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...

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’ve navigated the industry as screenwriters, television writers, and showrunners. These talented writers have not only enjoyed enormous success in the industry, but have also brought their own fresh perspectives which have been missing for a long time in Hollywood. Including narratives that have...

Our guest host Tom Graham — the Head of Dolby Vision® Content Enablement — returns for the second installment of our ongoing series, “Conversations with Colorists,” where he discusses the nitty gritty of working as a professional colorist, especially for projects that deliver in Dolby Vision®. Joining the discussion are three of the top colorists working in film & television today — Tony D’Amore, Paul Westerbeck, and Frederik Bokkenhauser, all senior colorists at Picture...

What exactly are movie producers looking for when searching for new creative voices? Academy Award® nominated Director Carlos López Estrada (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) — and winner of the Dolby Institute Fellowship — returns with another all-star panel to discuss this very topic, with some of the top producers in the field. So if you are an aspiring filmmaker, screenwriter, director, or any of the above early in your career, this episode is filled with real-world advice for navigating the...

Director Gareth Edwards joins us to discuss the 2024 Academy Award®-nominated sound of his visionary new dystopian sci-fi film, "The Creator.” The movie features some incredible work — including a glorious Dolby Atmos® mix — but with some unconventional sound design choices for a science fiction film about artificial intelligence and fully autonomous robots. Joining the director to discuss all this and more are sound designers and supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn,...

What goes into building a soundtrack for a short film? And collaborating with a sound team when you’re dealing with a short time frame? And an even more limited budget? To help us answer those questions and more, Glenn moderates a panel discussion with some of the filmmakers from this year’s Aspen Shortsfest — which is, without question, one of the best film festivals in the world for short films and short filmmakers: - Madli Lääne, Director of “Dear Passengers” - Nikita Diakur, Director of...

“A Haunting in Venice,” the latest cinematic adaptation featuring novelist Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, starring and directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, includes another unforgettable score by multiple award-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. But unlike most of her other groundbreaking work, this score features a more “classical” approach — a creative decision stemming all the way back to Hildur’s childhood! “Having grown up reading Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew and...

Director Carlos López Estrada — Academy Award® nominee for “Raya and the Last Dragon” and winner of the Dolby Institute Fellowship — leads an all-star panel of independent filmmakers to discuss perhaps the biggest challenge of any director’s career: “The making of a first feature is really nothing short of a miraculous feat. There’s just so many elements that need to perfectly align at the right time in order for an emerging filmmaker to get a shot at telling their story. And we’re hoping...

Director Neill Blomkamp joins us to discuss his thrilling new racing film and biopic, chronicling GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough’s rise into professional racing. Joining the conversation are the film’s supervising sound editors, Kami Asgar and Erin Oakley, as well as re-recording mixer — and real-life race car driver — Beau Borders, who brought his personal experience from behind the wheel onto the mixing stage, to give audiences the most authentic experience possible. “Obviously I'm...

SPOILER ALERT: This podcast discusses important plot points from episode three, “The Autopsy.” Executive Producer (and co-showrunner) J. Miles Dale joins us on the podcast to discuss the horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, which was recently nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards. Joining the conversation are nominees: Supervising Sound Editor Nelson Ferreira, MPSE, and Director of Photography Anastas Michos, ASC, GSC. To avoid spoilers, be sure to watch...

Independent filmmaker Sophie Barthes joins us to discuss her breakout Sundance hit — and winner of this year’s Dolby Institute Fellowship Award — The Pod Generation. The film is a hilariously biting near-future sci-fi satire, starring Emilia Clark and Chiwetel Ejiofor as a young couple who turn to a corporate tech giant to help them carry their new baby — literally — to term. “Living in America has triggered this passion for exploring the commodification of everything… The fact that we don't...

Academy Award winning sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay returns to the podcast, along with Academy Award winning director Davis Guggenheim, to discuss their incredible new documentary, Still: A Michael J Fox Movie. “I think in a much more traditional documentary, you can polish too much. The sound. You can make it too perfect. And that's sort of what we talk about [with] the off-camera voice. You want to make sure the audience feels like you haven't screwed with the...

