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Why Billie Eilish Apple TV+ Doc Looks Like ‘The Office’

Charlotte Henry ·

Pop stars notoriously come up with all sorts of weird demands for those around them. However, director R.J. Cutler was not quite prepared for Billie Eilish to ask for their Apple TV+ collaboration to look like The Office. He explained the request to Entertainment Weekly.

It took a second for the acclaimed The September Issue director to understand what the young music phenom was looking for, exactly. But by spending more time with her, “I realized what she meant was, as you know, there’s a unique relationship that the John Krasinski character in particular has with the camera in The Office, which is a full documentary. And that’s really what she was alluding to,” he tells EW. “That kind of connection to the camera was something she wanted the opportunity to have in making a documentary.” While it’s not an element that takes over the film, “There are two or three key moments where she connects with the camera in a way that is reflective of who Billie is in her connection to her audience,” the director adds.

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Will Apple’s ‘Wolfwalkers’ Win a Best Animated Feature Oscar?

Andrew Orr ·

Brandon Zachary makes an argument that the “Wolfwalkers” animated movie on Apple TV+ should win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature instead of yet another Disney movie.

It’s a highly engaging film, and one that never loses steam throughout the runtime. Wolfwalkers is passionate in a way the more heady Soul isn’t, taking audiences on a massive journey that touches on the plight of young women in this era, as well as men who are trapped by duty; however, it shows how people can grow to be better humans.

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Executive Producer of ‘Earth at Night in Color’ Talks on Podcast

Andrew Orr ·

Alex Williamson, executive producer of “Earth At Night In Color” on Apple TV+ spoke with Ben Consoli on the Go Creative Show podcast. Topics include filming the series, using special low-light cameras, discovering new animal behaviors, the benefits of using infrared light, the impact of using lights in nature, finding a narrator for the show, and how the pandemic affected production. It’s an hour-long show and you can listen by clicking the link below.

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The Streaming Wars Are Only Going to Intensify in 2021

Charlotte Henry ·

2020 was, you may have noticed, a big year in the streaming wars. However, Input thinks things are going to escalate even further in 2021. Looking at the amount of content on the way, it’s hard to disagree.

Aside from Netflix, which had more than a year’s worth of content on hand before lockdowns began, every major service experienced significant delays, pushing back their original slates of programming. With Hollywood productions back up and running for 2021, this will be the year the streaming wars begin in earnest. Even when just looking at the smaller services, the year ahead should prove exciting. Apple TV+ is gearing up to release Foundation, its next flagship prestige series, along with new seasons of shows the service launched with. CBS All-Access will be rebranding to Paramount+, an effort to reflect the more diverse content offering outside the kind of shows geared to the, er, typical CBS audience. Amazon Prime will drop the first season of its incredibly expensive Lord of the Rings adaptation. Oh, and Funimation bought Crunchyroll, bringing the bulk of anime licenses into one place for the first time.

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In a Year of Minuses, Streaming Services Are All About the Plus

Charlotte Henry ·

Everyone knows that you can’t have a streaming service and not call it Something+. (You even need to use a ‘+’ if you launch a podcast that discusses streaming services.) The LA Times looked into how, and why, this came to be.

Steve Kazanjian, president and chief executive of Promax, the trade association for marketing companies serving the entertainment industries, said the repeated use of the arithmetic symbol has made it an efficient tool to create awareness of the new services. “There is a stake in the ground that’s around ‘plus’ right now,” he said. “It’s in the consumer lexicon. It owns a bit of emotional equity in your brain already, which is really powerful.” Discovery found that was the case when it conducted surveys and focus groups with consumers on possible names for its service. The company considered dozens of original monikers — testing Latin words and new-fangled creations that came from combined words — a route that Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived streaming service took when it melded “quick bites” into Quibi.

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Barack Obama Names Apple TV’s ‘Boys State’ Among Favorite Movies

Andrew Orr ·

Former President Barack Obama has shared his favorite movies and TV shows of 2020, and one of them is “Boys State” from Apple TV+.

Like everyone else, we were stuck inside a lot this year, and with streaming further blurring the lines between theatrical movies and television features, I’ve expanded the list to include visual storytelling that I’ve enjoyed this year, regardless of format.