophobia--seemingly making it less of a priority for police to solve as law enforcement repeatedly ignored warnings from the public as to what was happening.
Episode 7, the Jennifer Lynch-directed “Cassandra,” for example, chronicles an apartment complex neighbor of Dahmer, Glenda Cleveland (played by Niecy Nash-Betts) who repeatedly called police about suspicious activity going on next door but to no avail. A Black woman, Cleveland was given no heed in a murder spree (which stretched from 1978-’91) claiming the lives of 17 people, 15 of whom were Black, Indigenous, Asian or Latino men and boys, mostly in the predominantly Black Northside neighborhood in Wisconsin. Dahmer met a number of his victims in gay bars and LGBTQ community locales.
Grateful for the opportunities Murphy has afforded him--and gratified over their positive collaborative relationship--Ferguson described him as “very clear about the look and vision” of any given project. “That’s very helpful for me and my entire department. One of the first things he defines--after story, how it will be told--is the color palette. For Ratched, it was green; for Hollywood, brown...For Dahmer it was dingy, dingy yellow. That palette would run across the entire project, a starting off point on which to build the emotional tone. It’s an uncomfortable looking color, is very of the period.” Ferguson went through varied color swatches, making the yellow lighter, darker, adding stains--and then sharing them with Murphy as ways to set the mood for Dahmer’s apartment, reflecting an uncomfortable, ugly, bleak world.
Re-creating that apartment was one of the series’ prime challenges, related Ferguson who had the invaluable help of set decorator Melissa Licht and art director Helen Harwell. The former served as set decorator on the Hollywood team that earned the aforementioned Emmy nod. Back when he was set decorator, Ferguson first hired Licht as his buyer. “I could immediately tell how good she is--better than me,” he laughed. “She’s so organized. We share a visual aesthetic, speak the same way in terms of furniture. Our working together was seamless.”
Upon getting his first full-on production designer gig on Hollywood, Ferguson hired Licht for her first full-time gig as a set decorator. That collaboration continued on Dahmer.
As for art director Harwell’s contributions, Ferguson assessed, “She did a great job, brought a lot of creative ideas as to how to open up the set. Dahmer’s apartment was very claustrophobic. It needed to feel that way on camera but it also needed to have crew access.” Ferguson worked with Harwell to put some walls on tracks, pulling them away when called for so that cinematographer Jason McCormick could get the necessary shots.
Ferguson said there’s constant collaboration in developing the sets as he, like Murphy, seeks out opinions and other options to arrive at the best solution supporting the story and its characters.
Murphy’s ties to past collaborators extend well beyond Ferguson on Dahmer. This is especially evident in the cast--not only for example Peters and Nash-Betts but also Richard Jenkins (who played Dahmer’s father, Lionel).
Murphy had previously cast Peters in American Horror Story and Pose, worked with Jenkins on the feature Eat Pray Love (directed by Murphy and starring Julia Roberts) and teamed with Nash-Betts who took on a bit part in Popular (Murphy’s first TV show) and then a starring role in Scream Queens. In a recent awards season session, Murphy moderated a conversation featuring Peters, Nash-Betts and Jenkins.
SHOOT earlier covered that talk in which Jenkins recalled receiving scripts for the first three Dahmer episodes. Jenkins loved the writing, describing it as “so human” and connecting with the feeling that a father cannot help but to blame himself to some extent for what his son did in this case.
Jenkins also read “A Father’s Story” written by Lionel Dahmer. The book, related Jenkins, was “a cautionary tale” as the father acknowledged that he didn’t want to hear that his son was gay. Lionel Dahmer lamented that perhaps this denial and ignorance of who his son was somehow contributed to the young man’s psychological problems which in turn led to the heinous crimes.
Nash-Betts meanwhile was best known for her comedic work but Murphy could see she had dramatic chops and was just lacking the opportunity to show them. He was confident in her ability to take on the role of Cleveland and she was eager to oblige.
Nash-Betts observed that she was unfortunately all too familiar with the story which is “still playing out today--marginalized people being over-policed, themes of homophobia and white privilege in the world. The story is not new.” Nash-Betts said she could relate to the role of a Black woman who is not heard. “I have been a Glenda Cleveland all my life--not being believed. To not be heard is painful. I wept for this woman, for all the times I wasn’t heard.”
Nash-Betts added that she wasn’t all that enamored with Peters personally at first. But later she discovered that his seemingly detached, aloof, unfriendly behavior was rooted in his acting method which had him immersed in the Jeffrey Dahmer role. His process did not allow him to be engaging.
“I wondered why is he being mean to me?” smiled Nash-Betts. Peters wanted and needed to keep that tension going. That tension on camera played well--particularly in a scene from “Cassandra” in which Jeffrey Dahmer visits Cleveland in her apartment, trying to convince her to retract her complaint to the landlord which has resulted in an eviction notice for Dahmer. He presents her with a home-made sandwich as a quesionable peace offering. Murphy said he loved the scene which afforded the two actors in character to “go at each other.”
Nash-Betts relished the scene as an opportunity for Cleveland to finally “confront him properly,” ultimately scoring a checkmate on Dahmer. Cleveland held her ground throughout the encounter despite how scared she really was.
When not on camera, Nash-Betts and Peters talked to each other sparingly, if not barely. It was only after shooting was wrapped that Nash-Betts got to know Peters and came to like him on a personal level.
Back in November 2022, Dahmer--Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story became at the time only the third Netflix series ever to register more than 1 billion hours of viewing in its first 60 days--the others being Squid Game in 2021 and season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022. Squid Game and Stranger Things, season 4, reached that milestone in the first 30 days as did most recently Wednesday, Tim Burton’s Addams Family spinoff.
