Dolby Creator Talks

Guillermo del Toro, a three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker known for his visually rich storytelling, teams up with seasoned cinematographer Dan Laustsen, famed for his collaboration on films like The Shape of Water. Together, they delve into the striking visual language of Frankenstein, discussing their painterly approach to emotion-laden black tones and the use of large-format cameras. They share insights on lighting philosophy, emphasizing single-source lighting, and reflect on creating practical effects for set design, all while keeping artistic flexibility at the forefront.

Composer Max Richter joins guest host Jon Burlingame to discuss his luminous, emotionally rich score for “Hamnet,” the new film from director Chloé Zhao. In their conversation, Richter shares how early musical sketches shaped the production, how he blended period instruments with processed textures, and how the film’s psychological and natural landscapes guided his approach. And as Richter explains, Elizabethan-era music became a key creative touchstone for capturing the film’s folkloric sensibility.“Elizabethan music is one of my great passions, really. It’s an amazing moment in English music history where you have this community of composers writing just extraordinary things, both instrumental and chorally. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to go back and connect to that material… Which evoked what [director] Chloé [Zhao] called the witchy sensibility of the sort of folkloristic… maybe dark fairytale quality of the relationship with nature and the connection between human beings and nature.”—Max Richter, Composer, “Hamnet”Be sure to check out “Hamnet,” now playing in theaters in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®, where available.Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube.Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Join sound legends John Marquis, Andy Nelson, Jack Dolman, and Simon Hayes as they delve into the auditory magic behind 'Wicked: For Good.' They explore the contrast between the youthful exuberance of the first film and the emotional depth of the sequel. Hear how they captured intimate live vocals and highlighted character emotions through sound design. Discover their creative process behind the film's new songs and the innovative soundscapes that brought aerial sequences to life, all while following Jon M. Chu’s visionary direction.

Director Jon M. Chu and Director of Photography Alice Brooks join us to discuss the dazzling cinematography of “Wicked” and its newly released sequel, “Wicked: For Good.” Though the two films together tell a single story — adapted from the beloved Broadway musical — each was crafted with a distinct visual style to reflect the evolving tone and emotion of its chapter in the tale of the Wicked Witch of the West. “When Jon and I first started talking about the movies, we talked about emotional intentions. And some of those emotional intentions for the first movie were ‘dreams’ and ‘yearning’ and ‘friendship’ and ‘choice.’ And the second movie, they were ‘separation’ and ‘sacrifice’ and ‘surrender’ and ‘consequence.’ And so quickly in our conversations it became clear that the first movie would glow in daylight, and the second movie would be steeped in density and maturity and shadow. And so we have these two worlds. We've got the whole visual arc of both movies, but each lived in their own distinct worlds.”—Alice Brooks, Director of Photography, “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good” Be sure to check out “Wicked: For Good,” now playing in theaters and Dolby Cinemas®, in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®. - Our previous episodes of Dolby Creator Lab with the artists behind Wicked: Director Jon M. Chu and the Sound and Editing Wizards of Wicked The Music of Wicked, with Stephen Oremus, John Powell, and Stephen Schwartz Capturing Wicked's Live Singing, with Simon Hayes Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube. Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Two-time Academy Award®-winning composer Ludwig Göransson and Executive Music Producer Serena Göransson join us to discuss the powerful use of music in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” recently nominated for six 2026 GRAMMY® Awards. In this conversation with music journalist Jon Burlingame, the Göranssons share how integral music was to the film’s storytelling — and how their close collaboration with Coogler shaped the creative process from start to finish.“Serena and I were there, on the dub stage, almost every day… [Director] Ryan [Coogler] is an incredible collaborator. He wants to hear ideas… take it in, and make difficult decisions. He really wanted this to be such an immersive experience... That's why he really spent time on the mix, like panning things around, making it create an experience… Sometimes I had to pinch myself and think to myself, Ryan and I, we've been doing this since USC, and our first studio film. We were young and we had a great experience. But at the same time, when you get started, people always think, oh, these guys don’t know what they're doing. And there's a lot of things that you have to prove. And now we're at this stage in our professional careers where we are experienced and also have more responsibilities and can really create in a different way… and try to push the envelope as much as we can.”—Ludwig Göransson, Composer, “Sinners”Be sure to check out “Sinners,” now streaming on HBO Max, in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®. Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube. Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Two-time Academy Award®-winning composer Alexandre Desplat joins guest host Jon Burlingame to discuss his latest score for “Frankenstein,” directed by Guillermo del Toro. This long-awaited project — their third collaboration — had been a topic of conversation between the two for years, and Desplat was eager to finally help del Toro bring it to life.“Knowing his passion for this character, and his sensitivity, I knew it would be epic, romantic, lyrical, emotional, and that it would be beautiful, visually… There’s this epic, fearless, operatic way of telling a story that Guillermo del Toro can handle so well. His talent as a director is so strong, his craft is so great, and his knowledge about art is so wide. I knew that it would be beautiful and strong.”—Alexandre Desplat, Composer, “Frankenstein”Be sure to check out “Frankenstein,” now streaming on Netflix — in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos® — and in select theaters.Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube.Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Should “Materialists” be considered a rom-com? What even counts as a rom-com these days? Academy Award®-nominated writer, director, and producer Celine Song joins us to discuss the state of the modern romantic comedy, as part of Dolby Creator Lab’s ongoing partnership with Sundance Collab. Joining the conversation are supervising sound editor & re-recording mixer Daniel Timmons, re-recording mixer Josh Berger, and composer Daniel Pemberton to discuss how they utilized sound and music to flesh out the world of “Materialists,” to turn the modestly budgeted film from A24 into an unexpected smash hit at the box office.“Stories about love and movies about love are often thought of as lighter fare, or not ‘serious cinema.’ My question in response to that is always, ‘why would matters of the heart — a universal theme and a great mystery, like love — be something that isn’t worthy of great cinema?’”—Celine Song, Writer, Director, and Producer, “Materialists”Be sure to check out “Materialists,” now streaming on HBO Max in Dolby Atmos®.Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube.Learn more about Sundance Collab here. Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Academy Award®-nominated composer Jerskin Fendrix joins guest host Jon Burlingame to discuss his latest score for “Bugonia,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Fendrix shares how he developed the film’s striking — and at times paranoid — musical themes, shaped in part by his own emotional state during the writing and recording process. Lanthimos had deliberately kept him in the dark, forbidding him from reading the script before composing, a choice that profoundly influenced the tone of the score. “I spent a lot of time by myself, doing all this kind of esoteric, bizarre research on bees and spaceships and so on. I knew that a lot of meetings were happening; I knew that the film was being made — the pre-production — none of which I was allowed to be privy to. I was starting to get a bit paranoid; I was starting to get a bit angsty about things. And all I was doing was really hoping what I was doing was right. And I think the reason that a lot of the music actually echoes the psychology — especially of Teddy, this kind of really frantic grandiosity, but paranoia, and so on — is because I was basically in the same position for at least a year, by virtue of Yorgos’s direction.” —Jerskin Fendrix, Composer, “Bugonia” You can watch our episode with Director Yorgos Lanthimos & Sound Designer Johnnie Burn on the Sound of “Bugonia” here. Watch our previous episode with Jerskin Fendrix on the music of “Poor Things” here. And be sure to check out “Bugonia,” now playing in theaters in Dolby Atmos®, where available. Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube. Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

