Variety Artisans Impact Report – 2017
They may be below the line in showbiz slang, but the work these artisans do is essential
to the above the line names that audiences pay to see.
Variety’s Elite list includes DPs who are artists as well as master technicians, while the costume designers, production designers and hair and makeup professionals distill history and contemporary influences to tell a story sometimes in one outfit or shot of a room. The composers expertly convey a character’s internal makeup in aural form. And bigger films and TV require more spectacular stunts. The elite in this report create onscreen magic via practical math plus good old risk-taking.
Fast 8 Stunt Coordinators Andy Gill, Jack Gill, J.J. Perry, and Troy Robinson
The stunt team topped itself again on “The Fate of the Furious,” the eighth installment in Universal’s high-octane action franchise. The Gill brothers leapfrogged each other across the globe with second-unit teams, racing through the streets of Havana and across a frozen lake in Iceland. Dropping seven cars out of a parking garage in Cleveland, Perry and Robinson worked with the first unit, staging everything from a mid-flight airplane fight to a prison break riot. With so much screen time devoted to action, there was ample opportunity to contribute creatively. “[The producers] are looking for what can you do to really wow and audience and, if you come up with an idea, they’re willing to listen, and a lot of [the action] is generated that way,” says Andy Gill.
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