This week we discuss the sound, music, and cinematography of “Masters of the Air,” the epic WWII limited series from Apple TV+. With so many films and shows about World War II over the past several decades, one of the biggest challenges of the series was keeping things fresh. So the creative teams took some ingenious approaches to give every episode and action sequence a unique look, sound, and feel. “Because there's so much time spent in the air with these planes, and so many different...

Recorded live at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Academy Award®-nominated director (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) — and Dolby Institute Fellowship winner — Carlos López Estrada brings together another all-star panel of Hollywood talent, this time posing the question: Is “No Budget Filmmaking” even possible in this day and age? “There's just so much pressure on a film and on a filmmaker that has nothing to do with the film being good, or them arriving at their artistic voice. I've worked on...

2-time Academy Award®-winning composer Hans Zimmer joins us on the podcast to discuss his work on “Dune: Part Two,” after winning an Oscar for his score to the first installment of the sci-fi franchise, directed by Denis Villeneuve. And like Denis, Hans had been dreaming about working on these films since he was a boy. And he also knew he wanted to take them in a less traditional direction, sonically: “These were the things which probably had been on my mind ever since I read the book. It's...

Academy Award®-winning Director of Photography Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC, returns to the podcast to discuss his work on “Dune: Part Two.” The film is a stunning achievement, from both the technical and artistic standpoints, which benefitted greatly from being a continuation of his work from part one: “Whenever you do a movie, you've got to solve a series of problems... And a lot of the technical stuff had been solved for us in advance, because we'd done part one. So this allowed us the...

Table of Contents: 01:28 - El Conde - Edward Lachman, ASC 12:53 - Killers of the Flower Moon - Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC 24:12 - Oppenheimer - Hoyte Van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC 33:29 - Poor Things - Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC Welcome to our continuing coverage of this year's Academy Awards®. We have compiled interviews from the nominees in the Best Cinematography category. So, if you are an Oscar voter — either as an Academy member or as a fan participating in your annual office pool — you'll have...

Table of Contents: 01:30 - The Creator 12:26 - Maestro 23:13 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One 33:55 - Oppenheimer 44:36 - The Zone of Interest Welcome to our continuing coverage of this year's Academy Awards®. We have compiled interviews from the nominees in the Best Sound category. So, if you are an Oscar voter — either as an Academy member or as a fan participating in your annual office pool — you'll have a much better idea of what to watch (and listen) for as you get to...

Table of Contents: 01:55 - American Fiction - Laura Karpman 13:45 - Oppenheimer - Ludwig Göransson 25:48 - Poor Things - Jerskin Fendrix Welcome to our continuing coverage of this year's Academy Awards®. We have compiled interviews from the nominees in the Best Original Score category. So, if you are an Oscar voter — either as an Academy member or as a fan participating in your annual office pool — you'll have a much better idea of what to watch (and listen) for as you get to this category...

The Academy Award®-nominated VFX team joins our returning guest, director Gareth Edwards, to discuss how they created such a visually stunning, effects-heavy science-fiction film with a comparatively minuscule budget. Rather than utilizing extensive previz, green screen studios, and fully-rendered CGI environments, “The Creator” was filmed on-location in Asia, documentary-style, with a very small crew, completely upending the usual methods of shooting for VFX: “You do concept art. That's...

Continuing our coverage of the 2024 Academy Awards®, we have another all-star team of sound artists whose work on “Maestro” is nominated in the Best Sound category. Today’s panel includes: - Richard King, Sound Designer & Supervising Sound Editor. - Tom Ozanich, Re-recording Mixer. - Dean A. Zupancic, Re-recording Mixer. - Steven Morrow, Production Sound Mixer. “Maestro” is a highly stylized yet intimate film about Leonard Bernstein: his fraught marriage, his affairs, his family, and - of...

Legendary cinematographer Edward Lachman, ASC, joins us to discuss his Academy Award®-nominated cinematography for “El Conde,” Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s satirical horror-comedy which reimagines Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year old vampire. The film features stunning black & white photography, which required the invention of a new kind of camera sensor in order to capture the unique look and feel of the film. Edward discusses that, his use of vintage glass, and the advantages of...

Our coverage of the 2024 Oscars continues in this episode with our guest, Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC. Robbie is a two-time Academy Award® nominee for Cinematography. In today’s episode, he discusses his second collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos on the film "Poor Things," following their acclaimed work together on "The Favourite," which earned Robbie his first nomination for Best Cinematography. This year, "Poor Things" boasts 11 Academy Award nominations, including Best Director for...

With our continuing Oscars coverage, today we are joined by Academy Award®-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. He discusses how he got his start in the film business, working with legendary director Martin Scorsese, the challenges of shooting “Killers of the Flower Moon,” as well as how his research into Osage traditions and rituals became directly woven into his photography for the film. “A lot of it I remember was based on the sun and the sun position. And even the rituals....

