Universal Studio Group and IndieWire Present USG University: Consider This, a Celebration of TV Craft in Los Angeles on May 22
IndieWire will also be partnering with USG for its tentpole FYC campaign, USG University, which encompasses a slate of virtual panels with producers, actors, and artisans from shows such as 'The Four Seasons,' 'The Americas,' 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Hacks,' 'Happy's Place,' and more. The first virtual panel will launch on IndieWire on May 19, with two a week rolling out in the weeks after that.
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(Open to TV Academy and guild members.)
This partnership aligns perfectly with IndieWire's in-depth, sharp awards coverage as well as Future of Filmmaking, our new content vertical and newsletter designed to help anyone in the film and TV industry to navigate a entertainment career.
The May 22 event, moderated by IndieWire's Jim Hemphill, will take place in person in Los Angeles and gather talent from 'Hacks,' 'A Man on the Inside,' 'The Four Seasons,' 'Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,' and 'The Umbrella Academy,' all NBC Universal-produced shows.
A reception will immediately follow the panel event.
USG University (a Universal Studio Group program) is presented in partnership with Roybal Film & TV Magnet and IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking. USG University is a vehicle to support Roybal, one of the finest High schools for preparing students for a career in below-the-line roles in film and TV, with immersive opportunities to learn about TV craft with an aim for helping students to picture themselves working as a TV artisan.
The specific talent on hand for the May 22 event is Everett Burrell, visual effects supervisor of 'The Umbrella Academy'; Sue Federman, editor of 'A Man on the Inside'; Shaye Ogbonna, executive producer and writer of 'Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist'; Mailara Santana, art director of 'The Four Seasons'; and from 'Hacks,' makeup department head Debra Schrey and hair department head Aubrey Marie.
Upon confirmation of your attendance, details will be provided to you about where the event is taking place. Doors will open at 4:15pm PT on the 22nd, with the panel discussion start at 5:00 and the reception following immediately after.Best of IndieWire
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Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Dimensions Dance Theatre brings dance to the summer heat
One plus one doesn't just make two in a pas de deux. Dance duets may amount to a singular force with their concentrated cohesion or a seeming multiplicity spread out through all the changes paired movement can bring. Now, Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami closes its season with contrasting examples of this fluid sum among the four works of 'Summer Dances,' coming to the Moss Center Main Stage on Saturday, July 12. Partnered exchanges will flash amid the program's ensemble pieces—Yanis Pikieris' robust 'The Four Seasons,' a company standard to Vivaldi, and the Moss main-stage debut of Alysa Pires' 'In Between,' its intimacies awash in a classic-to-contemporary ebb and flow. But the stand-alone duets will hold our attention for special rewards. 'Confronting Genius,' by Orlando Ballet's rehearsal director Heath Gill, though being staged for the first time by Dimensions, has the elements that could have been custom-made for the nine-year old Miami company from its start. Speed, punch, and plenty of flair are among the demands here that a Dimensions cast thrives on. DDTM co-artistic directors Carlos Guerra and Jennifer Kronenberg 'were blown away,' as she puts it, by the wit and physicality of Gill's piece when they saw it two years ago at the Riverside Dance Festival, co-produced by their artistic partner Ballet Vero Beach. This ballet upholds the virtue that the directors—in their co-authored book 'Experiencing the Art of Pas de Deux' (University Press of Florida, 2016)—attribute to well-crafted partnering with its 'incredible power to take dancers and their audiences on an epic journey.' As a standout dancer at Atlanta Ballet—his skills earning him a place on Dance Magazine's '25 To Watch' list in 2014—Gill was already forging a path in choreography (mostly for Wabi Sabi, an Atlanta Ballet summer offshoot) when he, along with other AB dancers, stepped away from their home company to form Atlanta's Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre in 2017. It was there that 'Confronting Genius' was born. 'I created it during our first season,' says Gill. 'Up to then I'd made a wealth of works but always on my timeline—whenever I had an idea, not feeling immense pressure. At Terminus I'd choreographed LORE, a full-length ballet for the first time, and I was thrilled with it. But the new year rolled around and—boom!—I had to do a new piece still feeling a bit drained.' At this impasse, he was wondering how to stay on a steadily productive track when a Terminus dancer turned him on to 'Big Magic,' a treatise by Elizabeth Gilbert (of 'Eat Pray Love' fame) on embracing the forces that nourish the imagination. 'It's a brilliant book,' says Gill. 