Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood's biggest and most recognizable stars, started his acting career as a heartthrob, exploding onto our screens as the handsome and doomed lover to Rose in Titanic. DiCaprio turns 52 today.

For a lot of audiences, he's still Jack Dawson. Through the years, he's never shied away from complicated roles or chances to play the bad guy. The most interesting turn in his career has been his work as creeps, crooks, and killers.

"When I can't immediately define the character, and there's an element of mystery to it and still a lot to be explored, that's when I say yes," he told The New York Times. "I like those kinds of complicated characters. I just do."

Below are five DiCaprio villains, and what each one shows actors and writers about building a bad guy who works.

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King Louis XIV, The Man in the Iron Mask

This was his first big swing after Titanic. He played two roles here, twins—the tyrant on the throne and the brother he keeps hidden behind iron. (Fourteen years later, DiCaprio reached for Louis XIV again when he described Calvin Candie.)

Playing a villain and a hero in the same film makes you define each one by contrast. For actors, it's a built-in exercise and a fun challenge.

He told Australian TV in the '90s, "This is possibly the most fun character I've ever played in my life. So, I've had a couple fun characters to play, but this is like the most flamboyant, and [I] get to be very cocky, which is fun."

Louis XIV of France, also known as the "Sun King," believed in the divine right of kings and absolute power of the monarchy, famously declaring, "L'état, c'est moi" (or "I am the state"). Pretty tyrannical guy.

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J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar

DiCaprio took on a tyrant of another kind when he became the FBI's Hoover for J. Edgar.

Hoover spied on fellow Americans and gathered ruinous dossiers on those he wanted to manipulate or silence. Still, Hoover is a contested figure. Historian Beverly Gage told NPR that Hoover began as a reformer, a fact his villainous reputation has buried. That gray area is exactly what DiCaprio wanted to play.

"I wanted him to tell me how he walked, how he talked, what his hands looked like, what his desk looked like, what was above his desk," DiCaprio told The New York Times.

DiCaprio recorded hours of conversation with one of Hoover's last surviving colleagues. And because aging him up took as long as five hours in makeup, he played the older Hoover for only about two of the shoot's 39 days.

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Calvin Candie, Django Unchained

Calvin Candie is easily one of DiCaprio's most contemptible characters. DiCaprio himself has said he hated this man.

He told Eye for Film:

“My character, as Quentin put it, represented everything that was wrong with the South. He was like the young Louis XIV, sort of a prince who wanted to hold on to his position and privilege at all cost. He was integrated his whole life among Black people, he was brought up by a Black man. He had to find the moral justification to treat people this way. He had a plantation to run. There was absolutely nothing about this man that I can identify with. I hated him and it was one of the most narcissistic, self-indulgent, racist horrible characters I’ve ever read in my entire life.”

At the table read, DiCaprio asked whether the film needed to go this far. Jamie Foxx later told Vanity Fair that Samuel L. Jackson pushed DiCaprio past his hesitation.

DiCaprio told Eye for Film:

“And Sam and Jamie said, 'Hey, look man, if you sugar-coat this, people are going to resent the hell out of you. You’ve got to push this guy to the utter extreme.' This is not only historically accurate but it went even farther than that, with worse atrocities. By holding the character back, you’re doing an injustice, and people are going to feel you are not telling the truth. That was the thing that ignited me into going where I did with the character.”

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Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street

For Scorsese's tale of Wall Street debauchery, DiCaprio played the antihero the audience could enjoy.

DiCaprio told NPR, "I really came into this film with the attitude of doing a Roman emperor right before the fall of the empire. I mean, I looked at these people as people that had no real sensibility for anything around them except their own indulgences."

He also worked closely with the real Jordan Belfort. He said Belfort even rolled around on the floor to show him what the Quaaludes felt like.

"It's incredibly freeing, performance-wise, to have no moral high ground and nobody really in the film that I had to answer to," he added.

A villain doesn't have to apologize to the audience. Sometimes the job is to make the seduction understandable.

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Ernest Burkhart, Killers of the Flower Moon

Most recently, DiCaprio gave life to bumbling Ernest Burkhart, whose cognitive dissonance allowed him to love an Indigenous woman while helping murder her community members. This time, he gave up the hero role on purpose. He was originally set to play FBI agent Tom White, and asked to switch to Ernest during the rewrite process.

DiCaprio told British Vogue:

“It just didn’t feel like it got to the heart of it. We weren’t immersed in the Osage story. There was this tiny, small scene between Mollie and Ernest that provoked such emotion in us at the reading, and we just started to penetrate into what that relationship was, because it was so twisted and bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

Scorsese told Time Magazine that, at a certain point, he realized he was making a movie about all the white guys, which the rewrite helped remedy (via Variety). But sometimes the villain's point of view is where the story's truth lies.

There was a time when those raw, powerhouse actors looked incredibly interesting, had classical Shakespeare training, and could blend into any movie genre.

One of the best was Stacy Keach, who we lost earlier today at the ripe young age of 85. Keach spent decades stepping into frame and taking immediate ownership of whatever was happening on screen. He was a lion, able to box you into a corner or to sit back and manipulate you with his words.

Today, I want to go over five different roles where Keach hijacked every scene.

Let's dive in.

1. Fat City (1972) - Billy Tully

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• Director: John Huston
• Writer: Leonard Gardner
• Cast: Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, Susan Tyrrell, Candy Clark, Nicholas Colasanto

This is a criminally underrated movie you should run to see whenever you get the chance. For Keach, it's probably his finest performance, and certainly the first one I thought about. He plays Billy Tully, an aging, alcoholic boxer trying to pull his life together for one last run in the ring. Too bad that run will come against a young puncher who's got him outmatched, played by Jeff Bridges.

Keach anchors the movie with a desperate optimism that everything will be okay, even though you know it will not.

2. Up in Smoke (1978) - Sergeant Stedenko

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• Director: Lou Adler
• Writer: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong
• Cast: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Stacy Keach, Strother Martin, Edie Adams

The very idea that just a couple of years after doing a boxing drama, he could be one of the stars of the first stoner comedy should prove to you the man has range. Keach plays Sergeant Stedenko, the narcotics officer determined to bust Cheech and Chong.

It's safe to say they get the better of him time and time again, but Keach's character is so goofy and unrelenting he steals a lot of the jokes. He takes the role so seriously you don't have to be high to enjoy it.

3. The Long Riders (1980) - Frank James

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• Director: Walter Hill
• Writer: Bill Bryden, Steven Smith, Stacy Keach, James Keach
• Cast: Stacy Keach, James Keach, David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid

Another hidden gem of a movie. Walter Hill makes westerns that rattle your bones. He cast real-life brothers to play iconic outlaw siblings, and Stacy Keach co-wrote the script, too. His brother James Keach plays Jesse James; Stacy plays Frank.

It's funny to think how smart they were to get involved in this, because you can see them pulling the best work out of one another. There's so much physicality in both their performances and in the way they relate to each other.

4. American History X (1998) - Cameron Alexander

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• Director: Tony Kaye
• Writer: David McKenna
• Cast: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Stacy Keach, Beverly D'Angelo, Avery Brooks, Fairuza Balk

Probably one of the scariest and most depressing movies ever made. It's harrowing, and once you've seen it, it'll haunt your dreams. Keach is only in a few scenes, but his work as Cameron Alexander, the Neo Nazi organizer who indoctrinates young men into hate groups, is gruesome. His words are so manipulative and brash; we hate him more than anything else in the movie. He's a literal stand-in for all the bigotry in the world.

5. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) - Wallenquist

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• Director: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
• Writer: Frank Miller
• Cast: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Stacy Keach, Eva Green

The sequel has its bright spots, and Keach is one of them. This is a world he was perfect for. He plays Wallenquist, the grotesque crime lord at the top of Basin City's food chain. Keach gets to wear a ton of prosthetics and use his spooky voice to command every scene. You can't look away from him.

Summing It All Up

Keach is one of those actors they just don't make anymore. Losing him feelsl ike we're losing ab ig piece of Hollywood. The characters he played will live on in both our dreams and our nightmares, and on 4K discs as well.

I'm currently working on a feature that I also wrote, and between takes, one of my actors specifically called out my first page as something that got him excited about his role. He's not even in the scene, but he understood what kind of movie we were making from the humor I added to some of the description.

I know I've talked about how important that first-page hook is, but I'd never had one of my actors directly compliment something I really do try so hard to do on every script. And that is to get the reader excited as fast as possible while also making the project's tone clear and establishing the world.

So obviously it's important to nail that first page.

Jacob Michael runs Big Red Stripe, a popular screenwriting and storytelling platform where he works as a script consultant and mentor. He says he has read hundreds of scripts over the past decade, from students to professional writers. In a new video, he lists the first-scene mistakes he sees most often, then the five things a first scene needs to work.

We've covered openings that kill a screenplay before, but this time we're focusing on the fixes. Check out the video below.

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Every Bad First Scene Has the Same Problem

Michael runs through five common film beginnings that feel cliche and often do little to set up the world. This doesn't mean you can't use them—just be aware of how common they can be and where you can subvert expectations.

These are beginnings you might want to avoid:

• The wake-up scene. Your character wakes up and starts a normal day. If there's nothing interesting or important about how they wake up, you might want to avoid this.
• The daily-routine montage. We get it—you're trying to establish a baseline for your character before the inciting incident. But if this feels too pedestrian, why would the viewer keep watching?
• The opening flashback. This just often feels like a bait-and-switch, and it's disruptive to your pacing.
• The flash-forward that cuts to "five days earlier." Of these, I feel this is the least egregious, because at least you're establishing where your character is going, and you still have room to surprise the audience.
• Two characters sitting and talking. This had better be the most interesting conversation of all time, otherwise it'll be pretty bland.

This also doesn't mean you can't have sitting-and-talking scenes later. Michael points to Sicario and Heat. Both have great scenes of characters sitting and talking, but both come later in the film, after the tension has built. Both films also open with action (a cartel raid and an ambulance theft).

The common thread of all these openings is that they're setting up the story without telling story.

"Every single one of them, they are trying to set up the actual story so it'll mean more or feel deeper to the reader or the audience," Michael says. "But ironically, because setup has no conflict, which is a result of characters not having a goal, the reader or the audience doesn't feel anything deeper. They actually feel nothing."

However! These openings can obviously work. The scenes need some key ingredients, which we'll go through below. For example, Project Hail Mary opens on someone waking up, and it works because conflict and stakes are there from the first moment.

Start Inside the Conflict, and Give Every Character a Goal

Your writing will instantly feel alive when characters are at odds and characters are in motion. This doesn't have to be literal motion—it can mean they're working toward something.

Ingredient one is in medias res. The character should already be dealing with something difficult when we meet them. The video's example is the opening of The Social Network, which is technically a sitting-and-talking scene but works anyway.

"Mark is trying to impress someone who is rapidly losing patience with him. There's a goal. There's friction. There's something to watch. That's conflict."

Ingredient two is a goal for this specific scene.

"Every scene needs characters who want something right now in this moment in this scene. They showed up to that scene, to that moment, to get something. And they get it, or they don't by the end of the scene."

The goals can be small. In Erin Brockovich, they're often just getting someone to talk or getting access to a file.

'The Social Network' Credit: Sony Pictures

Show Their Defining Behavior Under Pressure

If you have no pressure, you don't have conflict. That's one reason the "wake-up" scene can be boring. Unless the character is late or stressed, they're just going through the motions. How do they act when things are going wrong?

Ingredient three is revelation. We learn who a character is from how they handle something hard, not from their description or backstory. It ties the first scene to the character's arc. Page one shows the trait the rest of the script will test.

End Page One on a Question

Ingredient four is the hook. Imagine a tired reader at the bottom of page one deciding whether to keep going. Give them a reason.

It doesn't have to be big. Will they get the job? Can they get out before someone walks in? It just has to make stopping feel wrong. Make the reader keep going.

Ask Whether an Actor Would Want to Play It

Actors want meat. They want the motivation to be clear; they want transformation; they want nuance. Are you giving them all of this? Michael calls ingredient five the one most writers never consider.

"And this is important not because actors are your audience. They're not. But because what actors want to play and what readers want to read are almost exactly the same thing."

Is the role funny? Complex? Powerful? Does it give them somewhere to go? Chances are an actor will enjoy that role, then.

So just remember. Conflict, a goal, how the character handles difficulty, a question at the bottom of page one, and something an actor would want to play. You're off!

The Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF is getting another boost, as Blackmagic Design has announced another update to the top-of-the-line large-format cinema camera. Blackmagic Camera update 10.3.4 is squarely focused on the URSA Cine 12K LF and is set to offer improvements in several shooting workflows.

If you’re a Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF owner, renter, or interested party, here’s what you need to know about this latest camera update.

Blackmagic Camera Update 10.3.4

As mentioned above, this latest Blackmagic Camera Update (version 10.3.4) focuses on only one camera. This is something Blackmagic Design has been doing fairly recently: dropping notable, but not often major, improvements for some of its flagship cinema and broadcast cameras.

The latest update is strictly focused on the URSA Cine 12K LF and will add the following improvements and features:

• Improved 2110 talkback.
• Improved 2110 multicast support.
• Improved IS-07 tally support.

How to Download and Install

If this sounds like an update that you’re interested in and some support that could give your workflows a boost, you can find more info on how to download and install this latest Blackmagic Camera update on the company’s website here.

Blackmagic Design URSA Cine 12K LF Camera

Capture the heart of your story with a true cinematic look and feel using the redesigned URSA Cine 12K LF Camera from Blackmagic Design.

Some big storage news for y’all: the ThunderBay 4 RAID storage solution from OWC has announced that it is expanding its storage capacity to now go up to 128TB and now also features a downstream Thunderbolt 5 port for shuttle SSDs and other devices that you might want to bring to your edit station or add to your editing workflows.

This is a big update for those looking for added capacity and support for advanced video workflows, both for production and post-production. Let’s check it out.

The OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID

Designed now with a Thunderbolt 5 port, this storage option could be a nice option for professional video teams, DIT work, or even photographers and hybrid content creators looking for a huge array of storage options.

The ThunderBay 4 RAID is a four-bay solution built atop Thunderbolt 5 which, when all drives are installed, can deliver data speeds up to 1,268MB/s. The ThunderBay 4 will also now support 2.5” SATA SSDs at speeds up to 1,703MB/s, plus add quite a bit of enhanced connectivity with its Thunderbolt 5 connection.

This connection can help you connect to other Thunderbolt devices, including fast SSDs for quick edits, renders, or media headed to your colorist.

Price and Availability

The other big news here is that the ThunderBay 4 is now available in capacities up to 128TB. (Yes, 128TB, not GB. We’re in a different era now.)

What’s nice about this 128TB configuration is that when you order models with storage installed from the factory, they arrive preconfigured in RAID 5, which lets users keep working even if one drive fails.

The OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID is available for pre-order with pricing starting at $549.99 for the empty enclosure and $1,499.99 for preconfigured systems, with capacity options up to 128TB. You can find more info on the company’s website here.

It's kind of staggering how many great Clint Eastwood Westerns there are. We talk about all the famous ones on here a lot, but I wanted to take a beat to spend some time with one I feel like has gone unnoticed.

High Plains Drifter is a movie that takes a classic revenge story and adds some blistering desert heat. It's a story of a town too weak to fight back, and one guy confident and maybe even just bad enough to kill for them.

Some would say this is a study in cowardice, but I think it goes deeper than that. And one line extracts it all from this mining town.

Let's dive in.

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The Scene in Question

The mysterious Stranger (Clint Eastwood) has taken control of the small mining town of Lago, tasked with defending its residents from three vengeful outlaws.

He kills them while also getting a shave, which proves to the citizens that they have their protector.

But this man with no name isn't just some savior; he looks down on this town. These are all cowards who will do anything to push their problems on someone else.

Are they worth saving?

Who knows, but they're oney is good, and they let him do whatever he wants.

Still, the more time he spends with Mordecai (Billy Curtis), a dwarf whom he makes the mayor, the more he realizes these people just don't have killing in them. They only have fear.

After the stranger blows up a bunch of bad guys with dynamite, he has sex with a woman named Sarah, who he has this off-and-on thing going with. I would like to point out that their sex is a tad coercive for modern audiences, though in the morning they both seem to have gotten what they wanted.

Sarah tells him that the nature of the townspeople is that of people who would be afraid of him in any other circumstances, and that's dangerous.

But the stranger delivers a cold observation about human psychology:

“It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid.”

The TRUTH about FEAR | Clint Eastwood & Verna Bloom | High Plains Drifter (1973)www.youtube.com

What The Quote Means

This is a movie about having the gumption to do something when you get pushed around. People have it, and some don't. Some have no idea it's inside them.

There's a reason that the third act of this movie is a town uniting to work together with the man with no name to get rid of the bad guys, but not everyone joins them.

Only the ones with that willingness to die for something in their heart.

Only the ones who can be dangerous.

On the surface, High Plains Drifter comes across like a classic revenge movie, and this line hits that.

But you also get this guilt there. Should you have the willingness to kill, can land be dangerous in your heart? In the Old West, that can keep you alive for a long time, but it can also get you shot.

Still, when someone pushes you around and violates your core values, you have to push back.

The fear paralyzing the town is festering and infecting everyone and everything. A flurry of bullets let it out and let them believe in themselves again.

That's a pretty deep message about violence and revenge for this kind of movie.

The whole town arcs thanks to a standoff.

Summing It All Up

Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter reminded audiences that monstrous men are rarely as terrifying as the time you fail to stand up for yourself. This town was not able to see what they had become, but thanks to one guy not afraid of being feared, they were able to find themselves sticking up for one another.

It's that time of year again: the air is getting colder, you're decorating for the holiday season, and your favorite Hallmark channel or Netflix is gearing up to serve you some cheesy, comforting Christmas movies you love to watch with the family.

But maybe this year, you want to actually write one of those.

It seems like the market for those scripts is always open, with so many streamers and cable networks trying to capitalize on the season's spirit and even release a title a night. That means they need a lot of ideas!

So, we put together a list of Hallmark-inspired ideas to help get your creative juices flowing.

Pick them, put your own creative spin on them, and run to your screenwriting software and get your masterpiece going.

Let's dive in.

100 Christmas Movie Idea Prompts

Small Town Returns & Heritage Preservation

1. The Mistletoe Inn-heritance: A fast-paced Chicago PR exec inherits a struggling historic inn in Vermont, only to find the handyman restoring it is the childhood rival she swore off in high school.
2. The Christmas Carousel: An antique carousel restorer returns to her small Oregon hometown to fix the town square’s 100-year-old centerpiece before Christmas Eve, partnering with the mayor’s single-dad son.
3. Pinecone Ridge: An ambitious corporate strategist goes undercover in a quirky timber town to assess a family-owned Christmas tree farm for acquisition, but falls for the owner's son and the town's holiday charm.
4. The General Store Christmas: When a big-box store threatens her family’s century-old general store, a big-city accountant returns home to balance the books—and finds romance with the contractor renovating the competitor.
5. A Covered Bridge Christmas: An architect tasked with demolishing an unsafe historic covered bridge in New Hampshire must work with a passionate local historian to save it before December 25th.
6. The Gingerbread Lighthouse: A coastal village’s Christmas lighthouse tradition is on the line when a severe storm hits; a visiting structural engineer and a local boat captain team up to keep the beacon lit.
7. The Holly Berry Bakery: A pastry chef returns home for the holidays to save her grandmother’s bakery, entering the town’s annual bake-off alongside her high school sweetheart-turned-rival baker.
8. Saving Santa’s Workshop: A corporate land developer is sent to buy out a town known for manufacturing handmade wooden toys, but the local shop manager shows her the true meaning of craft and community.
9. The Clockwork Christmas: A vintage watchmaker returns home to repair the town hall clock tower before midnight on Christmas Eve, guided by the local librarian who holds the key to its history.
10. An Evergreen Reunion: A travel writer returns home after a decade away to cover her town’s famous "12 Days of Christmas" festival, only to be partnered with the local event coordinator she left behind.

Royalty & Secret Identities

11. A Crown for Christmas Eve: An unsuspecting pastry chef from Brooklyn is hired to cater a royal holiday gala in a small European principality, catching the eye of a prince hiding his royal title.
12. The Prince & the Poinsettia: A royal prince escapes his duties during a US press tour and gets snowed in at a small-town botanical nursery run by an independent botanist.
13. Royally Ever After: A publicist accidentally books a vacation at a cozy chalet already occupied by a low-profile European duke trying to spend one normal Christmas away from the court.
14. The Princess’s Holiday Swap: A stressed princess looking for a quiet break swaps homes with a small-town bookstore owner for two weeks, leading both to unexpected holiday romance.
15. A Duke Under the Mistletoe: A stern British duke travels to a small Maine town to inspect his family’s remote estate, only to fall for the vibrant local interior decorator hired to deck the halls.
16. Secretly Santa: A billionaire tech founder goes undercover as a volunteer at a small-town toy drive, falling for the program director who has no idea who he really is.
17. The Christmas Heiress: An heiress must complete 10 random acts of Christmas kindness in a tiny, snowbound town to unlock her trust fund, guided by a skeptical local news reporter.
18. Royalty in the Rockies: A princess gets lost during a ski trip in Colorado and is rescued by a local search-and-rescue ranger who doesn't recognize her.
19. The King’s Christmas Tree: A royal landscape architect travels to a small Pacific Northwest tree farm to select the crown jewel tree for the palace, clashing with the stubborn farm owner.
20. A Castle for Christmas: An American real estate agent is tasked with appraising a grand, historic castle in Scotland during the holiday season, clashing—then bonding—with the brooding laird.

Mistaken Identity & Fake Dating

21. The Fake Date Before Christmas: To avoid endless matchmaking from her family, a woman convinces her new neighbor to pretend to be her boyfriend for her family’s annual 5-day cabin holiday trip.
22. Operation Mistletoe: Two rival corporate lawyers agree to fake-date through a marathon of holiday office parties to boost their chances of a double promotion.
23. The Engagement Clause: A contract requires a young executive to be engaged to inherit her family’s Christmas tree shipping business, prompting her to make a deal with her best friend.
24. Snowbound Stand-In: When her twin sister falls ill, a quiet archivist takes her place as the hostess of a high-profile holiday gala, aided by her sister’s charming event co-chair.
25. Matchmaker’s Mistake: A professional matchmaker gets set up on a blind holiday date with a man she accidentally matched with her top client.
26. The Plus-One Pact: Two single colleagues agree to be each other’s platonic Christmas wedding dates, only for real feelings to surface amidst the mistletoe.
27. A Christmas Cover-Up: A famous pop star hiding from paparazzi in a remote mountain town agrees to pretend to be a local teacher’s boyfriend for the holidays in exchange for room and board.
28. The Christmas Stand-in: An out-of-work actor is hired by a wealthy family to pretend to be their estranged son's successful fiancé over the holidays, but falls for the real son's grounded brother.
29. Wrapped Up in You: A mix-up at the post office causes two strangers to receive each other's Christmas packages, leading to a series of contrived meetings and a fake-dating arrangement.
30. Holiday Double Header: A woman accidentally promises two different suitors she'll attend their hometown Christmas celebrations, leading to an elaborate juggling act—until she finds true love in the process.

Holiday Competitions & Festivals

31. The Great Christmas Bake-Off: Two competing pastry chefs are paired together in a nationally televised holiday baking contest, finding sweetness in their fierce rivalry.
32. Light Up the Night: Two next-door neighbors engage in an escalating Christmas light battle, only to team up when a local developer threatens to buy out their block.
33. The Ice Sculptor’s Heart: A world-class ice sculptor returns home to judge the town festival, only to be challenged by an amateur sculptor who sculpts straight from the heart.
34. Battle of the Gingerbreads: A traditional baker and a modern vegan pastry artist compete in the town’s high-stakes gingerbread house contest, discovering complementary recipes.
35. The Wreath Rules: A meticulous perfectionist and an eccentric free spirit are forced to co-chair their town's prestigious annual Christmas Wreath Competition.
36. Snowed In for the Snowman Contest: Stuck in a snowstorm during the town’s annual winterfest, two strangers team up to build the winning snowman entry.
37. The Christmas Pageant Panic: A high-strung theater director and a laid-back elementary school coach are thrown together to co-direct the chaotic town Christmas pageant.
38. Festival of the Pines: A festival director must work alongside her ex-fiancé to organize the town’s 50th annual tree-lighting celebration.
39. The Holiday Decorating Dash: A home stager enters a televised Christmas interior design contest, only to be paired with a rugged carpenter who prefers rustic simplicity.
40. Caroling for Kisses: Two rival local choir directors enter their groups into a regional holiday competition, but find harmony together behind the scenes.

Magical, Time-Travel & Christmas Miracles

41. The 12 Dates of Christmas: A woman gets trapped in a holiday time loop, repeating Christmas Eve over and over until she learns to open her heart to the right person.
42. The Mistletoe Wish: A woman makes a throwaway wish on an antique mistletoe branch, only for every holiday wish she’s ever made to start coming true in hilarious ways.
43. A Snow Globe Christmas: A stressed city lawyer gets magically transported inside her favorite childhood snow globe, where it's perpetually Christmas Eve, and life is simple.
44. The Christmas Ornament: An ornament passed down for generations grants a widowed craftsman five days to see what his life would look like if he opened himself up to love again.
45. Clockwork Christmas: An antique grandfather clock ticks backward on Christmas Eve, allowing a woman to relive the holiday season from ten years ago to fix her biggest regret.
46. Angel on Main Street: A guardian angel in training is sent to a small town to help a struggling hardware store owner find joy, but risks her wings when she falls in love with him.
47. The Wishing Tree: A magic wishing tree in the center of town delivers letters straight to the people who need to hear them most, reconnecting two long-lost high school sweethearts.
48. Santa’s Secret List: A woman stumbles upon a mysterious notebook that details the secret Christmas wishes of everyone in town, partnering with a local reporter to fulfill them.
49. A Past Life Christmas: After a hit on the head at a holiday market, a woman begins seeing visions of her small town in the 1920s, realizing the town handyman is her soulmate across eras.
50. The Christmas Fortune Cookie: A fortune cookie from a holiday festival promises "your true love will step into the snow at midnight," sending a skeptic on a holiday quest.

Stranded, Travel & Snowstorms

51. Snowed In at the Airport: Two polar-opposite travelers get stranded at a tiny regional airport on Christmas Eve and decide to throw a festive party for their fellow passengers.
52. The Christmas Cabin: A flight cancellation leaves a city lawyer and a rugged wilderness guide sharing the last available rustic cabin in a blizzard-bound mountain town.
53. Delayed Departure: An ambitious executive trying to make a deal before the year ends gets stuck at a charming B&B in Vermont during a historic blizzard.
54. The Holiday Express: Two strangers accidentally swap train tickets on a cross-country Christmas journey, leading to a frantic chase through scenic snowy towns.
55. Stranded in Starlight: A travel blogger’s car breaks down in a secluded valley town that takes Christmas decoration to the extreme, changing her cynical views on the holiday.
56. The Blizzard Breakdown: A mechanic helps a stranded high-fashion influencer repair her luxury vintage car, teaching her the beauty of slow-paced small-town holidays.
57. No Room at the Inn: When every room in town is booked for the Christmas festival, a woman is offered a room in the carriage house of a handsome local carpenter.
58. The Christmas Detour: A GPS glitch routes two road-tripping strangers into an off-the-grid mountain community that throws a week-long vintage Christmas celebration.
59. Flight to Mistletoe: A pilot and a flight attendant grounded in a small Midwestern town work together to make Christmas special for stranded passengers.
60. Trapped in Tinseltown: Two rivals end up trapped inside a massive department store after closing hours on Christmas Eve during a sudden ice storm.