Five-time Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos joins us to discuss his latest surreal adventure, “Bugonia.” The film is a darkly-comic paranoid thriller about a high-profile CEO who is kidnapped by conspiracy theorists, who are convinced she is an alien. Once again, Lanthimos tapped Academy Award-winning Sound Designer, Supervising Sound Editor, and Re-recording Mixer Johnnie Burn to create the sonic landscape for his film. But despite its out-of-this-world themes, it was important to the director that the sound keep the story grounded in reality.“It was trying and finding a way to simplify the soundscape, without making it boring. Because there’s so much dialogue in the film, and there’s moments of quite bombastic music, we needed to find a way to bridge those things, support the dialogue, and create an atmosphere that had a signature and made the film feel unique and different, but without stepping [on] all the other things that needed to work.”—Yorgos Lanthimos, Director and Producer, “Bugonia”Be sure to check out “Bugonia,” now playing in theaters in Dolby Atmos®, where available.Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube.Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

We are thrilled to welcome two-time Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and her creative team to discuss her newest political thriller, “A House of Dynamite,” brought to us by Netflix. This conversation was recorded as a live panel discussion at this year’s New York Film Festival. This was part of our support of the Artist Academy program, where we bring conversations about the art and craft of filmmaking to the next generation of directors.Joining this conversation: - Barry Ackroyd - Director of Photography - Kirk Baxter - Editor - Volker Bertelmann - Composer - Jeremy Hindle - Production Designer - Paul N.J. Ottosson - Re-recording Mixer, Sound Designer, and Supervising Sound Editor“It was really an embarrassment of riches. What [sound designer] Paul [N.J. Ottosson] does is he three-dimensionalizes any space, and it's just extraordinary. You think you know what the space is and then he'll bring a sound in and suddenly it's amplified tenfold. Then, in the quiet spaces, I thought it might be interesting to bring some score in. And then I sort of stumbled on the incredible soundtrack to ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and I just… my head exploded. So I reached out to [composer] Volcker [Bertelmann] and gratefully he had a short opening in his schedule. He came over, he looked at the movie even in its sort of raw stage. And I just think the synergy between Paul and Volcker and the sound design and the music, there's so much that they have in common. They are in conversation with one another. It was just a fluid, seamless, synergistic process.”—Kathryn Bigelow, Director and Producer, “A House of Dynamite”Be sure to check out “A House of Dynamite,” now streaming on Netflix in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®.Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.You can also check out the video for this episode on YouTube.Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.