“Emilia Pérez” songwriters and Artisans Award recipients Camille Dalmais (L) and Clément Ducol (R) on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival red carpet. (Meia Voss / Daily Nexus)
Four days into 2025’s installation of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, creators, journalists, fellow film workers and fans gathered to honor the works of 10 talented artisans from some of last year’s most acclaimed films.
Sponsored by Variety magazine, the Variety Artisans Award ceremony began at 8 p.m. in Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre on Feb. 8, with 10 different creators and artisans being interviewed and awarded in front of a large crowd. The event was dedicated to Santa Barbara’s “sister city of Los Angeles,” with opportunities to donate being highlighted throughout the event and donations being collected at the front of the venue.
A wide variety of fields were represented across nine films, with the event celebrating contributions in production design, musical scoring, songwriting, editing, cinematography, sound work, hair and makeup, costume design and visual effects (VFX). Featured films included “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Conclave,” “Nickel Boys,” “A Complete Unknown,” “The Substance,” “Wicked,” “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and “The Wild Robot.” The event was hosted by Variety’s Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay, who began the evening by acknowledging the destruction in Los Angeles and thanking first responders and firefighters.
Tangcay also reminded the audience that 2025 serves as the 11th anniversary of the awards ceremony, and promised the audience that this year’s installation would be different, with live performances from the three musical winners — Clément Ducol and Camille Dalmais for their songwriting contributions for “Emilia Pérez,” and Kris Bowers, who was awarded for his score for Dreamworks animated film “The Wild Robot.”
The panel began with individual discussions and questions for each award winner, starting with 2025 Oscar nominee Judy Becker, production designer for “The Brutalist,” which is a front-runner to win Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Bowers discussed the process of filming in Budapest, Hungary, which was different from her usual filming locations in the United States. Despite the events of the film taking place in 20th-century Philadelphia, the crew were able to use historic areas of Budapest to bring their vision to life.
“Hungary was a bit more challenging obviously, because it’s not the United States, but in a way it was not that much more challenging than shooting in New York or Cincinnati,” Becker said. “It was easier because Budapest was under Soviet control for so long that things didn’t get gentrified and didn’t get built … So there was this old industrial area that looked a lot like Philadelphia in the 1940s.”
The film follows Holocaust survivor and architect László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody, as he moves to Philadelphia and is hired to design a community center in Philadelphia. She also shared that she often imagines both Tóth and his creations as existing in our world — “I often speak of him as if he were a real person,” Becker admitted to the crowd.
Next up was composer, pianist and documentary director Bowers, who is known for composing scores for a wide variety of films and television shows. His scoring for 2024 animated film “The Wild Robot” was nominated at this year’s Golden Globes, and he has previously won an Academy Award for co-directing “The Last Repair Shop,” which won Best Documentary Short Film at last year’s ceremony. “The Wild Robot” was his first venture into the world of animation.
Bowers spent two years working on the project, joining when the film was just a series of black and white pencil sketches, something that he said “required a lot more imagination” in order to visualize a finalized version to craft his score around.
When speaking on one of the most prominent scenes of the film and its instrumental titled “I Could Use a Boost,” Bowers shared an emotional story of how he connected with his then-newborn daughter to compose the track — imagining all the major moments of her life as a proud father. He also tried to visualize potential conflicts, such as the one between main characters Roz and Brightbill, which guide the film and ultimately lead to a tearful yet heartwarming conclusion.
“… This movie, in a lot of ways, helped me start that process of recognizing that [parenthood] is going to be an imperfect and human process,” Bowers said.
The composer ended his discussion by discussing his hometown of Los Angeles and his current residence of Pasadena, advising the crowd to research and donate to The Altadena Preservation Fund.
The other musical creators were Ducol and Dalmais, a married couple who have written songs for a plethora of movies, including this year’s most nominated film, “Emilia Pérez,” which received a whopping 13 nominations at the Academy Awards. The duo described the process of meeting with director Jacques Audiard, who pitched the film to them as an opera. “He told us, ‘I think this film should be a musical film, but let’s find out if it’s a good idea,’” Dalmais said.
“So we built together the script in songs,” Ducol recalled.
“It took two years to check out if it worked,” Dalmais joked. “And it worked.”
The pair also described how being native French speakers affected the process of composing a soundtrack entirely in Spanish.
“It took a long time for me to write the lyrics, like twice more times than it would have taken to write in French or English,” Dalmais said. “But it was such a beautiful challenge.” They described their Academy Award nominated song “El Mal” as a rock opera that originally began as an electronic arrangement, but ultimately needed to be adapted in order to fit the intensity of actress Zoe Saldaña’s performance.