Bed & Breakfasts, Inns & Hospitality

61. The Mistletoe Manor: A hospitality expert is brought in to audit a charming but struggling New England inn, only to fall for the warmhearted family that runs it.
62. Check-In for Christmas: A travel critic accidentally reviews a small B&B under her real name, falling for the owner before her harsh initial draft gets published.
63. The Christmas Lodge: After inheriting a rundown ski lodge, an urban designer must team up with the lodge's long-time head ski instructor to turn it around before the holiday rush.
64. Suite Holiday: A hotel manager and an eccentric guest work together to save a boutique hotel’s annual Christmas Eve gala after the main event coordinator quits.
65. A Bed & Breakfast Christmas: A woman books a quiet holiday stay at a remote inn, only to find the owner is her first love, who built the inn based on their childhood dreams.
66. Inn Harmony: A classical musician takes a retreat at a quiet mountain inn to overcome writer’s block, finding inspiration in the owner's son, who plays acoustic guitar.
67. The Christmas Reservation: A double-booking error forces a workaholic executive to share a luxury holiday chalet with an outdoor survivalist and his young daughter.
68. The Holly Jolly Hotel: An assistant hotel manager fights for a promotion by planning the hotel's biggest holiday wedding ever, with help from the bride's charming brother.
69. Winter Harbor Inn: A woman inherits half of a coastal inn from her late aunt, only to discover the other half was left to her aunt’s handsome head chef.
70. The Fireside Inn: A romance novelist with writer's block stays at a fireside inn, where the innkeeper’s real-life holiday story inspires her next bestseller—and her heart.

Career vs. Small-Town Love

71. The Corporate Christmas: A high-powered attorney returns to her hometown to shut down a local craft distillery, but the charming head distiller shows her the value of community.
72. Headline Holiday: An ambitious big-city journalist is assigned a fluff piece on a small town's Christmas light show, but finds a scoop—and love—with the town mayor.
73. The Promotion Tree: A corporate climber must choose between securing a major promotion in London or staying in her hometown to save the local Christmas tree lot with her childhood friend.
74. Architect of Christmas: An urban planner tasked with replacing a small town's central park with a shopping mall learns to appreciate community heritage from a local landscape designer.
75. The Christmas Deal: A venture capitalist travels to a remote town to evaluate a small tech startup, falling for the founder who prioritizes work-life balance and holiday traditions.
76. Publishing Peace: A book editor must track down a reclusive bestselling author in his remote mountain cabin to get his Christmas manuscript turned in by the deadline.
77. Fashion & Frosting: A high-fashion designer stuck in a rustic town is tasked with designing costumes for the local winter pageant alongside a grounded local tailor.
78. Financial Holly: A Wall Street analyst returns home to audit her family's toy manufacturing plant, clashing with the creative floor manager who believes in magic over metrics.
79. The Art of Christmas: A museum curator travels to a small town to authenticate a rare holiday painting, falling for the local art teacher who owns it.
80. Marketing Mistletoe: A brand strategist is hired to rebrand a traditional Christmas ornament company, but the founder's son teaches her why some traditions shouldn't change.

Second Chances & High School Sweethearts

81. The Mistletoe Promise: High school sweethearts who made a pact to meet at the town clock tower 10 years later if they were both single are unexpectedly reunited.
82. Love, Always at Christmas: A forgotten box of unmailed Christmas love letters from high school surfaces, bringing two former best friends back into each other's lives.
83. A Song for Christmas: A former country music duo who broke up years ago are forced to perform a holiday reunion concert in their hometown for charity.
84. The Christmas Letter: A woman receives an anonymous holiday card with a deeply personal message, launching a search across town to find which old flame sent it.
85. Back to Sugar Plum: A prima ballerina returning home after an injury reconnects with her former dance partner, who now runs the local community studio.
86. The Reunion Tree: A high school class reunion held during the town’s Christmas festival forces two former rivals to co-chair the planning committee.
87. Christmas in the Cards: A greeting card writer gets stuck in her hometown and finds inspiration after running into the ex-boyfriend who broke her heart.
88. The Festive Fixer-Upper: A house-flipper buys her childhood dream home to renovate, only to find the lead contractor is the high school boyfriend she left behind.
89. Second Chance Sleigh: A widow returns to her hometown Christmas tree farm and finds hope and new love with the steady, supportive family friend who helped maintain the farm.
90. The Holiday Scrapbook: Finding a half-finished holiday scrapbook from their youth prompts two estranged friends to recreate their favorite childhood Christmas memories together.

Crafts, Food & Unique Traditions

91. The Christmas Cookie Club: A group of small-town women gathers for their annual cookie swap, helping the newest member open her heart to the town’s local veterinarian.
92. Hot Cocoa & Heartbreak: A specialty hot chocolate shop owner fights to keep her business open against a trendy coffee chain, supported by a loyal customer who happens to be the chain owner's son.
93. The Peppermint Patch: A candy maker trying to perfect an heirloom peppermint recipe for the holiday rush gets unexpected help from a visiting flavor chemist.
94. The Christmas Quilt: A textile conservator restores an heirloom holiday quilt that holds clues to a multigenerational town mystery, with help from the local museum director.
95. Fruitcake & Romance: Determined to prove that fruitcake can be delicious, an artisan baker enters a holiday food festival alongside a skeptic food critic.
96. The Tree Farm Toast: A sommelier visits a small vineyard that specializes in spiced holiday wines and falls for the winemaker who refuses to mass-produce his product.
97. Knitting for Two: An artisan sweater maker gets an influx of holiday orders and hires a charming newcomer to handle logistics, weaving romance into every stitch.
98. The Christmas Bookshop: A cozy indie bookstore owner plans a 12-days-of-reading festival to save her shop, partnering with a visiting children's book illustrator.
99. Candlelight Christmas: A chandler preparing her signature holiday candle scents works alongside a local pine farmer to source authentic natural elements.
100. The Toymaker’s Secret: A wooden toy maker creates a special series of hand-carved puzzle boxes for Christmas, each containing a clue that leads a local schoolteacher to a surprise proposal.

Now, go get writing!

A familiar pattern many Android owners and users cite as perhaps the biggest annoyance in their smartphone-using lives is that many great, helpful apps released these days often come out for iOS first, then slowly make their way to Android.

We saw it with the Blackmagic Camera app and others, and now the RØDE Capture app, originally released in 2023 for Mac users, finally comes to Android. Still, it’s better late than never. Let’s check it out.

RØDE Capture for Android

RØDE has announced that its RØDE Capture free video recording app is coming to Android users. This app will bring its integrated audio control and video recording capabilities to a broader community of creators, finally fulfilling its promise of being available to creators working in social media, vlogging, podcasting, mobile journalism, and filmmaking.

What’s neat about the RØDE Capture app is that it brings microphone configuration and video recording controls together within one interface. This means that, rather than switching between applications or navigating individual device settings, users can manage supported RØDE microphone features directly through the app, which can help streamline the recording process and reduce the complexity of mobile content creation.

Depending on the microphone you have connected, you’ll have access to audio tools such as gain adjustment, Gain Assist, Noise Reduction, split or merged recording modes, and high-pass filtering. The app also supports a wide range of RØDE microphones, including products across its Wireless range, compact on-camera microphones, and USB desktop microphones.

Price and Availability

RØDE Capture for Android is now available as a free download through the Google Play Store. Users can search for "RØDE Capture" to download the application. The app is also available for iPhone.

Ever wondered where your favorite editing tools came from? Before they were a menu item or a button, a lot of them were a demo on a stage, and nobody was sure they’d ever ship.

That stage is called Sneaks, and it’s one of the best parts of Adobe MAX.

So What is Sneaks?

Every year at Adobe MAX, Adobe’s own researchers walk on stage and demo technology that doesn’t exist in any product yet. It’s a real first look at what research is working on, shown to a live audience (and everyone watching online).

A few things to know:

• Nothing is guaranteed. Some of what you see makes it into Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, or Firefly. Some of it doesn’t.
• Your reaction counts. Adobe’s people say a lot of what ships depends on how the audience responds, in the room and online.
• It’s a competition to get on stage. Researchers pitch their ideas internally, and a jury vote decides which ones make the cut.
• You get a hint at what’s coming. Plenty of tools editors use today started as a Sneak, and the wait between the stage and the menu can run from months to a few years.

Don’t Take Our Word For It

A great video from Josh Olufemi that recently walked through how Sneaks projects became real tools, including one that launched as a tool nobody asked for and quickly picked up a million users, and one that never shipped at all. It goes through examples across Premiere, After Effects, and Firefly, and what the creator thinks it means for editors.

If you edit for a living, it’s worth 13 minutes of your time.

Watch Sneaks This Wednesday Night

This year’s Sneaks is Wednesday, November 11, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. ET, hosted by Terry Crews. You don’t have to be in Miami Beach to watch. MAX Online is free, and Sneaks is part of it, so you can register and tune in from wherever you are.

Watch, then tell Adobe what you want to see ship in the products you use every day. Your reaction is part of how these decisions get made.

Check out MAX online, including Sneaks, at max.adobe.com.

Teradek is a brand that has made its mark and has well-earned its reputation as being an industry leader in zero-delay wireless video solutions by releasing quality products and solutions for many years now.

One of its most important contributions to wireless video was the introduction of its original Bolt model in 2013, a solution that, with the Bolt 7, launched a line of unified wireless video and data systems that is still being expanded upon today.

And with the announcement of the new Bolt 7 lineup, which is set to include 750, 1500, and MAX TX and RX models, this might be the most significant update to the series since the original was launched back in 2013.

The new Bolt 7 is here to unify your cine and live workflows like never before and usher in a new era of 900MHz RF pipelines that can work with your zero-delay video signals and even act as a wireless Ethernet or USB cable replacement.

Let’s look at this bold new world of improved and now seamless, unified wireless video.

Introducing the New Bolt 7 Lineup

Set to include a range of models including 750, 1500, and MAX TX and RX options, the new Bolt 7 lineup is here, with each model set to feature an integrated 900MHz radio that will be able to run in parallel with a zero-delay 4K video signal.

“The original Bolt replaced long SDI cable runs with a wireless zero-delay video system crews could trust. Bolt 7 takes the next step with an all-new 900MHz RF pipeline that works in tandem with your zero-delay video signal and acts as a wireless Ethernet or USB cable replacement, enabling wireless camera control, color management, telemetry, and more without a Wi-Fi network.” - Colin McDonald, Product Manager at Teradek.

With these new models, your Ethernet workflows will also be simplified by eliminating the need for Wi-Fi or additional on-camera hardware. The new models will also be more compact and versatile, featuring a 20% smaller TX than the Bolt 6 XT models and an all-new color OLED display for faster pairing, control, and diagnostics.

Cine and Live Workflows

For those using the new Bolt 7 models across a wide range of projects, the lineup is well suited to cine and live workflows. For cine workflows in particular, the Bolt 7 can send camera control and zero-delay video over a single connection.

The Bolt 7 TX in particular will be able to connect directly to your camera and eliminate the need to set up or manage a dedicated Wi-Fi network on set. Plus, because the Bolt 7 uses dedicated RF pathways outside standard Wi-Fi frequencies, your productions can reduce interference and simplify their wireless environment.

For live productions, the Bolt 7 will similarly thrive by unifying camera telemetry, video shading, and zero-delay wireless video into one connection, reducing the complexity of multi-device setups.

Your crews will also thank you, as they’ll be able to send zero-delay video to a switcher while delivering telemetry data to a Sony or Cyanview RCP in an OB truck or control room without managing separate systems.

4K60 10-Bit 422 HDR Video Over 12G-SDI

The other big news here is that Bolt 7 TX and RX units will be able to provide some top-end video specs and capabilities, as they will be able to support up to 4K60 10-bit 422 HDR video over 12G-SDI and will be fully compatible across Bolt 4K (5GHz) and Bolt 6 (5GHz and 6GHz) wireless ecosystems.

“Whether you’re on a feature, commercial, or live broadcast, the goal is the same: fewer boxes, fewer cables, fewer complications. Bolt 7 enhances the zero-delay wireless video productions rely on with a dedicated data pipeline for the control and production tools of tomorrow, and we can’t wait to see how our users invent new ways to use it.” - Colin McDonald, Product Manager at Teradek.

It’s worth noting, too, that this new 900MHz wireless data functionality is available exclusively between Bolt 7 units. So if you’re looking for top-of-the-line data transmission, this will be your best bet.

The new Bolt 7 also stands out against its competitors simply because it’s able to transmit such high-quality uninterrupted video at near zero-delay, even if crews are adding up to six additional receivers. For more info on the difference between zero-delay and WiFi-based wireless video, check out this in-depth article on Teradek’s website here.

If size and maneuverability are important factors for you, we should also point out that this new model is pretty small compared to the old Bolt 6 XT TX. There are also some great battery cradle options which are pretty cool, including a horizontal and vertical one in GM and VM which users can put either a TX or RX in it in either direction.

All great stuff that should further help cement the company as a trusted brand used by filmmakers on the biggest of projects, as Bolt has won both an Emmy and an Oscar for its contributions to the cinema industry.

Price and Availability

Overall, this new Bolt 7 lineup represents a major step forward for the company and a bold new future for unified wireless video—whatever your needs may be.

The new Bolt 7 series also introduces one new transmitter and two new receivers to the Bolt product family, each with a 900 MHz radio, a color OLED display with a simplified interface, optional single-cable pairing, and new battery plate cradles for faster battery plate swaps.

Here are the different options for the new Bolt 7 lineup.

• Bolt 7 TX is available in 750, 1500, and MAX models. Boasting a 20% smaller footprint than the Bolt 6 XT, it is Teradek’s most compact 12G-SDI transmitter to date.
• Bolt 7 RX is available in 750 and 1500 models.
• Bolt 7 RX MAX enables encoding to an SD card. When paired with a Link AX or other Wi-Fi router via Ethernet, productions can receive zero-delay video while also sending a low-latency feed to iPads on set through the Teradek TV app.

