Variety Artisans

10 stories

Variety ArtisansCinemaTexas’ New Attorney General Nathan Johnson Composed the Music for 67 ‘Dragon Ball Z’ Episodes, Years Before Election Day Nathan Johnson was just elected as Attorney General of Texas, but long before that, he was a composer who scored the anime series “Dragon Ball Z.” “If you grew up watching ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ you might…

11.04

Variety ArtisansCinema‘Dune 3’ Production Designer Patrice Vermette Created a 55-Ton Spaceship for Sci-Fi Epic: It’s a ‘Major Spectacle’ Production designer Patrice Vermette promises the third and final instalkment in the “Dune” franchise is going to be “a major spectacle.” “You know when you go see fireworks, and they put everything…

11.03

Variety ArtisansCinemaTaylor Swift’s ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ and ‘La Bola Negra’s ‘La Nieve’ Among Nominees for Hollywood Music In Media Awards Taylor Swift and “La Bola Negra’s” “La Nieve,” performed by Guitarricadelafuente (written by Álvaro Lafuente, Raül Refree and Lucas Duran) are among the nominees for this year’s Hollywood Music in…

11.02

Variety ArtisansCinemaFrom ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ to ‘The Invite,’ Costume Designers Shatter the Myth Behind Dressing Contemporary Characters: ‘It’s Very Difficult’ Contrary to popular belief, contemporary design in film is not just about shopping; it involves deep storytelling and thought behind how characters are dressed.

11.01

Variety ArtisansCinema‘The Mosquito Bowl’: How a Parrot Proved to Be Peter Berg’s Biggest Challenge Director Peter Berg faced numerous challenges shooting his latest film, “The Mosquito Bowl.” Based on Buzz Bissinger’s book, the film tells the true story of four college football stars — Tom Francis…

10.31

Variety ArtisansCinema‘Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom’ Director on Why AI Is Not a Threat: ‘There’s a Desire to See the Craft Behind the Finished Product’ “Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom” is launching into Italy as the opener of Lucca Comics and Games on the eve of Halloween, which, coincidentally, also happens to be when this third feature…

10.29

Variety ArtisansCinemaHow Kazu Hiro Transformed Tom Cruise Into ‘Digger’ With Prosthetics for His Belly, Nose and Chin Oscar-winning prosthetic makeup artist Kazu Hiro has been in the industry for over 30 years. He’s transformed Bradley Cooper, Gary Oldman, Charlize Theron and, most recently, Dwayne Johnson in “The…

10.27

Variety ArtisansCinemaSCAD Film Studios Expands Backlot With New Soundstages, More Than 50 Backlot Facades Savannah College of Art and Design has completed its SCAD Film Studios expansion in Savannah, Georgia.

10.26

Variety ArtisansCinemaWhy Olivia Colman Didn’t Get Splinters From Getting Intimate With Alexander Skarsgård’s ‘Wicker’ Costume Believe the hype. “Wicker,” now in theaters, is every bit as horny, romantic and wonderful as the trailer leads you to believe.

10.23

Variety ArtisansCinemaThe Gotham Group and Toonstar Team Up for New Animated Series The Gotham Group and Toonstar are partnering to produce up to 12 new original animated series for kids.

10.23

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo