{"id":215919,"date":"2026-01-04T06:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/215919\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T06:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:09:10","slug":"this-week-very-important-bts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/215919\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week, Very Important BTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy 2026, y\u2019all! This is also going to be a shorter newsletter, since we\u2019re kind of in the breath before the guild award stuff, winter TV<\/a>, and whatever is going to happen in \u201cPrimate\u201d pops off. I\u2019ve had a fun week, mostly\u00a0not\u00a0thinking about movies and television, and replaying Lucy Dacus singing \u201cBread and Roses\u201d<\/a> a [redacted] number of times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I have been catching up on the \u201cPluribus<\/a>\u201d official podcast now that the show\u2019s wrapped. It\u2019s the kind of thing that should be called out in a Craft newsletter because it\u2019s hosted by editor Chris McCaleb, who has been doing these making-of podcasts since the \u201cBetter Call Saul\u201d days and has it down to a\u00a0science.<\/p>\n

\"STRANGER<\/a> \"Rhea<\/a> <\/p>\n

Even insightful Official Podcasts\u2122 will mostly be about actor reactions\/showrunner reflections on character and plot, and that\u2019s wonderful, sure. But the Vince Gilligan crew really seems to love and respect the team effort that goes into making things. There are standalone episodes with the \u201cPluribus\u201d sound team, with the DPs, the costume designer, and the choreographer, in addition to the roundtables that really try to guide listeners from what ideas were important in the writing to how they\u2019re realized through prepro, production, and post. It\u2019s great stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The comedy streaming service Dropout, actually, is very good about this, too. I have mentioned \u201cVery Important People<\/a>\u201d in this newsletter, and you should go watch some of the new episodes. But it feels like what completes that series is the \u201cLast Looks\u201d mini-episodes about the making of each outsized character, which host Vic Michaelis must confront within the show itself. <\/p>\n

Getting to hear directly from director Tamar Levine, makeup department head Alex Perrone, and prosthetics wizard Bruce Spaulding Fuller about the details of their work is fascinating, from baby teeth dental applications to exactly how one should do alien goo. I\u2019m sure not everybody watches them, but it\u2019s smart that Dropout does these short making-ofs for \u201cVIP\u201d and \u201cGame Changer\u201d as part of those series\u2019 release schedules. It really deepens your appreciation for the shows themselves, and creates a sense of them being handmade by people who care \u2014 not something we can often take for granted in the age of IP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Still\u2018Very Important People: Last Looks: Archimedes and Ollie\u2019 Dropout\/Screenshot<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of bemoaning (by me, as much as anyone) about the fact that we don\u2019t have DVD commentaries as a default part of how we consume media outside of the theatrical experience, but the DVD commentary\/BTS featurette hidden in the menu is still out there, in different guises. It would be great to see more streamers think about their ancillary materials in this way and integrate them as closely as possible into their main feeds. If I can watch \u201cFrankenstein\u201d in Spanish, Netflix, I should be able to watch it with GDT\u2019s commentary. C\u2019mon now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Craft side of IndieWire\u2019s been pretty quiet this week, other than\u00a0Jim Hemphill<\/a>\u00a0sneaking one last \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d piece in \u2014 he simply cannot be stopped \u2014 and a really fantastic Hugh Hart piece about the music of \u201cSong Sung Blue<\/a>.\u201d I\u2019m excited about some of what we have coming down the pike in January, though: Some long-overdue love for some of the best international films of last year, and Chris O\u2019Falt and I have been scheming about some fun we can have talking about casting as a discipline, in honor of the first year of the Oscar category. <\/p>\n

We did not conduct our \u201cThe Best Cast Movies According to Casting Directors\u201d survey this year. But we may be conducting another one soon\u2026 and then, of course, Sundance is about to hit before we know it, and we\u2019ll be digging into our usual cinematography survey and a whole lot else there. It\u2019s nice to have things to look forward to. Don\u2019t fuck it up, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy 2026, y\u2019all! This is also going to be a shorter newsletter, since we\u2019re kind of in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69,84671,90832,437,130424],"class_list":{"0":"post-215919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-pluribus","14":"tag-top-of-the-line","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-very-important-people"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}