Ari Aster and Bobby Krlic on the ‘Long and Arduous’ Process of Scoring ‘Beau is Afraid’

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Ruth Carter doesn’t need the prefix “costume designer” in front of her name; she is a household name. Carter made Oscar history when she became the first Black woman ever to win two Oscars,thanks to her work on the “Black Panther” films. With credits that include “Selma,” “Malcolm X,” “Coming 2 America” and being Spike Lee’s go-to, Carter has stories to tell.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The detail in costume design can define a character — especially for Amazon Prime’s epic “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and its retro “Daisy Jones & the Six.” Whether creating costumes for sea guards and Harfoots, “LOTR” costume designer Kate Hawley created over 2,000 outfits for the series. Hawley used blue rather extensively in stones and costumes to reflect the regal presence of Morfydd Clark’s elf, Galadriel, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s Míriel, Queen-Regent of Númenor. She created garments for the nomadic Harfoots that would shield them at night. The idea was that, like wild animals, they avoid detection from perceived enemies by just sitting still and blending into their environment.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor When costume designer Marina Toybina was tasked with building the Beast costume for ABC’s live action “Beauty and the Beast” broadcast, she looked beyond what Disney and the Broadway show had previously done. Instead, she found inspiration in puppetry. Josh Groban, who played the enchanted prince-turned-Beast, would not be relying on prosthetics and makeup for his transformation. Toybina instead built a hollowed-out puppet that stood at around 10 feet tall. Within that, she ensured there was enough mobility for Groban, and with the aid of rods, he would be able to move the arms and feet, all built via a backpack structure. Says Toybina of the contraption, “I wanted to lean into the narrative that there’s this prince trapped inside of a beast.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Yellowjackets” composers and songwriters Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker jumped at the chance to write the original music and lyrics contender “Sit Right Down” for Episode 7 of the Showtime series.“We were deep into the blood, fragmentation, descent and sanity-shattering music,” Wedren says, referring to the events that the survivors have to endure this season. The producers asked them to write an “MGM, old school standard number meets Bob Fosse.” The dream sequence happens as Simone Kessell’s Lottie asks the adult Yellowjackets to choose a therapy option treatment at her “wellness retreat.” Misty, played by Christina Ricci, finds herself in a sensory tank after picking “Guidance.” She needs it. In the teen timeline, Misty (played by Samantha Hanratty) makes a new bestie in Crystal, a fellow theater lover. Except, Misty’s openness with her BFF during a round of rapid-fire secrets comes to a sad end when Misty confesses she sabotaged the flight’s black box recorder. Mortified, Crystal asks if Misty will “poison her,” to which she replies “I’ll fucking kill you.” Moments later, Crystal has accidentally fallen off the cliff to her death. Meanwhile, adult Misty is racking up the “deaths” after kidnapping and spiking a reporter’s cigarette.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Production designers had their hands full the past year, recreating everything from an 18th century palace large enough for indoor badminton games to retro kitchens that looked like they were straight out of the 1970s. To achieve their period-accurate sets, they consulted books, photos and guild archives. For the third season of “The Great,” production designer Francesca Di Mottola a built a “gigantic games room where anything could happen and served many different purposes,” horse breeding among them. The production designer began scouting locations in the U.K., where the black comedy about Catherine the Great is filmed, but none quite fit what she was looking for, so she built the room on a soundstage.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Prey” director Dan Trachtenberg wanted his “Predator” spinoff, which is set in 1719, to be shot in a naturalistic way, so cinematographer Jeff Cutter made use of available light whenever possible — especially from fire and the moon. In the movie, Comanche warrior Naru (Amber Midthunder) tracks and hunts down a killer alien through the woods. “I would use fire as much as possible and augment it if we had to,” says Cutter.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Transforming actors into well-known figures such as Tammy Wynette and Princess Diana was a challenge for artisans, who experimented with techniques to come up with hair and makeup that would look authentic to viewers. Cate Hall spent hours with Elizabeth Debicki while recreating Princess Diana’s sophisticated coiffure from the early 1990s for Season 5 of “The Crown.” Through a series of incremental adjustments to the wig — and plenty of patience from Debicki – Hall got the look she desired. “You hold one another’s hand as you keep slicing the wig with a razor and inching towards a shape that feels recognizable,” she recalls of her collaboration with Debicki.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Max will be celebrating Pride Month in June through a series of events, programming and partnerships highlighting LGBTQ+ voices. Among the initiatives will be partnerships with Them and Newfest to help amplify queer voices, stories and content. The streamer has planned an in-app Pride takeover of the LGBTQ+ Voices page which will highlight queer content premiering in June. Among the programs will be the premiere of the HBO documentary “The Stroll,” which tells the powerful and poignant history of transgender sex workers in New York’s pre-gentrified meatpacking district in the 1990s. The Max original documentary reality series “Naked. Loud. Proud.” will stream. HBO documentaries “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” and TaylorMac’s “24-Decade History of Popular Music” are set to air.