You can find full info on pricing and availability on the company’s website here.

When Godzilla Minus One won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects on a sub-$15 million budget, everyone had to reckon with it. It was like they released an actual kaiju on Hollywood's VFX community to stomp all over them.

Since then, we've seen a rise in AI, and other adaptations meant ot cut costs of visuals and to help make American monster movies as scary and visceral as the ones we see from Japan.

Well, now Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel, is in theaters. And it has just as much of a visual flair on a budget, too.

Director Takashi Yamazaki's follow-up is an unprecedented box-office juggernaut, stomping all over the competition.

The movie debuted to $63 million worldwide, with a record-breaking $31.6M in North America. And it may have also solidified these movies as the future of mid-budget filmmaking, after it was reported the budget was probably around $18-20M.

You can't say that Toho is producing flukes; they're making movies people want to see on reasonable budgets that make money right away.

So, let's dive in.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

1. Pipeline Efficiency

Okay, so I have to say from the start that the VFX community in Japan, where Toho makes its movies, is very, very different than in America.

In the last movie, there were a lot of allegations that they worked very long hours and were paid very little, which is how they keep budgets down, versus a Hollywood union system, which has rules and much higher wages.

And not always better conditions!

This is all alleged, so we need to take it with a grain of salt.

I am not an authority on this stuff, but I want everyone to keep in mind that these structures exist, and shouldn't be ignored in conversations about why these movies are able to keep their budgets so low.

Another factor is that places like Toho, who make these movies, employ VFX artists in-house, whereas in Hollywood it's all done by outside hiring and vendors bid on jobs.

Having people in-house is great; it provides more jobs and means they know the aesthetics and procedures other places might have to learn.

All this is to say that Toho is able to keep things relatively streamlined because they can do everything in-house, whereas if you were making a massive kaiju movie in Hollywood, your work would be distributed across dozens of global VFX houses, often burning millions on late-stage structural changes and other tweaks.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

2. The IMAX Advantage

We know that IMAX is one of the biggest drivers to get butts into seats. So imagine you have a cheap overall budget AND you get to shoot on IMAX, which will drive your ticket prices up.

We'll put it this way: GKIDS put this movie on every IMAX and premium large-format screen in the country, and those screens delivered 74% of the gross.

The Odyssey only had 52% of its gross from PLF screens.

Premium screens accounted for over 34% of the opening weekend box office. For this movie, I expect that number to climb.

Godzilla Minus Zero holds the distinction of being the first Japanese production shot specifically targeting an IMAX immersive workflow.

They have these massive frames that make the fights feel more epic, and we get great attention to detail that adds scope and scale by maximizing how big things look on screen compared to humans.

3. The Power of Direct Distribution & Ground-Level Marketing

As reported by the Financial Times and Gizmodo, Toho’s strategy of taking international rights back in-house and partnering with targeted distributors like GKIDS paid off massively with this rollout.

The US and global marketing spend came in under $10 million. Which is so wild for a movie that made so much opening weekend here; they just released trailers and hoped people would talk about it, and they did.

It was a sequel, so they could bring back the original audience and attract more people who wanted to experience this and VFX again.

IMAX made it feel like an event people had to see to join the conversation.

Summing It All Up

These movies have really disrupted the way Hollywood looks at big releases. I am interested in whether they'll scale up for the third movie or keep it under $20 million again.

And I want to know where this movie ends up grossing, because for a film entirely in Japanese with only three really big action sequences, it's cleaning up with audiences everywhere. That'sa great sign for innovation and international hits to come.

I got the chance to see Martin McDonagh’s newest film, Wild Horse Nine, at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it absolutely brought the house down. His new film is absolutely hysterical and features a potential career-best performance from the legendary John Malkovich. It is also his saddest film, which is saying a lot.

Let’s take a look at why, with spoilers ahead.

What John Malkovich’s Character Thinks About His Life

Our film begins with CIA agents Chris (Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) being dispatched on a mission to Easter Island, where Chris bonds with Chilean university students. There, he informs them of the Government coup in their country that is to come within a few short months that the CIA actually had a hand in.

Throughout the film, Chris utilizes his old age to get away with things that, for all intents and purposes, he should have no business talking about. His memory is starting to fade, and he’s also dying from cancer, but he mostly remains lucid enough to know when he’s messing with both his business partner and best friend, Lee, as well as the powers that oversee them.

Lee’s major piece of backstory is that he was actually the man who shot and killed JFK as part of a CIA government conspiracy. As you may expect, even though this film takes place in the early 70s, Chris is experiencing some serious guilt about his involvement in an event that did a ton of damage to the country and the world at large. This compounds through his general disdain for his overall legacy, which seems built around doing dirty work for an organization that doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and has contributed so much destruction to the world.

He reflects upon his life with all of the wit and charm that you would expect from both Malkovich and McDonagh, but in a way that feels uniquely devastating to our current world. Our society today seems more awake to government involvement in tragedy and atrocity both domestically and internationally, and yet despite our knowledge, there is a seemingly unprecedented level of powerlessness that comes with it. Chris, while a person in a unique position of power, embodies the sentiment of so many people today with grace, humor, and a deep level of empathy for the younger generation he hopes will do better than him.

McDonagh’s Transition Into Late-Career Filmmaking Sentiments

‘Wild Horse Nine’Credit: Searchlight Pictures

Martin McDonagh is only 56 years old, and he doesn’t seem like he’s retiring from filmmaking any time soon. What does seem clear with this film is that he’s starting to really ruminate on the final couple of decades of his life, and what that means in the context of his career. So many of our other great filmmakers have been making movies with this in mind over the past couple of years, but only McDonagh and Paul Thomas Anderson (who coincidentally is also 56 years old) have started doing so at an age as young as their mid-fifties.

Also, funnily enough, both Wild Horse Nine and One Battle After Another feel very thematically similar in the issues they tackle about the goals of different generations. One Battle feels a lot more outwardly hopeful about the future and the power that the younger generation has to be able to make a difference. Wild Horse Nine isn’t a hopeless kick in the teeth or anything, but its cynicism about what the world nowadays is up against isn’t unfounded in the slightest. There is one conversation with Malkovich and one of the Chilean university students in a car near the end of the film that is bound to spark lots of debate about its ethics in the current climate.

It also really begs the question of how McDonagh’s perspectives on the world will evolve in his coming films. The late-stage career perspective he has now is one we haven’t seen analyzed by filmmakers with as much longevity as he currently has, so I think it further cements him as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.

The Film’s Awards Odds

Whether or not Wild Horse Nine is going to sweep wins across Awards seasons is up for discussion at a later time, as right now it’s just too early to tell. With that said, I think that between this film, Primetime, The Odyssey, and the upcoming Digger, we are bound to have at least one of the most exciting Leading Actor Oscar races in a very long time. If I had any authority on the subject, I would say that if we’re going on the quality of the performances alone, it’s Malkovich’s award to lose.

Costume design is one of the most important aspects of filmmaking when it comes to establishing a character. Almost always, an audience gets to see what a character looks like before they ever hear them speak a syllable, so the visual elements of a character are vital for delivering the right first impression. Is this a good character or a bad one? Are they rich or poor? Do they present male, female, or otherwise? Audiences can answer many of these questions from a single still frame, which speaks to the power of costuming. The way a character’s costuming changes throughout the movie also informs their arc and helps underscore their journey.

Hair and makeup also have a lot to do with this, but for the time being we’re going to focus on 10 superb costumes that do a heck of a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to developing the characters that they have been placed upon.

10. Pepa’s Red Blazer, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ (1988)Credit: Lauren Films

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown director Pedro Almodóvar is a master of on-screen color. One of his favorite colors to use is red, but he doesn’t just splash it into the frame indiscriminately. Red is the color of passion, love, and violence, and he places the color on his main character, Pepa (Carmen Maura), both so she stands out from the majority of the other characters in the movie and because she is the character in the door-slamming farce who is most profoundly impacted by love. She has been driven to the brink of madness after being abandoned by her lover, so her red blazer indicates the fiery feelings that she has been trying to hold inside as her external circumstances grow more and more frenzied.

9. Cher’s Yellow Plaid Suit in Clueless (1995)

‘Clueless’ (1995)Credit: Paramount Pictures

Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is the lead character in Clueless, which is a modernized retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma. In addition to her iconic yellow plaid suit being a dazzling testament to her fashion sense, the outfit underscores two important facets of her character. First, she has the confidence to stand out from the crowd. The eye-catching color looks completely different from everything being worn around her, even the high-fashion outfits of her best friend, Dionne (Stacey Dash). Second, she follows the beat of her own drum to a degree that is a little indulgent, which she slowly learns over the course of the movie as it occurs to her that being unapologetically herself shouldn’t include ignoring the beats of other people’s drums.

8. Satánico Pandemonium’s Stagewear in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ (1996)Credit: Miramax Films

The vampire stripper Satánico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) memorably wears almost nothing but a snake during her act in From Dusk Till Dawn. In addition to the snake being an eye-catching replacement for a more typical feather boa, it represents the way that her sexual allure is a mask for the fact that she’s a dangerous predator.

7. Elle’s Pink Suit in Legally Blonde (2001)

‘Legally Blonde’ (2001)Credit: MGM Distribution Co.

Legally Blonde is another movie that uses a bold color to show how a character stands out from the crowd. When socialite Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) goes to Harvard to prove herself to her elitist ex, her shockingly pink wardrobe makes her an instant fish out of water among the muted tones worn by her classmates. In spite of her wardrobe being judged, she refuses to abandon pink, which is a color often associated with femininity in American culture. This quality highlights the fact that her femininity is ultimately an asset in the courtroom, as it allows her to see a fresh angle in a case that is missed by the men on her team.

6. Eric Draven’s Outfit in The Crow (1994)

‘The Crow’ (1994)Credit: Dimension Films

Not everything has to be so complicated. In The Crow, Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) dresses like a hella cool rockstar who has come back from the dead as an avenging angel because that’s exactly what he is.

5. Grace’s Wedding Dress in Ready or Not (2019)

‘Ready or Not’ (2019)Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

The fact that Ready or Not’s Grace (Samara Weaving) is still wearing her wedding dress while being forced to participate in a deadly game of hide and seek with her new in-laws is no accident. The costume design accomplishes many things at once. First, it acts as an ironic counterpoint to the fact that this is supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Second, the white fabric will allow red blood to stand out perfectly on the dress, highlighting the ordeal she’s going through. Third, the turtleneck element makes the dress feel formal and restrictive, just like the family she has now unfortunately found herself trapped in.

4. Querelle’s Sailor Uniform in Querelle (1982)

‘Querelle’ (1982)Credit: Scotia

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s erotic drama Querelle follows the titular sailor (Brad Davis) docking in a small port town, where his sheer sexual magnetism tears apart the fabric of local society. His costume perfectly accentuates his mysterious, alluring aura. The symbolic purity of the outfits bright white color is at odds with the amount of skin that’s showing, while the hat and other symbols of his position are a reminder that he belongs to the sea and that his time in town will only be brief.

3. Giselle’s Wedding Dress in Enchanted (2007)

‘Enchanted’ (2007)Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The wedding dress worn by Enchanted’s Giselle (Amy Adams) has a completely different function from Grace’s in Ready or Not. Here, it is meant to represent the fact that Giselle comes from a Disneyfied, animated world where their notions of romance are over-the-top in a way that doesn’t square with the gritty reality of New York City. Her voluminous skirts not only make her look like a fish out of water; they literally make it difficult for her to exist in the cramped physical spaces she visits around the city.

2. Darth Vader’s Uniform in the Star Wars Trilogy (1977-1983)

‘Star Wars’ (1977)Credit: Twentieth Century-Fox

Much ink has been spilled about the iconography behind Darth Vader (played on set by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones), so I won’t belabor the point. But Vader’s uniform is perhaps the most perfect villain costume in cinema. The pure, uniform blackness of his clothing makes him stand out against his mostly bright-white compatriots, while his metallic, vaguely insectoid helmet removes any trace of humanity from his visage.

1. Lorelei’s Pink Dress in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (1953)Credit: 20th Century-Fox

The pink dress worn by Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) while she performs “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is iconic for a reason. In addition to being gorgeous, the bright pink fabric evokes femininity in the same way that Elle Woods’ costumes would later do in Legally Blonde. The boldness of the color highlights the way that the character in the song performs femininity, putting her womanhood front and center in order to get what she wants out of men.

So what are some of your favorite film costumes, and what do they tell you about the characters who wear them? Sound off in the comments below!

Any individual scene of David Lynch’s masterpiece, Mulholland Drive, is a total puzzle box, capable of hours of discussion and analysis. The initial diner scene between the characters of Dan and Herb is one that can feel somewhat detached from the rest of the story when viewed on its own. But it has deep thematic implications on how we as the audience should perceive what’s to come.

Let’s talk about what this scene is getting at, with full spoilers ahead.

What Happens in the Scene

Dan and Herb sit in a booth at a Winkie’s Diner where they don’t appear to be doing much eating. Dan laments to Herb about a terrifying dream he had about a man he saw at the back of the diner, and that Herb was in the dream with him, standing near the cash register.

Herb doesn’t really take what Dan is saying seriously, and gets up to pay the bill. Dan realizes the dream is coming to life when Herb stands at the cash register in the same way he did in Dan’s dream. They sneak out back, and Dan reluctantly approaches the back alley. Out of the alley, a dirty, disheveled figure appears out of nowhere, draining the sound from the scene, and making Dan pass out from fear immediately before fading back behind the wall.

Nothing Is as It Seems

If you weren’t automatically clued in to what usually goes down in a David Lynch movie, or the preceding first few minutes of the film didn’t give it away, this scene surely announces that the film is going to be diving headfirst into maximalist, dreamlike qualities that are meant to confuse you. For how silly this scene may sound when explained out loud, when you actually sit down and watch it in the context of the film it is hard to not get the shivers up and down your spine. The lack of background sound in the initial diner scene, the draining of all sound upon the jump scare, and the total lack of explicit answers about the dream coming true are all meant to really frighten you. It all leads back to the central question: is any of it even real?

That’s not really for me to answer, but the Winkie’s diner does serve as a symbolic center point for the various dream worlds in the film, as well as a potential center point for the real-life Diane in the final act of the film. Like the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks before it, Winkie’s Diner feels almost like a portal between dimensions than your average run-of-the-mill diner. Name tags read differently, dreams become reality, and scary figures emerge from the back of alleys. But another big question leads back to that, directly.

Who is the Man in the Alley?

‘Mulholland Drive’Credit: Universal Pictures

There are a million ways you can interpret the role of the man behind the wall in Mulholland Drive, so don’t let anything I say here stop you from having your own thoughts on it. Personally, I choose to see him as the physical embodiment of both anxiety in Hollywood and the torturous weight of personal failure in the same town. Much of my reasoning actually comes from his brief appearance in the final minutes of the film.

As the film nears its conclusion, we are brought back to the alleyway again, where the man sits, holding the infamous blue box from throughout the film. He puts it in a bag and tosses it to the ground, where, from the bag, miniature, crazed versions of the elderly couple that greeted Betty, now Diane in the first act of the film, emerge. The couple makes their way to Diane’s house, grow to full size, and chase her, while screaming for her life, into her bedroom, where she takes her own life in bed, in the same position as the corpse found earlier by both Diane and Betty in the dream world.

The presence of the elderly couple in the house, tormenting Diane, likely serves as a manifestation of Diane’s horror of not living up to her full potential, like the couple initially told her that she would. Their manifestation from the man in the alleyway’s bag implies to me that they are vessels of the man’s physical embodiment of anxiety and self-hatred in the dark underbelly of Hollywood.

Draw Your Own Conclusions

It can be tough to analyze a single scene from Mulholland Drive because every point you make ignites needed discussion about another area of the film that gives your argument further context. So if you were ever wondering about this scene, or any scene in the film, certainly use this article as a stepping stone, but make sure that you form your own analysis and conclusions on the labyrinth of a film that is Mulholland Drive. It’s one of the most fulfilling, and admittedly maddening, experiences you can have as a scholar of the medium.

I can't imagine the pressure Kevin Costner was under in 1990. He was at the height of his acting career, a certified star who could greenlight anything. And for all his power, he chose a western about going native that would run over three hours and be a brutal, and somehow meditative, look at life on the prairie during expansion in the post-Civil War America.

Yes, we're talking about Dances with Wolves.

Before it even came out, critics were calling it "Kevin's Gate," a play on the notorious Heaven's Gate, which robbed us of more Michael Cimino films.

But Costner would not suffer the same fate.

The film went on to capture seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it also redefined how Hollywood portrayed the American frontier.

At its core, Dances with Wolves is an intimate study of human connection and the idea of finding peace, even in a time of immense violence and bigotry.

Let's dive into the quote that pulls this out.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The Scene in Question

This movie is so sprawling it's hard to focus on just one scene. But let me get you up to speed. John Dunbar is a Civil War soldier who gets assigned to an isolated post at Fort Sedgewick.

The place is empty; all of the other soldiers have abandoned it after losing their horses to Indians and failing to thrive out there.

But John Dunbar is different; he wants to be as far away from the war and civilization as possible, so he stays, out of what he calls a sense of duty.

It's a lonely endeavor, but the longer he stays out there, the more he comes to understand the wilderness, thanks to an unlikely friendship with the Lakota people.

Dunbar spends time observing their daily routines, learning their customs, sharing food, and attempting to breach the language barrier with the help of Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman whom he rescued as a child.

Now, Dunbar has to undo many of his own preconceived notions about these people, and as he does, he reads her journals.

As he comes to understand the Lakota, he writes all this down in his journal, including one passionate entry about how much he respects them.

He says:

"I had never known a people so eager to laugh, so devoted to family, so dedicated to each other."

What The Quote Means

Again, we're not digging for meaning here. This is Dunbar, who came from what he would call "civilized society," fully getting that there's not much of a difference between him and the Lakota, except that they seem much more peaceful and happy.

That's really the point of the narrative arc.

Dunbar is beginning to learn that choosing peace and love, andn ot violence and war, will lead to a better, more fulfilling society. He came to this area as a soldier who wanted to defend, but now, after observing a foreign environment, he begins his transformation into a man who recognizes a profound sense of home on the prairie.

This movie is a real study in how to use voiceover. It's never on the nose; it's more insightful, and it crafts the journey and change from who we meet at the start.

Also, with so many values Dunbar could lean into, we see him desperate for peace and family. He came out here preferring isolation, but now we see he needs others not only to survive, but to have a happy life.

There's something deeply moving about that.

Summing It All Up

Great films anchor the story's underlying message, and what I love about this movie is that its message sort of changes the deeper you go. You think it's about isolation and peace, but really it winds up being about finding your people and being accepted by them.

Costner’s journal entry in Dances with Wolves bridges two worlds and brings us closer to accepting that when all mankind can set aside war and lean into peace, they'll be able to prioritize what really matters.

Most indie filmmakers shoot with one camera. In fact, a lot of larger productions also shoot with one camera, unless you're Ridley Scott rolling on everything at one. It's not a limitation to apologize for. However, it can make things difficult if you have to get a lot of coverage, which means a lot of setups, which means a longer shoot schedule.

Sareesh Sudhakaran explains why it's still the default for most productions in a new video.

"Traditionally, film was expensive, so you didn't want to waste more film than you had to. Today, it's still rare to use more than one camera because it's hard to light a scene for different angles and still make it look good."

The lighting is the major factor. If you're going moody, especially, you're going to run into issues of some talent being in the dark or obscured by shadows. For example, multicam is more likely to work in a TV soundstage setup because the lighting is usually just super bright all the time.

Sudhakaran is a director and cinematographer with more than two decades of experience. His second feature, Gin Ke Dus, was released in Indian theaters in March 2024. He runs the YouTube channel Online Film School. In the video below, he breaks down three ways to shoot a scene with one camera, using Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as the example. Check it out.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Let the Scene Play in One Static Shot

Start with the easiest option.

"The simplest way to shoot a scene is to let the actors act out the entire scene in one go and record all of it from one vantage point," Sudhakaran says.

You'll find this approach in a lot of older Hollywood films. They would just roll on a wide and let everything happen. The drive to the Overlook in The Shining plays out in one take from a fixed position. The car is moving, but Sudhakaran points out the conversation would work just as well parked on the roadside.

Kubrick used a wide-angle lens and put Jack closest to the camera, so he's the largest figure in the frame. Wendy sits farthest away and smallest, and Danny leans in between them. This is one of Alfred Hitchcock's rules: an object's size in the frame should match its importance to the story at that moment.

The trade-off is that you really have to trust your actors. If it's a lot of dialogue, they have to be off-book, and there's no room for a flub in the action or line delivery. Mess one thing up, and you have to do the whole take again.

However, a locked-off take still is a choice. Your blocking, your lens, and your dialogue do the work that cuts would otherwise do.

Move the Camera Instead of Cutting

The camera tracks alongside the characters and stops when they stop. The wide lens lets the ballroom's scale register, and the movement reveals more of the room as it goes. When Dick and then Danny approach the group, the camera pushes in. Everything stays motivated so the camera isn't just wandering around.

"This is a technique to eliminate more of the background and force the audience to focus on the characters," Sudhakaran says.

A push-in can do the job of a close-up without breaking the take.

Sudhakaran also points out details most viewers won't catch on a first watch. Jack slows down near the bar and ends up on the far edge of the group, and he keeps his hands in his pockets in a defensive posture.

Again, this type of take is still telling a story. You're establishing the space and people's place in it. But blocking, again, is super important. How are they moving in the space, and why?

Break the Scene into Pieces Only When It Earns It

When you're shotlisting, you'll probably come to beats that you know are more important than others. Therefore, you'll need to shoot inserts or different shot sizes to put the camera closer to the character or another detail. And you do that using the third method, which is is filming the scene in parts from different angles, then assembling it in the edit.

In The Shining, the kitchen tour mirrors the car scene's blocking, except now Wendy is the prominent one. In the dry-storage room, the blocking shifts. Dick moves to the right, Danny stands apart, and the camera stops pushing in.

"At this point, as a director, you ask yourself, why would I want to break the scene into smaller parts?" Sudhakaran says.

Kubrick finally cuts. He goes to a medium shot of Danny that zooms into a close-up, then to Dick, who asks Danny telepathically if he'd like some ice cream. This is the first time we see "the shine" in action. When cuts are rare, they have a ton more impact. It would be the same if you never moved the camera and then had a more cinematic move. Save those moments for when they matter.

Shoot the Fewest Shots You Need

When you're on a set, sometimes you're just desperate to get shots in the can. You might have a lot of fancy ideas for shots, but the fancier they are, the more time they take. Even simple setups can take half an hour at times. So if you can cut shots out, do it.

"To shoot a scene from multiple angles with one camera, you must first ensure there's a reason for it," Sudhakaran says. "Once you've done that, you must find the least number of shots it will take to accomplish this. You shouldn't just go about and shoot the scene from a million angles. Takes a lot of time and money to shoot all the extra shots, and the actors get numb."

Some directors have actors run the whole scene on every take, and others shoot it in pieces. Sudhakaran says there's no formula. If you want a fancy shot, put it last, and do it only if you have time. You'll thank yourself later.

While the Austin Film Festival is best known as a writer’s festival focused on screenwriting competitions, workshops, and pitch contests, it’s also a film festival in the traditional sense, where films from across the world find screenings and audiences for the first time.

And, in true film festival style, we got to check out a film that offered a unique look into the world with Pickpockets, a romantic comedy-crime caper film which screened as part of the festival’s Comedy Vanguard competition.

We chatted with writer and director D.C. Fairhurst and writer and star Lucy Green to discuss how they brought this fun story and its unique filmmaking approach to life.

NFS: Tell us a bit about both of your filmmaking backgrounds. How did you both start working together?

Lucy Green: D.C. and I met when he was at film school, and I was an actor who happened to be in roughly 15 short films that year at his school. On one project, he was lighting assisting and stepped in for the actor opposite me, who had to leave early. D C. completely blew me away with his acting ability!

I couldn't believe he was hiding behind the camera. We struck up a friendship and had a consistent collaborative dynamic where, if we weren't writing/filming together, we'd be brainstorming and sharing our ideas for feedback and inspiration. It became the cornerstone of our friendship.

NFS: Tell us a bit about Pickpockets and how this film came to be.

LG: When D.C. finished filming his first film, Reaching Distance, he came to me with a short film project that was black and white, super sharp, and kind of mean-spirited, and asked me to act in and produce it with him. I told him I'd do it, but only if he played the other protagonist. We shot the film in a weekend for not much money, and the film went on to do really well around festivals.

The rom-com short feels like it should end on a kiss, but instead it ends on a betrayal... and yet, we found that audiences still rooted for these characters to get together. The feedback we consistently got was "So what happens next? Do they end up together?" We discovered that these characters clearly had a world around them that audiences were intrigued by and wanted to see through. So we started writing the feature film, using the slightly modified short film script as the first ten minutes of the feature.

D.C. Fairhurst: The hybrid B&W/Color aesthetic was informed by the story first and foremost. The pickpocketing sequences are all about Objective and Obstacle, and the colour pop gave us an instant tool to direct the audience to the object they intend to steal. And once we experimented further, we discovered it could be used to highlight Robin and Jesse’s relationship dynamic as well.

B&W also allowed us to depict a grungier, backstreets perspective on Sydney that isn’t typically shown in our film and TV (that can sometimes feel like a tourism commercial).

NFS: To expand on the above, what camera did y'all shoot on and why? Also, what was your editing and coloring workflow?

DF: We had an all Blackmagic workflow. We shot on an URSA with Canon cine lenses. Knowing how intense the hybrid grade would be, we cut the whole film inside DaVinci Resolve as well, so we could run grade tests as we edited and avoid any issues transferring between software.

The film was graded by Kali Bateman (Elvis), and she took things to a whole new level. The skills she has to emulate a film look were the cherry on top to make the movie feel like a true screwball comedy.

NFS: How have you found the Austin Film Festival and its focus on screenwriting?

LG: Being among all the incredibly talented writers here at Austin Film Festival has been such a joy - discussing story, plot, characters, and the writing process has been a huge gift at this point in our journey. Wearing as many hats as we do, we can get a bit lost in the weeds... but this trip has allowed us to revisit the year we spent writing this film. Agonising over Jesse and Robin: their desires, their obstacles, and the way they were written to both torment and complete each other.

NFS: If you could give any advice to up-and-coming filmmakers, what would you share?

LG: Make the film. Make mistakes. Fix what you can, accept what you can't. Get a self-care routine. Find your "why" so you can see it through to the end (even when it gets hard). Back yourself. And try to enjoy the moments as they're happening.

DF: It’s a cliché, but just go out and make movies with your friends as often as you can. We shot the short that kicked off the whole journey for $500 over a single weekend, and now we’re here accepting awards at AFF. You never know what project is going to snowball into something more, so use whatever you have on hand to make stuff and stay sharp in your craft.

Ho, ho ho! Tis the season for The Polar Express to be back on our TVs.

You probably remember that conductor punching tickets, clearly with the face of Tom Hanks, who's oh-so-delighted to talk-sing about hot chocolate.

But Hanks isn't only the conductor. He also played the lead boy, his father, the train's conductor, a hobo, and Santa Claus. Hanks voiced each of those except the boy, whose lines were read by child actor Daryl Sabara. (Hanks also technically plays the film's narrator, bringing the actual total to six.)

Robert Zemeckis made the film with performance capture, which is different from motion capture and involved actors wearing up to 150 reflectors all over their bodies.