They also described the process of working with actress and pop star Selena Gomez, with Dalmais giving her high praise, particularly towards her voice.
“I’d like to think that peoples’ voices reflect who they are, and I feel that Selena’s voice sounds like the Milky Way. It’s very round, and her voice is very powerful and intimate,” Dalmais said.
Next was the Artisan’s Award for editing, which was received by Nick Emerson for his work on “Conclave,” which is nominated for Best Editing and Best Picture. Emerson describes the film as a “political figure,” and a rare opportunity to “have a look bending the curtain at an institution.” The film follows a cardinal played by Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes, who organizes a conclave to elect the next pope of the catholic church, only to discover mass corruption and scandal.
Throughout the course of the film, there are six different scenes where members must vote to elect the next pope, something that the filmmakers were concerned would become “repetitive” for audiences. Emerson discussed the process of editing each sequence, noting that the first sequence was to introduce audiences to the voting process, giving the editors more freedom for the following five montages.
“The first one, we deliberately take our time with, very slowly let it play out, almost in real time … it gives you permission to be more playful with the later ones,” he elaborated.
Emerson also described the experience of working with Fiennes, who is nominated at this year’s Academy Awards for his performance as Cardinal Thomas Lawerence. Fiennes was also honored with the SBIFF Outstanding Performer Award earlier during the festival.
“It was a dream come true,” the film editor shared. “Every moment Fiennes is transmitting a thought, even when he is delivering lines to another actor off camera, you know, behind the camera, he’s still completing his character and still giving everything.”
The following conversation featured cinematographer Jomo Fray, who recently won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for his contributions to “Nickel Boys,” which is entirely shot from the first-person point of view of its two main characters on a Sony VENICE digital cinema camera. Fray further elaborated on the unique decision to shoot the film from the first-person perspective.
“It wasn’t the point of view that was important, but it was more that the idea of the image having a certain sentience to it, the image almost feeling like it has a consciousness to it,” Fray said. He explained that his goal was to get the film to “feel what sight feels like” and “feel what a memory feels like.”
Fray further described that both the film and its cinematography attempt to show the difference between the attitudes and perspectives of main characters Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner, who both suffer mistreatment and abuse at Nickel Academy.
“It’s trying to imbue the image — from Elwood’s perspective, maybe a certain optimism, and imbuing the image with a certain kind of systemic, cynicism for Turner’s,” Fray said. “But more than anything, just trying to base it on what these people are feeling, going through their world.”
Sound engineer Tod Maitland was next, accepting the Variety Artisans’ Award for his contributions to Bob Dylan biographical film “A Complete Unknown.” Maitland has been nominated in the Best Sound category five times. He previously worked on 2019’s “The Irishman” and “Joker.”
Tod Maitlin, sound engineer for “A Complete Unknown.” (Meia Voss / Daily Nexus)
The biggest challenge of “A Complete Unknown” was making sure to capture completely live vocals from Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro (who play Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, respectively) without the assistance of playback, earpieces and timing mechanisms. Maitland described the process as “capturing a natural environment with no safety nets.”
“The whole goal of this film was to capture naturalism … I’ve never done a film like that, and to be able to do that, and right … was a pretty amazing feeling,” Maitland recalled.
The sound engineer also described the process of creating 1960s New York audibly. “We made the environments as real as we possibly could. We had every sound going that we could as they walked down the streets in New York — you have music coming from different places. ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ here, an opera singer here, music coming from clubs and we would put in even more music to help the actors.”
Maitland also noted the recreation of Bob Dylan’s 1965 concert at Newport Folk Festival as a stand-out moment of the film. In order to capture the sound of the crowd and Chalamet’s vocals, 40 microphones were used throughout the set, and the Best Actor nominee was equipped with twelve different microphones on his arms, in his hair and even in his guitar.
“We shot it as if it were a live concert,” Maitland explained. “The whole idea was to really make sound an important part of his character in the film. And I think we were really able to capture that.”
Receiving perhaps the loudest applause of the night was Pierre Olivier Persin, being honored for providing hair and makeup for “The Substance.” The film stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley as both versions of main character Sue, who both received heavy amounts of styling in order to create a monstrous finale where the two merge into a gnarly creature (that Persin lovingly refers to as “Monstero”).
Persin shared that Coralie Fargeat, director of the film, had no limitations when it came to bringing some of “The Substance’s” most unsettling moments to life, telling him that there were “no limits” and to “go crazy.”
“The most important [thing] was the emotion coming through each character, even though it’s gross. They can look ugly for the audience, but we put lots of love into them,” Persin said.