'The author cleverly paints a picture of how ideas come from some entity outside yourself. In classical Greece, that was the concept of the genius. If your ideas were great, it meant your genius rocked. That takes some pressure off the artist—though, of course, you still have to keep showing up to do the work. This helped me get over my roadblock. For my next project I had two dancers—the kind of parameter I love. Right there was my piece. I was going to have an artist and this external entity. And I finished it in six days.' Gill's own genius found support in his artistic toolbox. 'I always have this catalog of ideas filed away. Every time I have a new work and feel a particular vibe, I go into it to move things along.' And reaching in for the music is fundamental to his approach. 'I'm very rhythmic,' he says, 'having started out as a tap dancer.' Always happy to entertain while growing up in Albion, a little town in southern Illinois, he was asked to join a nearby production of 'The Music Man,' where a connection eventually led him to a summer intensive at Houston Ballet. 'That was a big jump forward in my journey,' recalls Gill. In 'Confronting Genius,' he turned his well-attuned ear to a rousing sound mix. 'The first track is an incredibly challenging Paganini caprice,' he explains. 'So this starts out in a burst of energy to the violin. By the time my work closes, it's soulful, simple, with another violin piece that feels fragile and beautifully human—like owning up to not having all the answers. But there's lots going on in the middle.' That includes dancing to a voiceover of Gilbert's text. 'I'm fascinated by speech as music,' says Gill. 'The rhythm, the change in tones, make me think of songbirds speaking to each other. Of course, language brings us pictures, and these play off the physicality of the dancers in a cartoon of sorts.' For Gill, humor is the helium that makes the weightiest of topics soar. He says, 'It invites people to the table to feel more comfortable laughing together. I've always been a bit of a cut-up myself.' Confessing his love for improv shows, he notes how timing is everything in comedy as in his art form. 'Ours is such a funny profession, and dancers can get pretty goofy. They're game to showcase this.' If one pair of dancers can set off a string of firecracker moments, as in 'Confronting Genius,' another can focus their energy for gradual luminosity. It is what brightens 'Apollo and Daphne,' Boulder Ballet artistic director Ben Needham-Wood's deeply felt response to Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini's encapsulation of myth in a marble masterpiece. Made flesh by the choreographer, the encounter between the ardent god and a demurring nymph—by divine intervention turned into a laurel tree within his reach—gains sentient human value, following an emotional arc that for Gill reigns over the specifics of narrative. 'The piece was inspired when I was on a trip to Italy with my mom, and we visited Rome's Borghese Gallery where the statue is,' says Needham-Wood, a student of Latin and classical mythology from his high school days in New Hampshire. Bernini's freezing of the moment of the nymph's arboreal transformation entranced mother and son for nearly their whole gallery visit. 'Bernini gives you such a strong feeling for the space around the action, and that's where my ballet lives,' says the choreographer, who listening on his headset during the flight home from Italy chanced upon Arvo Pärt's 'Spiegel im Spiegel,' its repeated three-note pattern on piano over sustained violin 'having so much air and swell it was perfect to accompany my dancers. To stand and hold a place in simplicity is one of the most difficult things for any performer to do. But it lets them and audiences connect on a deeper level.' That's a maxim he learned from mentor Bruce Simpson, then-director of Louisville Ballet, where Needham-Wood danced and 'Apollo and Daphne' premiered in 2011, allowing the choreographer's mother to admire the work shortly before she died. DDTM's directors ran across 'Apollo and Daphne' searching the Internet in 2017. Kronenberg says the ballet—which will be accompanied by live music—struck them as rapturous, adding that after a successful DDTM stage premiere in 2019, it streamed during the pandemic lockdown as part of Kennedy Center's Arts Across America series, serving as 'a poignant vehicle to connect with audiences on an emotional and spiritual level.' The work, too, connects with an observation in the directors' book: 'The best array of actions and emotions within a pas de deux can prove incredibly intense and extraordinarily delicate simultaneously.' A double magic for all times, be they troubled or fine. If you go: WHAT: Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami 'Summer Dances' WHERE: The Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211 St., Miami WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12. COST: $25-$45, $10 student tickets available by phone or in person with ID. INFORMATION: (786) 573-5300 or is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don't miss a story at
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Celine Song Says Audiences Are ‘Scared' of Taking Rom-Coms Seriously Due to ‘Misogyny'