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Lucasfilm’s immersive storytelling studio Industrial Light & Magic’s ILMxLAB is rebranding its creative studio to ILM Immersive. The move comes as ILM seeks to push state-of-the-art immersive innovations for its stories. In a statement to Variety, Vicki Dobbs Beck, VP of Immersive Content, said, “When we launched nearly eight years ago, we chose the name ILMxLAB to reflect the idea that this was a brand new storytelling space – a blank canvas. We knew we would need to experiment, explore and discover – much like a traditional lab. But we also imagined that, as we matured, we would want to transition to a new name that encapsulated our focus and future.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Nicholas Britell knew very early on that Brian Cox’s Logan Roy was going to be killed off in the final season of HBO’s “Succession.” It was up to him to figure out what the passing of a titan of industry would sound like musically. Britell, who won an Emmy for the show’s theme music in 2019, has been tasked with finding new ways to push the sound of obscene wealth each season. “I thought about Logan’s death and what that might feel like,” he says. “This is the death of a very complicated person. It’s going to leave a huge hole in everyone’s life, for better or worse. I was thinking about how that would impact the family.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Twists and turns, double-dealing and death are just some of the themes at the heart of HBO’s fourth and final season of “Succession.” With that, composer Nicholas Britell has released a 25-piece original soundtrack that accompanied the season, which will drop at midnight after Sunday’s series finale. Among the cues are: “Phone Call,” the music piece that plays in the shocking third episode “Connor’s Wedding” as the Roy children, Kendall (Jeremy Strong,) Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) learn that family patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) has died aboard the Waystar Royco plane, where Logan was flying with his executive team to Sweden.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor With the “Star Wars” universe serving as the DNA for Disney+’s “Andor,” costume designer Michael Wilkinson could honor a legacy while leaning into a new world. For Diego Luna’s Cassian, Wilkinson draped him in warm, earthy tones with fabrics that were textural. When audiences first meet him, he’s in “beautiful oilcloth from old leather jackets with iconic details such as a high neckline and a hood.” By the end, the silhouettes become leaner and streamlined.  “He has a beautiful tailored long-length linen coat that we made for him that moves beautifully for all the action sequences. It’s a grown-up silhouette.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor To bring Disney’s iconic mermaid princess Ariel to life in “The Little Mermaid,” costume designer Colleen Atwood constructed a life-sized tail that went from star Halle Bailey’s chest all the way down past her legs. “We made it to scale and 3D silk-screened the tail and painted onto that so you could get the nuance of the colors,” Atwood says. “We used different layers of sheer material, which gave the tail and scales an iridescent effect.” Her biggest challenge was blending the tail’s scales into Bailey’s skin. “I solved that by putting little fins made of fabric so there was a delineation between where the fish ended and the skin began,” she says.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Broadway designer Dane Laffrey and director Michael Arden often dive into conversations about projects long before a show is greenlit. Says Laffrey, who is nominated for best scenic design for “A Christmas Carol,” “We are extensively consistent collaborators.” Having worked on shows including “Once on This Island” and the Broadway revival of “Parade” — about the lynching of Jewish American Leo Frank in 1915 — the two often discuss visual research and organizing space through “snatches of conversations.” For “Parade,” which earned Arden a Tony nod for best direction of a musical, the duo was looking at visual reference points and political rallies from the period. Says Laffrey, “We looked at grandstands or viewing stands, and things that were constructed hastily. There were also contemporary reference points from Jan. 6, touch points that mean something to us because then they will mean something to an audience.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor If anyone knows how to get the right shade of red for Black hair, it’s Camille Friend. The Oscar-nominated hair department head, whose credits include “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” experimented with adding color into Lupita Nyong’o’s hair, and now she’s doing it again. This time, it was for Halle Bailey in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid.” But doing so didn’t come cheap. Her challenge was taking Disney’s most famous redhead, Princess Ariel, and creating a look for Bailey that would work. On top of that, maintaining Bailey’s natural hair was an important requirement she needed to meet. Bailey, who sports long locs, wanted to stay true to her Black heritage. And maintaining them without a wig would herald an important moment for representation and Bailey’s identity, as the movie presents Disney’s first Black Ariel (and first Black princess in a live-action movie.)