Zemeckis told The Los Angeles Times that he briefly considered having Hanks play every character, but it probably wasn't feasible. As it was, Hanks completed his performances in 38 days.

This is a story about technology, but the useful part for filmmakers is the creative logic behind the casting stunt. We'll look at how Hanks decided which characters to play, why the shoot felt like theater, and more.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Why One Actor Played Every Grown-Up

Having one actor in multiple roles can feel kind of gimmicky, right? But Hanks says there was a story reason behind the choice.

Hanks told MovieWeb in a Nov. 2004 press interview:

"When Bob [Zemeckis] explained it enough to me so that I could understand the process we were doing would make it possible for grown-ups to play the kids, that opened up a lot of opportunities for one aspect of it. But then came, where are all these adults coming from? And what they are, in my sensibilities, is they’re all the caregivers. They’re all the authorities in this boy’s life and he imagines them as variations on himself and variations on his uncles and variations on his father. As well as the great mystery of how he would have imagined Santa Claus needed to be himself. Santa Claus to this boy was not this roly-poly accountant that came down the chimney every day. He was this huge, muscular man that had to lift up this massive package, this sack of presents. He had to be a big, strong guy."

I love the idea that the main character is seeking himself and those he loves in the adults around him. So in that way, Hanks sees every adult, as well as the child, as almost an extension of how he sees the world.

For writers and directors, doubling or tripling actors can be a POV choice. If your story lives inside one character's head, casting can show the audience how that character sees the world.

Know Your Limits on Test Day

As we now know, Zemeckis entertained the idea of having Hanks in every single role. Hanks told MovieWeb the story, too. But he wasn't as sold on it.

"Bob at one point said, ‘I think you should play every role in this movie because then we could do it. You could play every role!’ But I said, ‘Well, wait a minute. There’s girls in this movie. I’m going to play every elf?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’ll be great.’ There’s only so much that I can internally grasp as an actor and on the day of tests that we did I played five or six or seven roles in the course of that day, and I said, ‘Bob, I’m exhausted here.’ So in my mind, I had a track on the five characters that I played. I could understand the differences between them all and I understood how they related to the boy and I understood what the boy’s perceptions of them were. And it was just a circumstance where it was doable. It was possible without having to do it in the way, like say for example, Jerry Lewis made The Family Jewels or something like that."

Test days exist to find your ceiling. Hanks capped the count at the number of characters he could keep distinct in his head.

Small-crew directors should know what you're asking of your actors. Even in a "normal" live-action film, if you have a lead who is in almost every scene, that's emotionally and physically taxing. Don't demand too much.

'The Polar Express' Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment

Performance Capture Felt Like Theater

“I found that it is actually a return to a type of acting that acting in films does not allow you to do. It was exactly like rehearsing a play in the round. You don’t have to worry about lights, angles, rails, cameras, over the shoulders coverage. We essentially did a great series of 10 or 15 minute plays in which we did it real, we did it all in real time, and when we were done Bob [Zemeckis] had everything that he needed to. So, as far as being an actor goes, it was a blast.”

When you split performance from coverage, you might gain something in that you protect your actors' momentum.

Any Actor, Any Role

Hanks was enthusiastic about what the tech could become, with caveats. Anyone could perform anyone, opening up creative avenues.

"Any actor can now play any role. Height doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter. Hair color doesn't matter. Even gender doesn't matter," Hanks told the LA Times. "If Meryl Streep can perform a great Abraham Lincoln, now she can do that in a movie."

Zemeckis also told LA Times, "It's going to be hard to go back. It's so liberating not to deal with any physical restrictions."

Later, we saw Zemeckis' Beowulf and A Christmas Carol made with the same technology, and then the de-aging in Here (per People).

Adobe MAX 2026 is here, and this week’s creative conference in Miami has likely revealed the biggest headline. Adobe has announced that local MCP integration with Creative tools is on the way. This shouldn’t be too surprising, per se, but if you’re interested in AI creative workflows, you might have wanted it sooner.

The company shared at the conference that the MCP integrations are set to come to Creative Cloud customers in “early 2027,” so we don't have exact dates yet. We do know this will let filmmakers, editors, and other content creators use Creative Cloud tools from their preferred third-party agents to make changes locally in native Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects project files.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into what this announcement includes and what it could mean for your AI-powered workflows.

Local MCP Integrations Coming to the Creative Cloud

Again, if you’re into AI and AI-assisted creative workflows, this is likely good news, but it's frustrating that it’s taken this long to announce. We had AI assistant integration come to DaVinci Resolve back in early September, so it was likely only a matter of time until it came to Premiere.

But, again, if it’s something you’re into, it’s not who’s first to the game; it’s who does it best that will matter the most here. And this announcement from Adobe offers a lot of promise in this space, as the company says this integration will let layers, vectors, bins, and sequences stay editable in these new workflows.

As seen at previews at Adobe MAX 2026, these MCP integrations should be quite high-powered too, mostly thanks to them being able to be run locally on your computer, which will allow agents to work directly in your native project files with everything staying editable.

More Info to Come

For those who follow AI-assisted and AI-powered editing and creation workflows, this is a pretty big deal and should unlock some new and easy ways to perform tasks where you can do them once, then ask your agent to cascade it across the rest of your project or campaign, with you still being able to step in at any moment to refine the work by hand.

Plus, the company also shared that if your agent is connected to other MCP tools like Google Drive or Slack, it can pull in a project brief from Google Docs, work on it in Adobe’s tools, and share the result with your team via Slack.

Again, all we know so far is that MCP integrations should come to Creative Cloud customers in early 2027. If and when we hear anything more concrete, we’ll let you know.

Check out more of our coverage on Adobe Max 2026!

Adobe MAX 2026 is already off to a hot start in Miami, Florida, as the company rolls out its usual haul of updates for its vast library of creative apps and tools. While photo, design, and web apps may make up much of the news, there are also interesting tidbits about filmmaking and video-editing tools and apps that could fit into your creative and professional workflows.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of what’s new with Adobe Firefly and Premiere mobile, which both have some updates for how to create videos, edit content, and find the perfect soundtrack for your stories.

Adobe Firefly Updates

As it was last year, and likely will be every year until the end of time (or not, who knows), most of the announcements at MAX this year have to do with AI. Adobe’s AI creative studio, Firefly, is expanding with a wide mix of new capabilities.

Here are some highlights:

• Turn your travel clips into a vlog: Bring your footage into Firefly Video, map out your story, arrange clips, add captions, and generate transitions or b-roll for the shots you wish you’d captured.
• Bring your next brand collab to life: Create everything from mood boards to campaign designs in Firefly Design, bringing images, illustrations, animations, and 3D elements together on one canvas.
• Get the perfect shot: Remove distracting objects, change text, adjust lighting, or retouch the details of your photos with Firefly Image, without changing the rest of your image.
• Put your spin on the latest trend: Explore ready-to-use Quick Actions to create thumbnails, build product ads, or remix trending styles with your own photos and creative flair.

And, as we’ll cover in more depth in another article, Adobe’s Creative Agent workflow is getting a major boost, and Firefly is set to get some notable power-ups in this regard too, including:

• Make every project feel like you: Set your preferred colors, styles, and brand guidelines once, and carry them across your projects.
• Stay in the director’s chair: Review and tweak your AI Assistant’s plan before it gets to work, or let it take the lead.
• Find the right AI model for your vision: Explore the industry’s top image and video models, choose your favorite, or let Firefly AI Assistant pick one for you.
• Bring your next big idea to life: Brainstorm with Adobe’s Creative Agent, now in Firefly Boards to create mood boards, storyboards and creative concepts, then move from inspiration to creation.

The last piece of news for Adobe Firefly here that is worth double-clicking on (to borrow a design term) is that these Creative Agents can be always on. This means the Firefly AI Assistant can take on recurring work in the background, even when you step away from your computer or device.

Adobe Premiere mobile Updates

Adobe rolled out some of this news before MAX this week, but Premiere mobile is getting new features and workflow improvements, and the smartphone editing app will add new music partnerships with big names like UMG and WMG, as well as finally becoming available on Android.

Some of the other new updates for Premiere mobile will include:

• Find a song that fits the moment: Explore hundreds of thousands of licensed tracks, including music from artists like Olivia Dean, Noah Kahan, and more.
• Tap into what’s trending: Discover popular tracks, browse featured artists, and explore the music people are listening to now.
• Get inspired by the music: Start with artist-inspired templates tied to the songs, artists, and cultural moments you love.

Plus, similar to the above for Firefly, the Adobe Creative Agent AI Assistant is expanding to Premiere mobile as a private beta. This expansion aims to bring agentic editing capabilities that should let creators transform footage into editable first cuts, make edits using natural language, and refine their videos while maintaining full creative control.

Price and Availability

All of these new tools and capabilities are available today in beta. The new music is also available today in Premiere mobile on iOS, with Android coming soon. You can find more info on all things Adobe on the company’s website here.

Check out more of our coverage on Adobe Max 2026!

Adobe MAX has officially kicked off in Miami, Florida, as the company’s annual creativity conference begins, as always, with opening remarks from its leaders laying out what’s new in all things Adobe.

Obviously, Adobe touches a lot of the creation and design space, but we’ll do our best to help synthesize the latest news towards what might most affect the lives of filmmakers and, even more specifically, video editors. There’s also, of course, a whole new focus on the new era of multi-hyphenate, AI-assisted content creators, but we’ll do our best to cover what’s actually useful for most of us in the industry.

Let’s start with the big news from Adobe’s opening keynote and what’s coming to Creative Cloud at Adobe MAX 2026, with a focus on Premiere and other video-adjacent creative areas.

Premiere Updates at Adobe MAX 2026

So, the headline news for most Adobe users might still be Photoshop, which, as you can imagine, is getting several new AI-powered tools and features, including new Relight, Generative Restyle, and Quick Compare tools.

These new Photoshop features often make their way downstream to other apps like Premiere and After Effects, so they’re worth keeping tabs on. But the big news for Premiere specifically is actually going to be some rehashes and improvements of some tools and features which we’ve covered in the past.

The biggest updates for Premiere introduced here at Adobe MAX 2026 will have to do with Color Mode, which Adobe introduced at NAB about half a year ago, and we covered at the time. Color Mode is now generally available and supports everything from quick corrections to more advanced grades while keeping your video as the focus.

Generative Media and Enhance Audio

The other big updates for Premiere include familiar functions, plus the Generative Media Tool, which brings Generate Video, Generate Sound Effects, Generate Soundscape, and Generate Music directly into the timeline.

Users can generate missing b-roll, background music, or sound for a scene using context from their edit, then keep refining the result in their timeline. Users will also now be able to choose from Adobe Firefly and models from partners including Google, Kling, Runway and Luma based on the creative needs of their projects.

New and updated audio tools are also on the way, as the Enhance Audio feature will now let users separate audio sources and mix them independently (Adobe shows how this will include dialogue, music, ambiance, and sound effects).

There are also new Separate Crosstalk and Separate Sound Source tools to separate overlapping speakers into independent tracks, clean up noisy dialogue, and break audio into individual elements.

Finally, there’s also a new Generative Remove tool in Premiere (beta only at launch) that will bring intuitive ways to remove unwanted objects from your shots, like boom mics, logos, or background distractions.

More News to Come

This is just a small sampling of the info being introduced and covered at Adobe MAX this week. Stay tuned for more news for filmmakers, video editors, and those interested in how AI is set to play a much bigger role in your workflows—if, you know, that’s something you’re into.

Check out more of our coverage on Adobe Max 2026!

In 2003, American Idol was the biggest thing on TV, and its first two finalists got a movie whether they wanted one or not. You'd think it'd be a guaranteed hit, with how popular the show and their songs were. The film opened June 20, 2003, on a $12 million production budget and grossed $4,928,883, per Box Office Mojo.

A few million isn't anything to scoff at, but it was low for a fairly affordable project with two bankable stars. Since it flopped, it's become a millennial cult favorite.

It's a spring break musical. College student Justin (Justin Guarini) hits Fort Lauderdale with his buddies Brandon (Greg Siff) and Eddie (Brian Dietzen), meets waitress Kelly (Kelly Clarkson), and falls for her fast, while Kelly's jealous friend Alexa (Katherine Bailess) works to keep them apart.

Clarkson emerged from the debacle virtually unscathed and now has daytime TV success. Guarini didn't go as far. Recently, as he promoted his new book Center Stage Confidence, he told Fox News Digital he considers the collapse that followed one of the best things that ever happened to him.

Today, let's look at how the movie got made, why it fell apart, and what writers, directors, and performers can take from two stars who left with very different lessons.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The Movie Existed Before Its Stars Did

Most films start with a script or a filmmaker. This one started with a contract clause.

Clarkson learned she would have to star in the film shortly after winning Idol and was upset about it immediately. She's on record as hating the film. She told Yahoo! Entertainment:

"I mean, I cried. I tried so hard to get out of that film. When we all made the [American Idol Season 1] top 10, they informed us that whoever won the show had to do this movie musical. And I was like, 'I don't really want to be an actor.' Like, that's not a dream of mine. I came on a singing competition, and I was already worried about it. And then when it came down to the top two, Justin really wanted to do the movie and I didn't, so we were kind of hoping he'd win so I didn't have to! And then he loved it, so they were like, 'Well, why don't we just make it the two of y'all?'"

She admits she was "miserable shooting it" and worried it would ruin her career. She notes the script came from Kim Fuller, brother of Idol creator Simon Fuller, and that they shot it in about 28 days.

When a project is built to monetize a moment, the story can become an afterthought, which is never a great decision. Always focus on story first.

It Rushed Into Theaters, Then Rushed Out

The speed was kept up after the film was done. It opened at No. 11 in 2,001 theaters with $2.7 million, then dropped 77% its second weekend (per The Numbers). Then there was a distribution fight.

Fox had planned a late-July video release, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the biggest theater chains complained it was too soon after the theatrical debut, so Fox delayed it (via TV Guide). It hit video stores August 26 (via Herald-Standard).