Celine Song is speaking out on how rom-coms are written off by critics and audiences alike. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker was asked by the Southampton Playhouse Artistic Director Eric Kohn why there are fewer rom-coms made today (although Song's sophomore film 'Materialists' is decidedly not one of them). Song told the Southampton Playhouse that the lack of romance genre films is in part due to 'misogyny,' specifically by deeming the features merely 'chick flicks.' 'There has been this diminishing of the genre by calling them 'chick flicks,'' Song said. 'I think about this in terms of what I'd consider the middle class of movies. Either you can make a movie for so much money that you have to make so much money back, or the movie is being made for festivals under $2 million where it's for some people and the goal is to go through the journey of accolades and all those other things.' More from IndieWire Ari Aster Says 'We Have No Say' in How AI Will Impact the World: It's 'Already Too Late' How Victoria Mahoney's Groundbreaking 'Star Wars' Directing Gig Guided Her Work on 'The Old Guard 2' She continued, 'Generally speaking, there are so few movies that fit into whatever category mine is. It's a theatrical film, not for streaming. It's an R-rated romantic dramedy and not based on a book. It's an original story. It has these great actors in it and the genre has been historically dismissed as chick flick.' That dismissal is in part due to the patriarchal undermining of films that are largely written and directed by women; Song also stated that people are also fearful of examining their own relationship to the idea of love, which is at the (literal) heart of the rom-com genre. 'A few reasons, one of which is misogyny. But there's another part of it. Romance is something that we're all embarrassed to be obsessed with,' Song said. 'OK, fine, it's a chick flick. That's often said as if it's not a serious movie. I always think, well, that's sad in a couple of ways. You're saying chicks are not serious people. Secondly, it's not the concern of serious people to think about love and dating. But serious people do it, too. They're very troubled by love and dating. Ask any serious person. And so it's a genre that is dismissed. People are scared of it. […] True love is a difficult thing for people. When I say it, adults look at me like I'm Santa Claus. But true love is the only thing that is real. I don't know why true love is any less real than a Birkin bag or a Maserati. True love has endured throughout time. It's a thing that is so ancient.' Song cited how the American way of looking at (and for) love is starkly different from other cultures' approaches to courtship and self-worth. 'As a Canadian, as a bit of an outsider, I see the way that Americans think of themselves as merchandise that is built into the DNA of the country,' Song said, with the theme of people as 'merchandise' being throughout the aptly-titled 'Materialists.' 'My actors were so beautifully attuned to this,' Song said of the cast, which consists of Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. 'Who [better] understands 'I'm not merchandise, I'm a person' than Chris, Dakota, and Pedro. Pedro gets treated like he's 'The Mandalorian' and Chris gets treated like Captain America. He's a different person. Dakota was in '50 Shades of Grey.' Talk about objectification!' She added, 'They wanted to do this movie not because it's a fun rom-com. They get offered rom-coms all the time. They wanted to make this particular movie with me because they wanted to talk about the way we brutalize ourselves and don't treat ourselves like real people. Only when we're people are we actually capable of love.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
How Victoria Mahoney's Groundbreaking ‘Star Wars' Directing Gig Guided Her Work on ‘The Old Guard 2'
Director Victoria Mahoney knows a little something about stepping into a beloved franchise and coming out the other side. In between her lauded 2011 feature film debut 'Yelling to the Sky' and a wide assortment of TV directing gigs ('Queen Sugar,' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'Claws,' 'You,' and many more), Mahoney was hired as the second unit director on J.J. Abrams' 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.' A 'Star Wars' gig? That sounds great for any director, but when Mahoney was hired in 2018, it came with some added weight: The position meant that she'd be the first woman to direct on a 'Star Wars' film ever. More from IndieWire You Can Now Buy Tickets for Angel Studios' Founding Father Biopic 'Young Washington' Before It's Even Shot Brad Pitt Says His Generation of Actors Were 'More Uptight': 'You Didn't Sell Out' with Franchises So, yes, Mahoney knows a little something about stepping into a beloved franchise. For her second feature, Netflix's 'The Old Guard 2,' Mahoney is once again taking an established (and adored) series and making it her own. Following Gina Prince-Bythewood's smash hit 'The Old Guard,' Mahoney's film picks up where the superhero story ended, and follows the exploits of a talented group of immortal warriors, including Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, and Veronica Ngô, plus newbies Henry Golding and Uma Thurman, and returning (human) co-star Chiwetel Ejiofor. The big question: What's her secret for putting her own stamp on everything from 'Star Wars' to 'The Old Guard'? 