Pierre Olivier Persin, hair and makeup stylist for “The Substance.” (Meia Voss / Daily Nexus)
The hair and makeup artist also discussed the amount of time it took to style Moore and Qualley — an unsettling moment where Moore’s finger begins to decay took 45 minutes to craft, shots of the characters’ deteriorating faces took three to four hours and full body hair and makeup sessions took between six to seven hours. He also discussed working with Qualley for the film’s conclusion, referring to both her and Moore as “troopers.”
Persin described the disturbing ending in a more positive light, saying that he sees it as Sue’s “happiest moment.”
“I think the character is the happiest at that point. Believe it or not… I think she finds a weird balance, but a balance nonetheless,” Persin said.
Next up was Paul Tazewell, being honored for his work costuming the cast of blockbuster film adaptation of the musical “Wicked,” which is nominated for 10 Academy Awards at this year’s ceremony. Tazewell’s discussion focused on costuming the massive ensemble for “One Short Day,” an enormous musical number that occurs once Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) arrive in the decadent Emerald City.
Tazewell began his interview by discussing the process of working with director Jon M. Chu, while also honoring the extensive amount of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Wicked”-related material that came before.
“[Chu] wanted to have a new vision of what our ‘Wicked’ would be. But I think I found that it was important to acknowledge these characters in a way that the audience could relate to them, and that it would kind of raise up these feelings of nostalgia and warmth,” Tazewell said.
Tazewell also discussed the use of the color green throughout the film, explaining that there is very little of the color, (excluding Elphaba), until the main characters arrive in the Emerald City.
The first kind of introduction to green is the train,” Tazewell explained. “When they step off, you have this whole world that unfolds and this world unfolds, and it’s completely green. But it also has layers of chartreuse, there’s fuchsia, there’s a little bit of blue, kind of teal tones to set the green off.”
The costume designer also explained the process of designing the outfits for Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth’s cameo apperances, who played Elphaba and Glinda in the original Broadway musical. Tazewell decided to make their costumes in 2024’s “Wicked” entirely different from what they used to wear on stage.
“I wanted to swap their tonal quality. So I made Kristin Chenoweth the darker one and Idina the lighter one, more reflective of the sun. And then the color palette and the ombre of color within the dresses was more magical,” Tazewell said.
He ended his individual conversation by sharing some of his favorite easter eggs hidden throughout the costumes of “Wicked,” particularly the “tornado-shaped” heels on the film’s version of Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers and the imagery of poppies on the clothing of Elphaba’s mother, referring to both the green elixir and the field of poppies that is featured in the source material.
The final recipient of the night was Erik Winquist, being awarded for his virtual special effects (VFX) contributions to “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a massive project that not only transformed a majority of its cast into primates, but also had to find a way to animate the apes’ speaking, something that rarely occurred in the original trilogy.
“We were sort of leaving the sign language part of the franchise behind. In the past … realistically, a lot of the facial animation that you saw in those previous movies had been animated by hand … that wasn’t going to cut it this time around,” Winquist shared. “There’s more talking in this movie than there was in the previous trilogy combined.” Winquist discussed how the team built a “machine learning technology” that was able to capture a “three-dimensional mesh” of actors’ faces, as long as they had a series of dots on their face.
The post-production process for “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” was 58 weeks long, with the process for individual shots taking between 12 to 15 weeks. Winquist credits director Wes Ball with giving the VFX team a substantial amount of freedom.
“[Ball’s] background was in animation before he started directing live action films. And so there’s this sort of shorthand that we had with each other that allowed him to trust that process, I think, more than other filmmakers,” Winquist explained. “The whole team felt like we had input into this.”
Before all eleven recipients would return to the stage for the final group discussion, Bowers, Ducol and Dalmais gave performances of their nominated works. Bowers gave a brief discussion of his process for creating the score of “The Wild Robot,” and discussed how music is a kind of character in the film, noting that he and director Chris Sanders had to, “carve out houses for music in the film.” Bowers, who began his career as a jazz pianist, improvised around two emotional piano pieces, the main theme of the film and “Roz’s Theme.”
Ducol and Dalmais apologized for not being able to play their Academy Award nominated track “El Mal” (as they would need a full band), but instead played “Papa,” which they described as a “very intimate song” and moment in “Emilia Pérez.”
Towards the end of the panel, all 11 recipients were re-invited back on the stage for a quick group discussion, where they discussed the media that they were currently watching and the ways that they overcame their own, unique versions of writer’s block. The Artisans were then each presented with an award by David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, who are art directors and frequent production designers for acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino, contributing to films such as “Reservoir Dogs,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Kill Bill: Volume 2.”
In their closing remarks, Wasco and Reynold-Wasco thanked the recipients for helping to create “some of the most daring films of the year,” reminding the audience that “those behind the films are the true makers.”