Scottish composer Lorne Balfe joins us to discuss his incredible original score for the latest addition of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Guest host Jon Burlingame returns to delve into Lorne’s process — including some on-the-fly performances during his interview — and why he so badly wanted to record elements of the soundtrack in so many locations from around the world. “You sometimes have these choirs [that] have to sing in different languages. And of course they can do it. But it's...

Academy Award-winning composer Ludwig Göransson returns to the Dolby Institute Podcast to discuss his latest collaboration with auteur filmmaker Christopher Nolan, with guest host Jon Burlingame. They discuss the composer’s process which, on this film, was anything but traditional, including why he composed over three hours of music before principal photography even began. “But then the real job begins when [Christopher Nolan] comes back and he goes into the edit bay and he sits there with...

Fresh from their Academy Award-winning work on Top Gun: Maverick, supervising sound editor James Mather and re-recording mixer Chris Burdon return to the Dolby Institute Podcast, along with picture editor Eddie Hamilton, to discuss the sound of the latest installment in the Mission: Impossible series. If you haven’t already, be sure to see Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One in a Dolby Cinema®: “What Dolby Atmos® allows us to do is make [the sound design] that much more immersive. I...

A new, exclusive interview with Phedon Papamichael, the director of photography of the latest (and final?) installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. He and director James Mangold had to contend with a myriad of unique challenges on this film, including matching and updating the classic “Indy look,” filming more chase scenes than you can count, and working with cutting edge VFX to “de-age” Harrison Ford, making the 80-year old action star look the same age he was when he shot Raiders of the...

Director and Co-Writer Peter Sohn and Director of Photography Jean-Claude Kalache join us this week to tell us about the making of Elemental, Pixar Animation Studios’ most ambitious movie to date. We discuss Pixar’s famously demanding story development process and why this film took years just to get to an outline, how this film deals with some much more grown-up themes than the typical Pixar fare, and the unique challenges of animating two lead characters made up entirely of either a...

Former DGA president, and one of the most successful directors working in television, Paris Barclay joins us on the podcast to discuss his remarkable work on episodes six and ten of DAHMER, season one of Ryan Murphy’s series, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” But it was work we almost didn’t get to see, because he was initially very reluctant to take on the job. “This one was a hard NO. Um, ‘I'm doing a series about Jeffrey Dahmer and I want you to be a part of it’ is not a call that I'm...

Key members of the team behind DAHMER, season one of Ryan Murphy’s hit series “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” join us this week to discuss the challenges of balancing this gripping portrayal of the notorious serial killer, and his impact on the communities he preyed upon, without glorifying or redeeming Jeffrey Dahmer’s horrific acts. “‘Monster’ doesn't just relate to the guy with the knife. It relates to the society in which he was working within, and how he was able to get away with...

For our 150th episode of The Dolby Institute Podcast we’re delighted to bring you filmmaking advice for first-time filmmakers… FROM first-time filmmakers. We have gathered a panel of emerging directors, fresh off the premieres of their very first films, to share their insights, triumphs, and challenges in this candid round-table discussion.  What hard lessons did they learn? And what would they do differently next time? “As the director, everything that goes wrong is my fault. And you have to...

How legendary indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, and his very talented family, made their latest action-thriller, Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck.

Writer/Director Nida Manzoor and her creative team join us to discuss how they made one of the breakout films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Writer/Director Lee Cronin and Sound Designer Peter Albrechtsen join us to discuss crafting the very creepy soundtrack to this latest Evil Dead film.

Independent filmmakers Hannah Pearl Utt (“Cora Bora”) and Emma Westenberg (“You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder”) discuss the challenges and triumphs of making a successful indie film, at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival.

Legendary sound artist Craig Henighan discusses working with the director and the challenges they faced remastering the new Dolby Atmos mix for A24’s 25th anniversary re-release of Aronofsky’s directorial debut, Pi.