'Well, I think that I had a few bites at the apple on that,' the director said during a recent interview with IndieWire. 'Coming into 'Star Wars' and doing second unit on 'The Rise of Skywalker,' I had this wonderful experience of being on a franchise that I knew and loved since I was a kid. It wasn't just like, 'Oh, well, whatever, I guess I'll do this.' It was something I loved and I wanted to help protect. I wanted to be a part of it. It meant something. Characters meant something. Stepping onto the Millennium Falcon meant something.' Mahoney still speaks of her experience on 'Star Wars' with reverence. This was not just a job to her; even if it did help guide her next few years of professional choices, including boarding 'The Old Guard 2.' 'I held it with great duty and responsibility, and when you step into something of that magnitude, you get an immediate, immediate education in what it means to honor what audiences want and to betray what they want,' the director said. 'That's a crash course in how to navigate something that you want to do in a story that's so beloved. Between you and me and everyone who reads this article, nothing's going to compare to that. Nothing will ever compare to that level of reach.' And while 'The Old Guard' fandom isn't quite as large and devoted as that of 'Star Wars,' the films — based on Greg Rucka's comic book series of the same name — do have plenty of devoted watchers and readers. 'On this, the amount of people who love the first one and love the characters, they're very serious,' Mahoney said. 'How do you make sure that you are valuing and honoring each character and giving audiences their wishes? There's also something great about bringing people along with you to somewhere maybe they didn't know they wanted to go, and they arrive at that place realizing they were hungry for it the entire time. But it's all done with respect and care. I don't think you can thrust or demand. It's done with a very light, warm invitation.' Mahoney's fan-centric bent — and her desire to tweak expectations along the way — is borne from something very simple: She's a fan, too. She's a fan first. 'There are different jobs that I've done where I'm asking a question or there's something that we're trying to figure out, and I present something in a certain way, and it's like, 'Oh, no one will notice it,' but I will notice. I will notice,' she said. 'I actually love this character, or I love this circumstance, or this story or whatever it is, and that'll bug the hell out of me. That's going to drive me crazy. And then I'm going to know you didn't care about me, and now I feel like, 'Oh, all the love I've given you is nothing and it's small, so you don't value me, so why do I value you and I'm not watching anymore?'' And, yes, Mahoney is also a dedicated fan of Prince-Bythewood's first film, which hit Netflix in July 2020, during some of the earliest weeks of the pandemic, and proved to be balm for film fans itching for original action. Mahoney is the first person to tell you: She watched it a lot. 'I did watch it, many times!' she said. 'Some people think, 'Oh, you're exaggerating,' but I really did. I thought the world was ending, and if I was going to die, I was going to die watching movies and TV shows and just watching stories and reading books and listening to music. I found the movie to have some kind of hope. There was a care and regard the characters had for each other, and the length of their care and regard blew me away … I found there to be a beautiful sense of hope in how they sustain those relationships.' There was also something else that tickled Mahoney: taking those relatable, earthbound worries (how do you take care of the people you love?) and sticking them inside a wild framework (and, oh, you're also an immortal being who has lived for thousands of years?). 'Part of why I found it exciting was [the question of] how to play with something that could be in the superhero realm, held above us and far away from us, and how to bring that into a realistic purview,' she said. 'Where I and anyone else who watched the movie could wonder what I would or wouldn't do if I were immortal. I thought the first film successfully did that and kept me curious in a way that I kept watching it.' When Mahoney signed on to direct 'The Old Guard 2' in 2021, she said she made a point to speak to Prince-Bythewood, who remained a producer on the project (the filmmaker was, at the time that the sequel was greenlit, just gearing up to make her 'The Woman King'). 'I have her to thank greatly on this,' she said. 'We talked, and a lot of what I wanted to know was how to sustain and preserve these incredible nuggets of truth and importance that she put forward in the first film. You can think, 'Oh, we could change that. Oh, you could do that. Oh, that doesn't matter.' But stepping into a second installment and franchise that I enjoy, [I had] the honor and the collaboration of spitballing with the first director about why they did what they did and that this thing that might seem like nothing to someone was so important and valuable and how I can help protect that or grow it. I valued her guidance and input and clarity and insight.' Mahoney's deep-rooted fandom is clear in every moment she talks about the film. Even a question wondering if she felt a particular sense of favoritism toward Layne's character, Nile (who really comes into her own in the sequel), was greeted with an unexpected answer. 