Guarini told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2023, "But at the end of the day, I wanted to do it. And I loved the idea of it. There were things to be desired from the script, yes. … But no matter what the box office numbers were, I'm proud to have made it."

Release strategy should always be part of your filmmaking plan.

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Clarkson's Smartest Move Was Positioning Herself

Clarkson couldn't get out of the movie. She'd already tried, through tears and lawyers. So she changed what she was negotiating for, and that was what audiences would hear from her before the movie came out. She told Yahoo that as the first Idol winner, she was already struggling to be taken seriously as a singer by an industry that wasn't sold on talent shows, and she feared a bad movie would wreck whatever chance she had.

"I was like, 'Can you at least let me have my first single, and then the movie can come out? Just let me have a chance, before this completely ruins my chances.' And he agreed for my first single, 'Miss Independent,' to come out first."

"Miss Independent" went to U.S. radio on April 10, 2003, five days before her debut album, Thankful, came out. It reached the U.S. Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Mainstream Top 40 chart for six weeks.

You can't always control the project, but you can sometimes control the order things come out. For filmmakers, that's festival strategy, which short leads your reel, and which project you announce first.

Guarini Treated the Set Like Film School

Guarini came onto the project with a much different attitude.

He had spent years auditioning for The Lion King on Broadway, and the role finally came through right as Idol was taking off. He chose Idol. He told Yahoo! that, unlike Clarkson, he came from the theater and musicals world and was fully on board with the movie.

"I was there for the experience. When I could have been in my trailer, I was sitting in Video Village, and watching and learning, because I'd never been on a film set like that before. I learned what I needed to learn. I got what I got out of it. Yeah, it was a box office flop, but ultimately, it served me, 20-plus years later. … And so, it was this sort of bittersweet experience where I didn't have what I wanted, but I got what I needed—which was all the experience in the industry. And I'm so glad that the record flopped, that the movie flopped, because I still got to work with amazing people like Babyface. I still got to stand in Video Village in From Justin to Kelly and listen to the producers talk, listen to the directors talk. I was a sponge throughout that whole experience."

Even a doomed set teaches you things. Be the person watching, not the person hiding in the trailer.

In an industry shake-up, James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-presidents of DC Studios, Variety reports.

I have been waiting for this change, which felt inevitable when Paramount took over Warner Bros. I was a massive fan of James Gunn and the creativity he brought to DC, but he never really had the time to establish a universe.

And I didn't think Ellison would just let one person continue their vision for such a big part of the IP. I figured that with Ellison taking over, he would want to restart something that felt more like him, starting from scratch.

Marvel Studios veteran producer Jeremy Latcham will take the reins as DC's new President and Chief Creative Officer.

Gunn took to Instagram with extensive comments on the world he was allowed to build.

The Box Office Realities of the Gunn-Safran Era

Like I said in the opener, we never really got an extended era of Gunn and Safran. These were guys who took over with a lot to sort out after the Snyder era and who were tasked with restarting every major title and building out a world.

We got one Superman movie, a couple of other smaller titles, and another Superman on the way, plus a delayed Batman.

It felt like they were just spreading their wings, but they had a rough summer during the Warner Bros. acquisition. Supergirl made $126 million against a reported $170 million budget and got memed to death.

Now, the surprise hit of Clayface should be seen as a win, where a mid-budget horror turned a modest profit, bringing in $109 million on a $44 million budget, and that's growing weekly.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow, scheduled to hit theaters next summer, but I could also see the new DC writing it off completely and starting over again.

The thing is, Gunn took over at a volatile time and stabilized the place. Now, we're seeing a new owner make it crazy again.

For their part, Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz praised Gunn and Safran for “[launching] a new era for DC Studios and [leading] it through a period of real transformation.”

Ellison and Kreiz put out a statement in which they continued, “We’re grateful for their passion, contributions and commitment to this legendary brand.”

Enter Jeremy Latcham

In the same statement from Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, they went on to say, "Jeremy has been a longtime creative partner to both, and we have complete confidence that James and Peter will ensure a smooth, collaborative transition and continue this work with care. We look forward to working with Jeremy to build the next generation of DC storytelling and to doubling down on our commitment to fans.”

This will be a hard job for the Marvel alum. DC has been trying to build an extended universe for what feels like 20 years, but so far they've only found modest hits on TV and in movies.

Luckily for DC, Jeremy Latcham brings a blockbuster track record to DC Studios as a former key executive at Marvel Studios. Latcham served as an executive producer on foundational MCU hits including Iron Man, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

He worked with Kevin Feige and helped define the most profitable era of Marvel movies and shows.

So what can he do for DC? Time will tell, but as Skydance shapes what it wants for the next era, it'll be interesting to see how it schedules and builds differently than the eras before it.

I love classic Hollywood so much. It was a time of such magic and such wonderful marketing. Without the internet, you had to grab people in different ways. That's why when MGM signed a contract with Hedy Lamarr, they sold her as "the most beautiful woman in the world."

The thing is, I think they were right at the time.

Hedy Lamarr was gorgeous, but her most significant contributions to society weren't her looks; they were her genius. She was a self-taught inventor who co-patented frequency-hopping technology during World War II.

Yeah, she helped beat the Nazis.

But that's a different post. Today, I want to focus just on the acting and talk about her best roles as an actress.

Let's dive in.

1. Ecstasy (1933) - Eva Hermann

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Gustav Machatý
• Writer: Gustav Machatý, František Horký, Vítězslav Nezval
• Cast: Hedy Lamarr (as Hedy Kiesler), Aribert Mog, Zvonimir Rogoz, Leopold Kramer

How do you know you're seeing a star on screen? When 18-year-old Hedy Kiesler shocked international audiences in this Czech avant-garde classic, Hollywood knew they had to have her. She had "it," and this is the best, unfiltered look at what someone saw in her.

2. Algiers (1938) - Gaby

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: John Cromwell
• Writer: John Howard Lawson (Screenplay), James M. Cain (Additional Dialogue), Henri La Barthe (Novel)
• Cast: Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr, Sigrid Gurie, Joseph Calleia, Gene Lockhart

This title was Lamarr's American film debut. She plays the glamorous Gaby, a Parisian tourist seducing a jewel thief. Lamar became so popular in this movie that her hairstyle caught on. The film's atmosphere directly inspired Warner Bros. when greenlighting Casablanca.

3. Boom Town (1940) - Karen Vanmeer

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Jack Conway
• Writer: John Lee Mahin (Screenplay), James Edward Grant (Story)
• Cast: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr

Clark Gable was a massive star, so it was a vote of confidence that they cast Hedy Lamarr opposite him in this movie. But the fun thing is we also got to see her doing comedy, which proved she was funny as well as dramatic.

4. Ziegfeld Girl (1941) - Sandra Kolter

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Robert Z. Leonard
• Writer: Marguerite Roberts, Sonya Levien
• Cast: James Stewart, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Tony Martin, Philip Dorn

Lamarr was the kind of actress who could do it all, including musicals. This movie is probably most famous for its elaborate costumes, but it's one of those unsung stories about beauty and talent and the sacrifices we make for stardom.

5. Experiment Perilous (1944) - Allida Bederaux

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Jacques Tourneur
• Writer: Warren Duff (Screenplay), Margaret Carpenter (Novel)
• Cast: Hedy Lamarr, George Brent, Paul Lukas, Albert Dekker, Carl Esmond

Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, Cat People) directed this Victorian psychological thriller where Lamarr is truly the star of the show. She plays a woman with a controlling husband who is planning what to do next. It's all dread and gothic lighting.

6. The Strange Woman (1946) - Jenny Hager

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
• Writer: Herb Meadow (Screenplay), Ben Ames Williams (Novel)
• Cast: Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Gene Lockhart

Lamarr co-produced this independent film noir to take control of her career and to give herself a role that was complicated and contained depth. She got a meaty role that allowed her to play in film noir and gave her a dark complexity that studios just wouldn't touch.

7. Samson and Delilah (1949) - Delilah

- YouTube www.youtube.com

• Director: Cecil B. DeMille
• Writer: Fredric M. Frank, Harold Lamb, Jesse Lasky Jr., Vladimir Jabotinsky
• Cast: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Henry Wilcoxon

This was a massive hit for its time, a biblical epic from Cecil B. DeMille that blew the Technicolor doors of Hollywood. It's her highest-grossing movie, and she kind of plays the hits here as the gorgeous Philistine temptress Delilah. Lamarr dominates the screen and kind of makes you play with her decisions, even though she's the bad guy.

Summing It All Up

Careers are a funny thing; in Hollywood, they can come from nothing and launch you to everything. For Lamarr, her legacy is not just being a person who helped us defeat fascism, but also being an actress who took fate into her own hands and played roles that made her proud.

What titles should I add to this list?

One of my favorite things about horror movies is that they usually come with their own set of rules. In fact, Scream did a really good job using the opening scene to sort of shrink this down.

But the general idea is that when you have a killer, especially an otherworldly one, you need rules on how they operate.

And yet, there's nothing more boring than a scene that's just someone explaining how and why things happen...so, how do you make that scary to fit the tone?

Well, in 1984, Wes Craven came in with a very simple rule, one that shook up all slashers and gave us a villain who operated purely within the subconscious.

A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced us to the rules of its world in one line, and it made it terrifying. Today, we unpack it.

Let's dive in.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The Scene in Question

Okay, so you know the basic premise: Freddy is killing teens, and people want to know why. As they dig deeper into the past, they also have to survive the present.

The line we're talking about explains how to survive Freddy's onslaught, and it gives the movie its fun and games; it's the trailer moment. And it makes it easy to explain to anyone who hasn't seen the film.

It is so efficient we should lionize this kind of exposition.

So, in act one, as the killings happen, the core group of teenagers begins to realize that their shared nightmares are not coincidences, and that they are all in fact linked by a killer who keeps showing up in their minds.

After Tina Gray’s gruesome murder leaves her boyfriend Rod under suspicion, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) starts piecing together the terrifying pattern connecting their dreams to the real killer.

Nancy lays out the stakes to her boyfriend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp in his feature film debut), and he is only half-listening.

But Nancy delivers the one chilling rule to keep you alive when confronting Freddy:

“Whatever you do… don't fall asleep.”

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What The Quote Means

As I said in the opening, horror movies need clear rules. And this one is maybe the clearest. If you go to sleep, you can die.

The quote establishes the Elm Street franchise's central storytelling tool.

If you wrote this as a spec script and handed it to an exec, they could clearly explain this to their boss and see the trailer moment immediately.

It also has this thematic core of teens being isolated in their dreams, afraid Freddy will kill them. Teen isolation is a sort of universal theme in coming-of-age movies,m and in this one, the second you go to sleep, that isolation is your death warrant.

Since this is a scary movie, all dreams become nightmares. You used to have dreams of being popular in high school, and now those dreams will get you killed.

The parents in this story had dreams until Freddy was killed in that fire after hurting them, and he's taking the dreams away from their kids, too.

Nancy's rule turns bedtime into a ticking clock, and it gives us something to root for at the top of act two. We don't want these kids to fall asleep, so we also get this perverse role-play where we'd think about how we would stay awake while also leaning into the story.

Summing It All Up

Horror movies are great because once you pull out your hook, you then get to have al ot of fun with it. Just like Jigsaw has traps, Freddy has sleep. And the idea of killing in sleep is what spawned this into such an epic franchise.

Wes Craven weaponized a fundamental body function that we needed to live...but that could also kill us.

That's what makes this movie last forever.

Another fun discovery at this year's Austin Film Festival was GIANTS, a five-minute short film in the festival’s Animated Shorts Program. It caught our attention for its DIY style and roots, and we were intrigued by the film’s journey: it began as a live-action short film shot over a decade ago before it was brought back to life and mutated into a stylized rotoscope-animated film.

We chatted with filmmaker Nate Bayless about the film’s history and how he brought it into a new, mutated version that screened at this year’s Austin Film Festival.

NFS: Tell us a bit about the inspiration and original idea for GIANTS?

Nate Bayless: It was one of those all-too-rare ideas that came into my head fully formed, all at once. In my experience, you have to follow those.

The film is mostly about growing up. I was 26 when I wrote and directed the live-action reference footage back in 2013, and there was a lot of eye-opening political stuff going on that has only grown more relevant as time progressed.

I don’t want to say much more than that about what it means to me personally and why the idea wouldn’t let me give up on it after so long, but it definitely wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve. Studio Ghibli, Lord of the Rings, all manner of dystopian science fiction from The Matrix to Brave New World, the rotoscope animated films of Ralph Bakshi, psychedelic 70s fare like the films of John Boorman, it’s kind of a hodgepodge of all my favorite things!

NFS: You mention that the film began as a live-action project before it mutated into stylized rotoscope animation. Could you tell us a bit about the film's history and this conversion?

NB: My two producer friends and I threw a fundraiser, did a little crowdfunding, and called in a ton of favors to organize a surprisingly professional three-day shoot in Austin, TX, with a sizeable crew, one day in the woods at the local Greenbelt and two days on a greenscreen soundstage.

The footage all looked great, but the issue was that I was way overestimating visual effects capabilities at the time. Given that it is a very effects-heavy film, I decided it would be best to put post-production on hold until my skills developed, but 2 years later I found myself working with Austin rotoscope studio Minnow Mountain and thought this might be the best way to realize the film, and that changed my whole perspective on it.

However, none of the designs I made felt right, and it took a long time to find a look I was happy with. In 2020, I became a father, which of course slowed things down too. That was OK, because I’d waited this long and there was no real rush to finish.

Then just last year in 2025, my passion for filmmaking got reignited after a successful year-long festival run for my short film, Shirime, and I just had so much fun with that that I wanted to keep the train rolling, so I dusted off GIANTS, and here we are!

Outside of the visual style, the film is mostly the same as it was written, save for one big narrative and titular change. The film was originally about a couple of magical woodland creatures who stumble into a monolithic building where they discover a world of mesmerizing spectacle, only to uncover its nefarious secret.