We have an all-star team of sound artists whose work on “Oppenheimer” is nominated for a 2024 Academy Award®. They are certainly no strangers to that award show, as they already have NINE Oscars between them! Today’s panel includes: - Richard King - Sound Designer and Supervising Sound Editor - Gary A. Rizzo - Re-recording Mixer - Kevin O’Connell - Re-recording Mixer - Willie D. Burton - Production Sound Mixer We discussed how they approached getting inside the head of the brilliant but...

As part of our continuing Oscars coverage, we are joined by Academy Award®-nominated cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC. He discusses how he got his start in the film business, working with Christopher Nolan, shooting “Oppenheimer” on film, how they did all those in-camera practical effects, and his fears about creating a dynamically visual film… with so much dialogue. “I was scared sh**less in the beginning, because you are very much out of your comfort zone. In the old days -...

Five-time Emmy Award-winning composer Laura Karpman joins guest host Jon Burlingame to discuss her first Academy Award® nomination for the music of “American Fiction.” Karpman took a rather unique approach to composing this “jazzy” score, by thinking of the actors’ voices as musical instruments themselves. “There's a lot of dialogue. And the way the score is constructed is using the actors — particularly Erika Alexander, who plays Coraline, his love interest, and then Jeffrey [Wright], who...

Recorded live just a few days ago at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Academy Award®-nominated director (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) — and Dolby Institute Fellowship winner — Carlos López Estrada brings together five filmmakers, each with debut feature films in the US Dramatic Competition this year. “I have experienced what all five or panelists are experiencing right now. It's this insane, adrenaline rush of playing your first movie for groups of audiences who love film. And it's the most...

Academy Award-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) joins our guest host, music journalist Jon Burlingame, to discuss his score for the latest animated Spider-Man film. If you’ve seen it, then you already know it features incredible, cutting-edge animation. But it turns out Daniel’s approach to the score was equally “experimental.” “As soon as I finished ‘Into the Spider-Verse,’ I was thinking about ‘Across [the Spider-Verse]’ because… as a composer, you don't...

Director Carlos López Estrada — Academy Award® nominee for “Raya and the Last Dragon” and winner of the Dolby Institute Fellowship — returns to The Dolby Institute Podcast for another panel discussion, this time with members of Sundance. More than just a film festival, The Sundance Institute offers a myriad of resources for emerging and independent filmmakers, but navigating them all can be overwhelming. So this very special podcast episode is designed to answer this essential question, from...

Director Blitz Bazawule joins his composer Kris Bowers to discuss their new adaptation of “The Color Purple.” You may remember the original filmed adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, directed by Steven Spielberg, from 1985. This version is actually an adaptation of the hit Broadway show, which won two Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. Our guest host, music journalist Jon Burlingame, returns to the Dolby Institute Podcast to speak with Kris and Blitz...

Academy Award®-nominated director Jonathan Glazer joins us to discuss his latest film, 2024 Best Picture nominee “The Zone of Interest,” a searing drama about life just outside of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, which the director chose to have the audience hear, rather than see. “The atrocities that are being committed in the camps — and the images that we already know in our minds, from all of the documentaries and books and fiction films and so on… I had absolutely no interest...

Director J.A. Bayona discusses his latest film — 2024 Academy Award®-nominee for Best International Feature Film (Spain) — “Society of the Snow.” Director of Photography Pedro Luque and Sound Designer Oriol Tarragó also join us to discuss how they crafted this riveting retelling of the infamous 1972 Andes flight disaster, where a team of rugby players from Uraguay had to do the unthinkable to survive. Realism was a big priority for Bayona, so the production was a challenging, sometimes even...

Academy Award®-nominated composer Jerskin Fendrix joins us to discuss his first-ever film score — the latest from director Yorgos Lanthimos — “Poor Things.” It was an exciting experimental collaboration for both artists, as this was also the director’s first time working with an original score for one of his films. “We both learned along the way how to make a film score from scratch… The first thing we agreed on is that the music had to be part of the film, exclusively. No external...

Director Carlos López Estrada — Academy Award® nominee for “Raya and the Last Dragon” and winner of the Dolby Institute Fellowship — leads another all-star panel of Hollywood talent to discuss how they broke into the industry as professional cinematographers. And what better way to do that than by discussing their first feature films? “Cinematographers, together with the directors and writers of a film, are also the authors of the story. They are responsible for every image, for every frame,...

Academy Award®-winning writer and director Emerald Fennell joins us to discuss her latest dark comedy thriller, “Saltburn.” The film features an unflinchingly disturbing story, incredible performances, and an appropriately cutting-edge sound design, which was being experimented with up until the very end of post-production. “For it to be exciting and vital you need to be experimenting up until the end. You need to be pushing and pushing. This is a very Gothic movie in lots of ways. It’s very...