'I have no favorites and I'm not being polite or political, because they all mean so much,' she said. 'They function as a whole. They're not individual entities. As far as storytelling goes, each one services a different need, and if you pull one out, the house of cards comes down. There's not one of them that services a lesser need. Each aspect of creative value, story value, character value that one of the nine [stars] presents at any given moment is the most important thing in the story. Whoever we're shooting that day, that minute, whatever shot, whatever aspect of story we're chasing, is the most important, right? Then we go to the next one, and then that's the most important. Wherever that camera is between action and cut, that's the most important thing in the world.' Given how long Mahoney has been working on the film — after coming on board in late 2021, Mahoney shot the film in late 2022, gutted her way through some serious delays from Netflix, shot additional material in 2024, and finally sees it released this week — she completely understands the fan fervor. She feels it even more acutely. 'Well, for me, being in it in real time is different from anyone who's watching it and waiting and wondering,' Mahoney said. 'I have that with movies, I have that with TV shows that I love, I'm like, 'Where is the next one? What's the next season?' So I am right along beside fans in that aching and hunger for the thing that we love. … I was in it the whole time, from the moment I got hired to the moment that this film is released, it'll be three-and-a-half years. Other directors might have, at some point, moved toward another project because of the duration and just the hunger to get back on set. I did not want to abandon my post. I cared about the movie way too much. I wanted to see it through, and there was no other answer.' Mahoney's film leaves things wide open for a third feature, though one has not yet been announced. During production, Mahoney said, 'There were discussions just logistically, and rightfully so, about the what-ifs' that the second film might set up. As for a third film? 'Whatever discussions they're having, I don't know,' she said. 'And I will be a spectator along with everyone else, because I will be gone doing something else. Whatever happens on the third one, I will return to [it as] a viewer and a fan, and I will be waiting with bated breath for what comes next, and where they go, and how it plays out. I will be cheering everyone on.' With 'The Old Guard 2' under her belt and 'Star Wars' behind her, I asked how Mahoney reflects on the truly ground-breaking nature of her 'Rise of Skywalker' work, of being the first woman, let alone the first Black woman, to direct on a 'Star Wars' film. Despite her characteristically upbeat and thoughtful personality, even Mahoney got a bit morose in thinking back. 'It's interesting, because a lot of those factors that you just described are as poignant today on this movie as they were then,' she said. 'I don't know how many women have big-budget movies coming out this year. It's challenging. So, unfortunately, that particular part of the discussion is identical to the discussion that was in the 'Star Wars' press tour.' Still, Mahoney remains awestruck by the devotion of 'Star Wars' fans, and the born-and-bred New Yorker attempted to compare it to Knicks or Yankees fandom. 'I'll say 'Yankees' now, I'm going to lose people,' she said with a laugh. 'They're going to be like, 'Oh, she's a Yankee/Knicks fan. That sucks.' But when you went to the old Yankee Stadium, you sit down, and it's summer, it's warm weather, and the lights are going down and the sky is turning magenta, something magical happened. Even if you were jaded and you didn't like sports and you didn't believe in mystical moments and wonderment, you were taken over, and 'Star Wars' does that.' Even now, Mahoney said she's still struck when she sees little kids in airports sporting their 'Star Wars' PJs for a flight or adults playing lightsabers in a park with friends. 'There aren't words for what that does to your heart when you interact with people who have that kind of magic in them,' she said. 'And then on ['The Old Guard 2'], there's a feeling about immortality and living and loving the one you're with that has some version of magic to it. It kind of propels you into another space and mind.' 'And we're just talking about imagination here,' she added. 'But 'Star Wars' has a way of accessing one's imagination and putting you in this great what-if. What's fun for me about 'The Old Guard' and why I find it exciting is there are aspects of 'The Old Guard' that allow me, as a viewer and a storyteller, to access my imagination in a beautiful, welcomed what-if.' 'The Old Guard 2' is now streaming on Netflix. 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