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www.postmagazine.com 2 POST JAN/FEB 2025 EDITOR'S NOTE wards season is in full swing, with many industry organizations announcing the nominees for their respective awards, including the Visual Effects Society, Association of Motion Picture Sound, Motion Picture Sound Editors and American Society of Cinematographers. While the Advanced Imaging Society cancelled the luncheon for its annual Lumiere Awards due to the Los Angeles fires affecting so many members of the AIS community, they did announce their the 2025 Lumiere Award winners on Friday, February 7th, the event's originally-scheduled date. You can view the full list of winners on the Post website. Of course, the 97th Annual Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 2nd, and many of the top films in contention are covered in this issue, beginning with Iain Blair's "Oscar Picks" feature on page 22. Iain speaks with leading talent in a number of craft catego- ries, including Directing, Cinematography, Visual Effects and Best Picture. Emilia Pérez leads the list of Oscar nominations with 13. The Brutalist and Wicked each received 10 nominations, while A Complete Unknown and Conclave each received eight. Other films with multiple nominations include Anora (6), The Substance (5), Dune (5) and Nosferatu (4). I had a chance to chat with director James Mangold, who led the team behind the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Mangold received a Best Director nomination, and the feature is also in the running for Best Picture, among a number of other categories for its on-screen and off-screen talent. Mangold, whose credits include Girl Interrupted, Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari and Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny, assembled a familiar team that included cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and editor Andrew Buckland, ACE. He also brought with him the experience gained while directing the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, and shares insight into the challenge of recreating the 1960s for his new film, whose talent perform much of the music live, on-camera. Turn to our cover story on page 12 for my conversation with Mangold, Buckland and co-editor Scott Morris. My colleague and CGW editor Kendra Ruczak caught up with the team at DreamWorks, which produced the CG-animated film The Wild Robot (pictured below). The film is an Oscar favorite in the Animated Feature category, and is also recognized with nominations for its Sound and Music (Original Score). Beginning on page 28, Kendra talks with director Chris Sanders, VFX supervisor Jeff Budsberg and production designer Raymond Zibach, who share an inside look into bringing author Peter Brown's best-selling novel to the big screen. The Wild Robot is about a robot known as Roz, who becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island. Roz has to adapt to unfamiliar surroundings, and DreamWorks also had to venture into previously unexplored territory to achieve the film's painterly look while revamping its color pipeline as well. And on page 18, you can hear from the team behind director Ridley Scott's latest film, Gladiator II. The project comes more than 20 years after Scott directed the original Gladiator, which took home the Visual Effects Oscar back in 2000. In this issue, I connect with co-edi- tors Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo, as well as with special effects supervisor Neil Corbould and visual effect supervisor Mark Bakowski, all of whom share their experience working with the filmmaker to bring this Roman Empire-era project to life. There's a lot to report on, so visit postmagazine.com for more of our awards coverage relating to feature films. BY MARC LOFTUS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MLOFTUS@ POSTMAGAZINE.COM A A FOCUS ON FEATURE FILMS SEE US ON EDITORIAL MARC LOFTUS Editor-In-Chief Post Publishing, LLC 516.376.1087 mloftus@postmagazine.com KENDRA RUCZAK Managing Editor Post Publishing, LLC/CGW kruczak@cgw.com CONTRIBUTOR IAIN BLAIR Film & TV DESIGN MICHELLE VILLAS Senior Art Director michelle@moontidemedia.com ADVERTISING MARI KOHN Director of Sales Print, Digital and Awards 818.291.1153 cell 818.472.1491 mkohn@postmagazine.com WILLIAM R. RITTWAGE Sales 818.636.2835 brittwage@copcomm.com JUNIOR LOPEZ Customer Service, Circulation 818.291.1117 jlopez@copcomm.com TOMMY RITTWAGE Digital Marketing Social Media 818.291.1166 tommy@copcomm.com REPRINTS 781.255.0625 • 818.291.1153 WILLIAM R. RITTWAGE President/CEO Post Magazine is published by Post, LLC, a COP communications company. 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