But once the film became an animation and all limitations were gone, I decided to turn the building into a lumbering, rotting giant with a machine head that the creatures would enter through a metallic doorway that protrudes from the giant’s pelvic region… which is admittedly a lot weirder, but also more visually interesting, and led to a better ending that thematically fits a lot better with what the movie is about.

NFS: What camera did you originally shoot on? Were there any challenges with using footage for so long ago?

NB: We shot on the Blackmagic 4k Cinema Camera. Our DP, Dustin Supencheck, knew what he was doing, and the footage looked great, so luckily there were no challenges in using it as reference footage for the rotoscoping process.

NFS: What appeals to you more at this point, live-action filmmaking or animation?

NB: That’s exactly why I love rotoscoping so much; it’s the best of both worlds! There’s nothing quite like the creative energy of being on set and the thrill of nailing the perfect take, but you also butt heads and run up against curveballs that force you to compromise your vision. Animation is great because you get to be the all-powerful god of the world of the movie you’re making, but it can get very lonely working for so long in the isolation animation requires.

With rotoscope animation, you get to work with others but not have to spend so long on lighting setups or spend so much money on sets, wardrobe, and props since you’ll be drawing everything eventually and can redesign it however you like while still getting the little touches that actors and happy accidents on set bring. But even before working in this medium, I’ve always found rotoscope animation to be sort of magical, just on the edge of real and unreal, like being in a dream; in other words, exactly what film does best.

NFS: How has your experience been at the Austin Film Festival?

NB: Showing GIANTS at the Austin Film Festival was a dream come true. It’s been on my list for a long time, and I’m glad to be able to check it off. Great communication from the festival coordinators, tons of incredible films and filmmakers; it was an honor to be included. I’d highly recommend submitting, if any filmmakers reading are on the fence!

NFS: If you could give any career insights to up-and-coming filmmakers, in live-action or animation, what advice would you share?

NB: I think “making it” in the film world in any meaningful way requires 3 things: A) You’re good at what you do, B) You know the right people, and C) You’re in the right place at the right time.

Study your craft, follow your interests and instincts, and never stop learning, so that you’re great at what you do and develop yourself as a unique professional.

It can be a lot more difficult to know the right people and be in the right place at the right time, but get involved as often as you can, however you can. You won’t be able to do either if you don’t get involved, and you never know when a contact will become the person who recommends you for a job because they’re talking to the right person. Go to the mixers, attend the festivals, try to work on sets as much as you can, and you’ll dramatically improve your odds.

And lastly, as corny as it sounds, try to build relationships rather than contacts. The vast majority of work that I’ve gotten over the years has been because I was friends with someone who recommended me for certain projects. And while I’ve recommended people because of their skill set, I’m always much more likely to recommend or hire someone because they’re my friends and I want to see them succeed. Worst-case scenario, you end up with more friends you can talk movies with, and that ain’t half bad.

Adobe MAX is about to kick off, and as we covered last year, the name of the game was AI. And, believe it or not, that appears to likely be the central theme once again, as major announcements covering how AI will continue to further seep into every area of the company’s Creative Cloud, and creative design, creation, and editing in general, are on the way.

In anticipation of the company’s annual creativity conference kicking off later this week in Miami, the company has released some data and numbers that paint a picture of how AI is being used by its users and how these technologies are speeding up workflows and, in theory, improving lives.

Here are some key data points from Adobe’s latest Creators’ Toolkit Report.

Adobe Creators’ Toolkit Report

So, as the company has done in years past, this latest Creators’ Toolkit Report surveyed more than 2,000 US creators seeking to take the pulse on how the creator economy is rapidly evolving and how workflows are being improved, or at least changed, by major emerging trends like the new AI tools and features in Adobe’s products.

“I taught myself how to use many of the tools I rely on to create content today, so learning new skills and experimenting with technology have always been a big part of my creative journey. Creative AI has become another tool in my creative process, helping me explore new ideas, experiment with different approaches, and bring ambitious projects to life. What excites me most is that AI doesn’t replace my creativity; it expands what’s possible. I’m still the one driving the vision, making the creative decisions, and shaping the final result, but now I have even more ways to turn my ideas into reality.” — Katarina Mogus, tech creator and podcaster

Some of the big numbers report that more than three-quarters (78%) of creators who currently use creative AI say it has accelerated the growth of their business or following. That number climbs to 89% for full-time creators who feel confident they can learn the AI skills they need to keep growing.

The Changing Landscape for Video

Our big focus in covering Adobe MAX this year will once again be on how the filmmaking and video editing landscape is set to change with each new announcement and innovation.

And to that end, Adobe has some data that points towards AI, at the very least, speeding up workflows and productivity, as the company reports that more than a third (38%) of creators say they’re making more video than a year ago, and nearly two-thirds (65%) say that making more video assets is important to achieving their goals.

When looking at this data for the different areas of video creating and editing where AI assistance is most wanted, the most common answers include the following:

• 21%selected adding visual effects or removing unwanted details
• 19% selected editing and arranging clips into a complete story
• 18% selected cleaning up speech or fixing unwanted sound

Those are just some raw numbers, though. We’ll report back as we talk with filmmakers and video editors in person at MAX this week and cover what announcements are sure to come.

So, stay tuned, y’all.

Alden Ehrenreich's first day of press happened when he was 19, sitting next to Francis Ford Coppola for Tetro. And he realized he didn't know how to do interviews.

"And I remember him saying this thing that I still think about, which is like, you just talk to the person. It's just like each person that comes in is just a different person. You just talk to them."

Years later, Ehrenreich sat with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused to promote A Talent for Murder. That's Anton Corbijn's chamber thriller starring Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith, written by Joanna Murray-Smith. He has worked with the Coens, Coppola, Christopher Nolan, and Zach Cregger, and he talks openly about both the high points and the hard ones.

Here's what actors and directors can learn from his stories.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Make It Matter So Much It Stops Being Funny

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from Hail, Caesar! Ehrenreich plays a young Western actor who gets pulled into a serious British drama at the same studio, where he's terribly miscast and in over his head. He's given the line, "Would that it were so simple," but with his accent, it doesn't sound as refined as the director (Ralph Fiennes) would like. He's noted to death and is never able to deliver the line right.

It is so funny because of its repetition and absurdity. He said it was the funniest writing he'd ever read, and that was the problem.

"And I couldn't get through preparing for it without laughing, right? And it became really scary because I really couldn't get through without laughing."

The Coen brothers told him it was fine; they could cut around it. But he wanted to do the scene right. His fix was to raise the stakes for his character, Hobie Doyle. He had just come off prepping for a grueling audition and role in Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, which had raised his bar for how prepared he needed to be.

"And when I did Hail, Caesar! it was almost like all of that newfound threshold of how prepared I needed to be came into play, because I was like, this has to mean so much to me. In other words, what my character wants, and this opportunity in this prestigious—I think it was called Merrily We Dance or something like that—movie has to mean so much to me that there's nothing funny about it if I can't say these lines."

He went to the woods and spent a day mentally preparing. Fiennes stayed in character the whole shoot until his last close-up, when he finally broke. Ehrenreich also says he was "playing what he was living," a nobody among A-list stars, determined not to blow his chance. Comedy works when the character takes the situation completely seriously.

If an actor is cracking up in rehearsal, help them find what the character wants. Raising the stakes is what kills the laugh. The Coens took the pressure off without lowering the bar, and that left Ehrenreich room to push himself.

Compare that with the worst note Ehrenreich says he ever got.

"The director had watched dailies of the scene the day before and came the next day to me and the leading actress and said, 'I just need to see it behind the eyes. I just need to see it behind the eyes. I want to see it behind the eyes.' I was like, 'How do I—behind the eyes?'"

A good note gives the actor something to play. "Behind the eyes" doesn't.

For him, the mood on set also matters.

"How good a filmmaker is is how good of an experience you have making the movie, I think. And you don't have control over how the movie comes out, but the experience itself, if you're working with somebody who's really talented, it's just going to be a great time."

When a Production Falls Apart

Shortly after his film with the Coens, he landed a lead role in a Star Wars spin-off as a young Han Solo. But the film didn't do well, and production was something of a disaster. He was initially excited and felt like "a little kid" given permission to play make-believe.

Asked whether he felt the production coming apart in real time, he says most of it doesn't matter anymore. But he describes how the director change felt.

"By the time there was the director switch, it was like when people say their parents got divorced and they were just so relieved because the household had become so tense," he said.

Lucasfilm fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller in June 2017 and brought in Ron Howard. At the time, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the studio had hired an acting coach for Ehrenreich. When Horowitz brings up that coverage of his acting, Ehrenreich says it "was not accurate" and that he's moved on.

Cast and crew feel tension at the top of a production, even when no one says anything about it. Directors and producers set the tone for the whole set.

'Weapons' Credit: Warner Bros.

Prepare, Then Fight for the Role

Ehrenreich talks about how he once blew a big audition when he was in his early 20s. He was not off-book. Years later, Zach Cregger gave his Weapons role to another actor, and Ehrenreich didn't let it go.

"I sent him a short film that I directed where I gained 20 pounds, and I looked like hell, and I just said, 'You know, just want you to see this,'" he says. "This is after it went to the other actor because I never felt this before, but I was like, 'I didn't get it, and something's wrong. I feel like that was my part.' And I for a year stayed on him, and other people went in and out of the movie and other roles, and the movie got delayed, and I just kept emailing him."

It paid off. When a scheduling conflict opened the role back up, his agents told him to email Cregger that day. Cregger called and asked him to dinner.

Filmmakers can learn from both halves of this story. Showing up unprepared to a pitch or a meeting can cost you the job, and you may not get a second shot.

And when you believe a project is yours, show it. Ehrenreich sent a short film that proved he could transform physically. For a director, that might be a proof of concept, a lookbook, or a short that shows you can handle the tone. Then follow up politely and stay on the radar.

While streaming might not be the main passion or vehicle for many in the film and video space, it’s long since moved beyond the “emerging” label many would throw at it. Streaming these days is big business. And whether you do it yourself, or help a client or friend with their setups and content, it’s worth keeping tabs on how it is developing, as it can be a pretty lucrative world to step into.

It’s also getting much easier to do with the cameras available these days. This new VM20 4K Streaming Camera from NearStream really pushes things quite further than before, as it is set to offer some pretty beefy capture and zoom specs and could be a nice option for those looking to easily start streaming to popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, or OBS.

The NearStream VM20 4K Streaming Camera

Designed as an “all-in-one” option for vlogging, streaming, gaming, or other content, this new streaming cam offers an easy workflow for most live-streaming RTMP platforms, including YouTube Live and Facebook Live.

The VM20 delivers a 40x hybrid zoom (10x optical x 4x digital), allowing streamers to capture sharp, detailed images from long distances. Plus, with its 5MP 1/2.8" CMOS sensor, it should in low-light settings, ensuring image clarity and fine detail. Ideal for aiming for top-quality 4K webcam footage.

Speaking of which, the camera supports up to 4K30 resolution video via RTSP streaming over Ethernet, and it can also output video via HDMI and USB-C for streaming to popular sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and OBS.

Price and Availability

Overall, this NearStream VM20 4K Streaming Camera is a close-to-top-of-the-line streaming option, with multiple output options, multicam setup and mounting capabilities, and clear audio capture.

If you’d like to find out more about the NearStream VM20 4K Streaming Camera and what it could offer for your streaming and content needs, here are the full specs and purchase options.

• Stream Video up to 4K30
• HDMI, USB-C & Ethernet Streaming Output
• 8 MEMS Mic Array + 3.5mm Audio Input
• 40x Hybrid Zoom, 5MP CMOS Sensor
• Noise-Canceling, 360° Audio Pickup
• Presets, PoE, Webcam Use Support

NearStream VM20 4K Streaming Camera

The VM20 4K Streaming Camera from NearStream is an all-in-one camera designed for vloggers, streamers, and content creators to provide a very easy workflow for live streaming to popular RTMP platforms, including YouTube Live and Facebook Live.

While this isn’t the first or only multi-cam monitoring and control app on the market, it's new and intriguing for a few reasons. One of the biggest benefits is that this Director Mode app can work with different camera brands at the same time, supporting Canon and Sony cameras.

If you’re someone who could benefit from turning your iPhone or iPad into a compact monitoring and control console for multiple cameras, or even just one camera, to handle controlling and monitoring a new or different variable for your productions, then this might be one to check out.

Director Mode Multi-Cam Control and Monitoring App

So, promised to be an advanced multi-brand camera monitoring and control console that can fit into your pocket (or in your backpack if it’s an iPad), this new Director Mode app looks to really hit its stride when it’s working with multiple live views in a responsive grid.

With this multi-cam setup, the app helps directors and crews view camera telemetry, start or stop recording on individual cameras, or control recording across the entire setup. They can also open their dedicated camera controls whenever they might need to make an adjustment and control some of the following essentials:

• Live View monitoring
• Waveform monitor
• Focus peaking
• Frame guides
• Desqueeze
• Canon Log monitoring LUTs
• Custom LUT import
• Touch focus and tracking where supported
• Recording status, tally and live frame-rate information

Compatible With a Wide Range of Cameras

It may be easier to list the cameras this new Director Mode app doesn’t work with, as it supports a wide range of Canon and Sony cameras. The key here is that the app supports multi-brand connections and can work with the following camera types:

• Canon Cinema EOS cameras using XC Protocol
• Canon EOS R cameras using Canon Camera Control API
• Sony Alpha & selected FX cameras over Wi-Fi
• Sony Alpha & selected FX cameras over direct USB-C

The Director Mode app is an independent application and not affiliated with Canon or Sony, and the company notes that compatibility, available controls, Live View quality, and performance can vary by camera model, firmware, device, network, and connection method.

Price and Availability

If you’re curious to check it out, the app is free to download and use with a basic plan. To unlock all the controls, a Pro plan is available for a one-time purchase of $29. You can find more info on the Apple App Store here.