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Prehistoric Planet” is back on Apple TV+ with over two dozen new extinct species to explore. Given the amount of dinosaurs and birds, the biggest challenge for supervising sound editor Jonny Crew was “capturing those prehistoric sounds.” Without a library of extinct sounds to pull from, Crew, who also worked on the first season, says the trickiest task was distinguishing the sounds of different birds. That’s where chickens helped crack an important moment in the show’s first episode, titled “Islands,” in which audiences are exposed to the behavior of the Hatzegopteryx, a stork-like reptile. A key scene focused on two dinosaurs mating.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Mrs. Kasha Davis’ run on “RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars” Season 8 was short-lived — the returning Season 7 alum was eliminated after just three episodes — but you haven’t seen the last of the queen. She can be found hosting Drag Story Hour. Drag Story Hour, a storytelling event for kids and teens, has been at the center of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation introduced by Republican lawmakers in the U.S in efforts to ban children from drag performances. Davis says the popularity of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and drag being in the mainstream is what creates fear among conservative Americans as the LGBTQ community comes under legislative attack and anti-queer hate crimes appear to be on the rise.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Hulu’s football docuseries “Algiers, America” reaches both an emotional and musical peak in its fifth and final episode. As the students of Edna Karr High School near graduation, one of their classmates, Keyron Ross, is killed by gun violence. The series profiles the New Orleans high school’s football team while also looking at the reality of gun violence, which has caused the players to lose both family members and teammates. For the show’s score, composer Chad Cannon threaded in a whirlwind of sound and emotion, with Labrinth’s “Euphoria” soundtrack serving as inspiration in the way that it fuses gospel, orchestral and electronic music. The importance of music in the series was particularly highlighted during Ross’ funeral.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “It Chooses,” Episode 8 of “Yellowjackets” Season 2, now streaming on Showtime. In the last moments of the Season 1 finale of “Yellowjackets,” viewers were tipped to the fact that Lottie was alive and well, and out there somewhere in the world. In the show’s second season, the adult version of Lottie, played by Simone Kessell, is revealed to be running a wellness center in Upstate New York — and there’s been an air of doubt around her. Can she be trusted or not? As it turns out, not. Lottie’s sessions with her therapist have been purely a figment of her imagination, and she’s still haunted by the Antler Queen, as well as her past in the wilderness.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor If anyone knows the musical world of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, it’s composer Brian Tyler. Over the years, he’s created themes and cues for Dom (Vin Diesel), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Cipher (Charlize Theron), and with “Fast X” he gets to dabble with Jason Momoa’s brilliant baddie, Dante. “Instead of creating a dark energy theme, I went for alluring,” Tyler says. In the film, Dante seeks to avenge his father’s death, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) from 2011’s “Fast Five.” Dante lures the Fast Family to Rome, which leads to an action-packed chase through the cobbled streets of the Eternal City as Dom, Letty and their crew attempt to stop Dante from blowing up the Vatican. “Dante is charming and he makes you laugh. So, I used high strings such as the harp, and then we get into bass music with modern instruments,” says Tyler. “It gives you this feeling that you can’t look away. There’s a sense [in his music] of empathizing with him, and why he becomes this villain.”