Aratouial Delafeld
Novice
One of the questions that I'm seeing come up is looking at what the production quality is going to be like, because of course we want to see this get the treatment it deserves. I looked over the IMDB crew list today and I am so impressed right now with their hiring choices. I'm getting excited.
Director: Uta Briesewitz (also credited as a producer), who has directed for Westworld, Fear the Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and Jessica Jones. I really liked the Jessica Jones episodes she directed.
Visual FX: Jakob Chilczuk and Karen Goulekas. Jakob has done Black Mirror, and Karen worked on Looper, Green Lantern, Raimi's Spider Man, Godzilla, Titanic, Apollo 13 and this one really caught my attention because it's one of my all-time favorite movies: The Fifth Element as digital effects supervisor.
Costume: Isis Mussenden did the Narnia movies, and has also done some period films (On the Basis of Sex, most recently). I haven't heard of most of what she's done with live action (she worked on Shrek and such) but most of it does not stand out to me either way (Dante's Peak, The Wolverine, American Psycho). I really liked some of Susan's designs for Narnia and Jadis was pretty cool, so at the very least I think she'll do alright. Hopefully she's inspired by the variety in WoT and understands that it can be so much more than generic European medievalness.
Makeup: Nick Dudman. This one has me the most thrilled because look at this work history. His very first job was Empire Strikes Back and he won a BAFTA for Fifth Element. Like. omg. I'm also a huge 80s scifi/fantasy nut and his fingers have been in basically every project I've ever loved: Superman II, Dragonslayer, RotJ, Krull (my heart!), Labyrinth (!!!), Willow (!!!!!!), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he created Jack Nicholson's Joker, did Indiana Jones, Alien 3, and then was involved with every Harry Potter. I've watched every scrap of reel on the makeup FX from Harry Potter and I couldn't be more happy with this decision.
Their choice for makeup FX gives me a lot of hope for what this show could be like. I personally really want to see practical FX over CGI as much as possible because, to me, it looks so much more real and has so much more staying power. Plus, WoT has an incredible amount of fantastical and whimsy to it, and sometimes whimsy with a dark side. With this work history, I think I'm going to see the makeup FX realized exactly the way I think it should be.
10/16/2019 Update:
So I tweeted at Rafe and the official Twitter account about hiring intimacy coordinators and sexual violence advisors and look what showed up on IMDB: Yarit Dor and Enric Ortuno have been hired as intimacy coordinators. A bit of description about what Dor will be doing: "Pre-shoot rehearsals with actors to create consensual choreography" and "Advocate for actors on-set: checking-in, maintaining any nudity riders, offering support as Mental Health First Aiders and more." Ortuno works with Dor a lot, and it's possible they might also be the team working on fight scene choreography. Ortuno has a background as a stunt man. Very excited about this addition to the crew.
11/04/2019 Update:
Storyboarding: At least one artist is Mark Risk, who has a lot of experience in genre entertainment as well as movies and film-- his work has really run the gamut from a Scorpion King sequel and The Maze Runner to Black Sails, Serenity, and Outlander. I'm not familiar with everything he's worked on-- a lot of it is critically acclaimed and some of it were bombs, but this is probably a decent pick. I like that he's worked on Black Sails and Serenity, since they were both examples of excellent storyboards.
Special FX tech: this person will probably be largely responsible for visualizing weaving, so probably worth paying attention to. Miroslav Precechtel is currently working on other Amazon projects, but his background is encouraging: Spider Man: Far From Home was a special FX masterpiece in a lot of ways and he was a part of the action unit for Underworld: Blood Wars so that again makes me think he might be one of the people responsible for making Moiraine shoot fireballs out of her hands
Lighting: The balloon lighting supervisor, Marek Radolf, makes me happy, since some of what he's worked on (his resume is long and very impressive) had some truly excellent lighting: Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, Inglorious Bastards, and the lighting in The Ghost Writer was a big part of what made that movie work for me so well and he worked on The Grand Budapest Hotel and there was some really cool lighting work in that so I'm happy with this pick. It's starting to be a trend, me being very happy with their crew decisions.
Cinematographer: David Moxness. He's a standby of genre television (Fringe, Smallville) but I'm not familiar with most of his work and a lot of what I am familiar with ... I wouldn't think of as having outstanding cinematography. Most shows don't have the same cinematographer for the whole thing, though, so if I'm not a fan of it I'm not too worried about it. Another cinematographer, according to r/TheDailyTrolloc, is David Luther, but I'm not sure how he knows that. Luther is more encouraging to me because I do like the cinematography of shows he's been on (White Queen had some great moments in his episodes, and so was his episode of Sherlock).