Ramsey Avery, Kate Hawley
Production designer Ramsey Avery and costume designer Kate Hawley collaborated for the first time on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video)--and both are considered Emmy contenders for their work, in part due to the respective guild recognition they’ve already received this awards season.
Avery won the ADG Excellence in Production Design Award for the “Adar” episode while Hawley scored a Costume Designers Guild Award nomination for the series’ very first episode titled “A Shadow of the Past.”
Avery aspired initially to a career as an astrophysicist. While he explored various fantasy books over the years, the first to profoundly influence him was J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel “The Hobbit,” which led Avery to “The Lord of the Rings.”
“That world felt utterly real to me. It sparked my interest in the whole idea of science fiction and fantasy,” recalled Avery who as a result realized he could “make worlds”--and “didn’t have to figure out how they work” as an astrophysicist. Rather than serving as a scientific observer, he could actively create worlds in his imagination and bring them to fruition through design. Little did he know that the profound influence of Tolkien on his art and livelihood would one day translate into his bringing life to Tolkien-inspired worlds in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Avery came into the ambitious project with his share of world-building experience. As an art director, he contributed to the future worlds in such films as Minority Report and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, eventually becoming supervising art director on Star Trek Into Darkness, Mirror Mirror, Tomorrowland and Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2.
As a production designer, Avery has designed the films 10 Cloverfield Lane, Hotel Artemis, Peppermint, and the Sundance selections Waitress and Right At Your Door.
In addition, he has designed national commercials for, among others, Budweiser, Microsoft, and Capri Sun, plus a Super Bowl spot for Dodge. He was nominated for an ADG Award for Excellence in Production Design for his design of the live action portion of the trailer for The Bee Movie.
Avery is no stranger to the ADG Awards’ circle, having been nominated as an art director for Tomorrowland, Star Trek Into Darkness, Minority Report and AI Artificial Intelligence. And now his production design on The Rings of Power yielded the aforementioned ADG win.
There was plenty of room for imagination in The Rings of Power as the show takes place thousands of years prior to The Lord of the Rings feature films. While Tolkien provided the road map for navigating the worlds in The Rings of Power, Avery had creative room on his journey. For example he was tasked with bringing the island of Númenor to life, a kingdom--known for its strength in water and sailing--never previously depicted on screen. Within that environ came a life-sized ship with 30 foot sails. The set for Númenor was built on a lot in New Zealand spanning some five acres.
Avery also had to create such locales as the underground Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm, the elves’ city of Lindon, and pop-up villages of the Harfoots. Avery tapped into such talent as illustrators John Howe and Alan Lee known for their Tolkien book artwork as well as concept art for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy. But the concept art they did for The Rings of Power was an original proposition in that Jackson’s movies portrayed the decline of the various worlds of men, elves, Tolkien’s dwarves. The Rings of Power in contrast showcases these kingdoms back when they were flourishing. The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history.
When feasible, practical sets were constructed--giving actors an inhabitable space even when the locations are fantastical. Environments had to feel real and honest. Avery also had to design for visual effects when an in-camera approach wasn’t viable. He explained that they took every opportunity to put the camera in a real place--to make the worlds and cultures real.
Ramsey affirmed that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was “the only show I ever worked on where the visual effects and art departments stayed hand-in-hand from the very beginning.” He recollected that “day in and day out you knew where the visual effects were, where the construction was.”
This coordination and communication made the creation of worlds efficient and optimal. Similarly, Hawley noted that her ensemble was in sync with the visual effects team relative to not just backgrounds but creature creation. The costume department knew the ongoing status of their effects counterparts’ work and how it impacted costume design.
Hawley’s costume design exploits span such features as Edge of Tomorrow, Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak; the latter two directed by Guillermo del Toro. For Crimson Peak, she earned her first Costume Designers Guild Award nomination
Like Avery, Hawley was influenced by Tolkien whose books she discovered at the age of 12. Hawley became enamored with worlds that felt so real and “defined fantasy in a different tone. The poetry of it blew me away. The poetry felt like music to me.”
Hawley never lost sight of that poetry and the “beautiful characters” who impacted her. Fast forward to adulthood and she’s grateful for the opportunity to have an artful hand in defining all of this in a streaming series.
Hawley and Avery also benefited from their teams coming together. Avery cited as an example Hawley’s Dwarven costumes which were “so rich that we were careful not to have the backgrounds be too rich as well.” This, he explained, helped the grandeur and beauty of each of the Dwarven characters to “pop forth from the background.”
This creative give-and-take in order to best tell the story proved integral to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It’s all the more impressive when you factor in the scale and scope of the series. “You may have a couple of major worlds in some movies,” said Hawley. But in the case of this series--which Amazon Studios has committed to five seasons of--there are “characters and environments everywhere. Each had to be created from the beginning this first season.” And those creations encompassed a wide range in costume and production design--from tiny details to major elements.
Another balancing act was the desire to show the grittiness of these worlds--to create “a grounded world, not a Star Wars fantasy,” said Avery--while also capturing the intangibles including a sense of beauty. “As much as you wanted to make sure you felt the dirt, Kate would remind me about the poetry, to think about the poetry,” continued Avery. This kept the dynamics of “romanticism, a depth of passion” at top of mind for Avery, ensuring that this dimension would be infused in the story.
This is the sixth installment of SHOOT’s weekly 16-part The Road To Emmy Series. Future parts in the series are slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com--with select installments also in print/PDF issues. Emmy nominations will be announced and covered on July 12. Creative Arts Emmy winners will be reported on during the weekend of September 9 and 10, and primetime Emmy ceremony winners will be covered on September 18.