Makeup, prosthetics: Johnny Murphy, who I know from Into the Badlands and Vikings. I haven't seen much of Penny Dreadful, his other significant work, but this choice means that they have someone on board who can do a lot of gore. Like ... a lot of gore. Nick Dudman's style will probably be more influential on the overall look than Murphy's, and his leans toward the whimsical, so it's probably good to have someone on hand who can show Trollocs being burned alive and wolves being cut to pieces. I think we can count on Perrin's berserker scene being fairly realistic, with a pick like this.
12/02/2019 Update:
Director: Salli Richardson-Whitfield posted on Instagram about being in Prague with a selfie and a well-worn cover of The Dragon Reborn, and tagged it "#directorslife" so it's possible we have a second director! She's got a lot of genre directing experience: Altered Carbon, American Gods, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Magicians (including "Six Short Stories about Magic, which was so good), The Punisher, Luke Cage, Agents of SHIELD, etc. Her background is just as impressive as Uta's, so this is exciting. They're getting some top-notch directors who are capable of doing really interesting, beautiful things.
12/03/2019 Update:
Director: Wayne Yip is listed as being involved with the Wheel of Time on his agency's profile page, and given his previous credits he's probably another director. He doesn't have as strong of a background in genre television (he's worked on Doctor Who, Into the Badlands, Cloak & Dagger) since his focus is more in suspense/thriller.
02/28/2020 Update:
Season 1 Finale Director: Ciaran Donnelly. I think his first international presence was directing 13 episodes of The Tudors which seems like it was directed adequately for me. I wasn't in love with the show, though, so maybe he did a good job and I can't see it past the bad writing. He directed one of the more memorable episodes of Once Upon a Time (the one where Ariel shows up). I haven't seen anything of Krypton but he started the show off so SyFy must have trusted him a good bit. He's done a bunch of The Vikings and two from Altered Carbon, so his career is definitely picking up some steam.
See below for pics of set pieces and wigs.
09/02/21 Update:
David Buckley has been replaced as composer by Lorne Balfe, who has a much more extensive catalog of scores under his belt than Buckley.
***
I'll be coming back to update this as we get more news about crew members. Prop master and set designer are my next biggest priorities after makeup.
Director: Uta Briesewitz (also credited as a producer), who has directed for Westworld, Fear the Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and Jessica Jones. I really liked the Jessica Jones episodes she directed.
Visual FX: Jakob Chilczuk and Karen Goulekas. Jakob has done Black Mirror, and Karen worked on Looper, Green Lantern, Raimi's Spider Man, Godzilla, Titanic, Apollo 13 and this one really caught my attention because it's one of my all-time favorite movies: The Fifth Element as digital effects supervisor.
Costume: Isis Mussenden did the Narnia movies, and has also done some period films (On the Basis of Sex, most recently). I haven't heard of most of what she's done with live action (she worked on Shrek and such) but most of it does not stand out to me either way (Dante's Peak, The Wolverine, American Psycho). I really liked some of Susan's designs for Narnia and Jadis was pretty cool, so at the very least I think she'll do alright. Hopefully she's inspired by the variety in WoT and understands that it can be so much more than generic European medievalness.
Makeup: Nick Dudman. This one has me the most thrilled because look at this work history. His very first job was Empire Strikes Back and he won a BAFTA for Fifth Element. Like. omg. I'm also a huge 80s scifi/fantasy nut and his fingers have been in basically every project I've ever loved: Superman II, Dragonslayer, RotJ, Krull (my heart!), Labyrinth (!!!), Willow (!!!!!!), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he created Jack Nicholson's Joker, did Indiana Jones, Alien 3, and then was involved with every Harry Potter. I've watched every scrap of reel on the makeup FX from Harry Potter and I couldn't be more happy with this decision.
Their choice for makeup FX gives me a lot of hope for what this show could be like. I personally really want to see practical FX over CGI as much as possible because, to me, it looks so much more real and has so much more staying power. Plus, WoT has an incredible amount of fantastical and whimsy to it, and sometimes whimsy with a dark side. With this work history, I think I'm going to see the makeup FX realized exactly the way I think it should be.
10/16/2019 Update:
So I tweeted at Rafe and the official Twitter account about hiring intimacy coordinators and sexual violence advisors and look what showed up on IMDB: Yarit Dor and Enric Ortuno have been hired as intimacy coordinators. A bit of description about what Dor will be doing: "Pre-shoot rehearsals with actors to create consensual choreography" and "Advocate for actors on-set: checking-in, maintaining any nudity riders, offering support as Mental Health First Aiders and more." Ortuno works with Dor a lot, and it's possible they might also be the team working on fight scene choreography. Ortuno has a background as a stunt man. Very excited about this addition to the crew.
11/04/2019 Update:
Storyboarding: At least one artist is Mark Risk, who has a lot of experience in genre entertainment as well as movies and film-- his work has really run the gamut from a Scorpion King sequel and The Maze Runner to Black Sails, Serenity, and Outlander. I'm not familiar with everything he's worked on-- a lot of it is critically acclaimed and some of it were bombs, but this is probably a decent pick. I like that he's worked on Black Sails and Serenity, since they were both examples of excellent storyboards.
Special FX tech: this person will probably be largely responsible for visualizing weaving, so probably worth paying attention to. Miroslav Precechtel is currently working on other Amazon projects, but his background is encouraging: Spider Man: Far From Home was a special FX masterpiece in a lot of ways and he was a part of the action unit for Underworld: Blood Wars so that again makes me think he might be one of the people responsible for making Moiraine shoot fireballs out of her hands
Lighting: The balloon lighting supervisor, Marek Radolf, makes me happy, since some of what he's worked on (his resume is long and very impressive) had some truly excellent lighting: Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, Inglorious Bastards, and the lighting in The Ghost Writer was a big part of what made that movie work for me so well and he worked on The Grand Budapest Hotel and there was some really cool lighting work in that so I'm happy with this pick. It's starting to be a trend, me being very happy with their crew decisions.
Cinematographer: David Moxness. He's a standby of genre television (Fringe, Smallville) but I'm not familiar with most of his work and a lot of what I am familiar with ... I wouldn't think of as having outstanding cinematography. Most shows don't have the same cinematographer for the whole thing, though, so if I'm not a fan of it I'm not too worried about it. Another cinematographer, according to r/TheDailyTrolloc, is David Luther, but I'm not sure how he knows that. Luther is more encouraging to me because I do like the cinematography of shows he's been on (White Queen had some great moments in his episodes, and so was his episode of Sherlock).
Makeup, prosthetics: Johnny Murphy, who I know from Into the Badlands and Vikings. I haven't seen much of Penny Dreadful, his other significant work, but this choice means that they have someone on board who can do a lot of gore. Like ... a lot of gore. Nick Dudman's style will probably be more influential on the overall look than Murphy's, and his leans toward the whimsical, so it's probably good to have someone on hand who can show Trollocs being burned alive and wolves being cut to pieces. I think we can count on Perrin's berserker scene being fairly realistic, with a pick like this.
12/02/2019 Update:
Director: Salli Richardson-Whitfield posted on Instagram about being in Prague with a selfie and a well-worn cover of The Dragon Reborn, and tagged it "#directorslife" so it's possible we have a second director! She's got a lot of genre directing experience: Altered Carbon, American Gods, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Magicians (including "Six Short Stories about Magic, which was so good), The Punisher, Luke Cage, Agents of SHIELD, etc. Her background is just as impressive as Uta's, so this is exciting. They're getting some top-notch directors who are capable of doing really interesting, beautiful things.
12/03/2019 Update:
Director: Wayne Yip is listed as being involved with the Wheel of Time on his agency's profile page, and given his previous credits he's probably another director. He doesn't have as strong of a background in genre television (he's worked on Doctor Who, Into the Badlands, Cloak & Dagger) since his focus is more in suspense/thriller.
02/28/2020 Update:
Season 1 Finale Director: Ciaran Donnelly. I think his first international presence was directing 13 episodes of The Tudors which seems like it was directed adequately for me. I wasn't in love with the show, though, so maybe he did a good job and I can't see it past the bad writing. He directed one of the more memorable episodes of Once Upon a Time (the one where Ariel shows up). I haven't seen anything of Krypton but he started the show off so SyFy must have trusted him a good bit. He's done a bunch of The Vikings and two from Altered Carbon, so his career is definitely picking up some steam.
See below for pics of set pieces and wigs.
09/02/21 Update:
David Buckley has been replaced as composer by Lorne Balfe, who has a much more extensive catalog of scores under his belt than Buckley.
***
I'll be coming back to update this as we get more news about crew members. Prop master and set designer are my next biggest priorities after makeup.
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