Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Jess Royal. In this interview, she talks the role of set decoration and the bigger changes in her department in the last decade, key ingredients to longevity in the industry, and her thoughts on generative AI. Between all these and more, Jess takes a deep dive into her Emmy-nominated work on “Stranger Things”, from its early days to the final season.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Jess: I’m Jess Royal. I’m a set decorator and I did all five seasons of “Stranger Things”. My background is in law. I went to law school and practiced criminal defense. I had some faith going into it that some people are wrongly accused or overcharged, but in my case, our clients were very much guilty [laughs]. The thought of doing that for the rest of my life was quite daunting, and I felt an urge to do something creative.

I didn’t know what that was going to be right away. I found my way into film based on watching background interviews of production designers and set decorators who did period sets on movies and TV shows. I love history, and that was the best possible merge of both worlds. Fortunately, I met a production designer on an elevator, and I would not let go until I got what I wanted, and here I am now.

Kirill: What are the misconceptions or maybe misunderstandings about your role?

Jess: My mom still calls me a set designer, because that’s what the words make sense in her brain, even though a set designer is more of a draftsman who draws up the plans. Perhaps people draw a connection to interior designers that do a full design. People hear set decoration, and think about curtains or sofas or the frilly little details at the end.

The best thing about my job is doing junkyards and huge equipment. It’s doing a landscape that I can build from scratch – exteriors and interiors. It can be drapery, but it’s also every stack of newspaper or a collection of tchotchkes. You can build a backstory of where someone’s been in their life, what they’ve collected, what’s important to them.

I feel like “decoration” is the wrong word. It’s designing a whole world and a whole backstory for a character or a town, using objects, exterior and interior.

Left to right – production designer Chris Trujillo, set decorator Jess Royal, and art director Sean Brennan on the Mayor Cline’s bedroom set of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: What would be the bigger change that happened in your part of the world, comparing today vs when you were starting out?

Jess: Before, we didn’t have the option to fix things in post with VFX. You had to think about everything – something like covering a transformer on a telephone pole half a mile down the road that someone would see that’s not period. Now we make a note for VFX. Sometimes it’s handy, but I also miss thinking about everything in 360. On “Stranger Things” we started with Schindler boxes to do playback on older TVs to prevent flicker on camera, and now everyone is using green screens to put it in post. It’s mostly about technology and VFX.

Kirill: Getting to “Stranger Things”, how did it start for you, and what stood out in those early days?

Jess: I worked with the production designer Chris Trujillo for a few years before the show on smaller indie movies, and we kept saying that one day we’re going to get a show or a movie that everyone’s going to watch, and we’ll really have made it in the world.

I was in Los Angeles on a vacation, about to get on a plane, and he texted that he was sending a script with a good potential for me to read and to see what I think. Originally it was called “Montauk” and that’s where we were supposed to shoot it. I read the script on the plane, and I thought that it could be so amazing. One thing led to another, and we were scouting in Wilmington for Montauk, and eventually they said that maybe we can look in Atlanta and change the setting of the show. No matter what though, I felt that it had great potential.

It felt very small at the beginning. Netflix was hesitant to give us money to do everything we wanted to do, but then it came out, and it was amazing. It felt that our lives changed, as everyone watched it within 48 hours. It was cool to grow up in those early months of the first season or two.

Jess Royal on the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Was it that immediate for you after the first season dropped?

Jess: The release premiere in LA was somewhere outside of West Hollywood. I remember we were sitting on folding chairs, and how small it still felt. But it caught on so fast. I went straight from LA to a wedding in Massachusetts, and by the time I got to Massachusetts a day or two later, my brother had watched it, my mom had watched it, people at the wedding had watched it. Everyone was talking about it, or at least the people I was surrounded with, whether they were watching it for my sake or not. It felt like it was blowing up right away.

I’d already started scouting for “Ozark” at that time. My original film job was the location scout and then I became a decorator, so on some of those earlier shows I would scout and then I’d start prepping decorating. “Ozark” was fun to scout for and I was excited about doing it, and then at some point a few weeks in “Stranger Things” was immediately picked up for season two. So I had to leave “Ozark” a little bit early. I was bummed about that, but I think I made the right choice to stick with “Stranger Things” and what we had built. Merchandise and various experiences came later, but everyone hearing about the show was pretty immediate.

On the sets of the Byers’ living room of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Looking back at these 10 years and the entire story arc, why did people connect so much with this show?

Jess: It’s a multi-generational show. One of my best friends is about the age of Jonathan in the show, and he was a photographer in high school and later went to college at Pratt for photography. People his age identify with all the music of the era. They were kids in high school right at that same time. He immediately loved it, and I ended up using his photography as Jonathan’s background photography in the dark room and bedroom.

People his age who now have kids who are around the younger kids’ age in the show can watch it together as family. It transcends generations. It also lends itself well to having a pop culture – the music, the D&D aspect for all the nerds out there who love it. This game has been going strong since the ’80s, and there’s so many generations that can enjoy that aspect. You cheer for these kids and it doesn’t matter how old you are. You want to see them beat the dark forces and stay friends. Watching them grow up has been a delightful thing for a lot of people who have grown up with these kids as the show has gone on.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and episodic productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Charlie Cole. In this interview, he talks about the transition of the industry from film to digital, the evolution of tools at his disposal, importance of communication, and his thoughts on generative AI. Between all these and more, Charlie takes a deep dive into his work on the just released “Cruel Hands”.

Charlie Cole on the set of “Cruel Hands”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Charlie: My name is Charlie Cole, and I’m a cinematographer. I started out as a fine artist, I was in love with charcoal drawing, and went to undergrad in Brooklyn at Pratt Institute. And then I realized that to be a fine artist, at least what worked for me, you’re isolating yourself in the world so much. I started falling in love with the idea of working with collaborators and being inspired by other people’s art forms, which led me to picking up a camera and seeing how that fit – and I just fell in love with that.

I did freelance director / cinematographer work for a couple years, experimental poetic narrative type things, and then I applied to this grad school in LA called American Film Institute for cinematography. That’s when I started taking it more seriously as far as a craft and a career. Before it was much more of a passion and something that I felt very in tune to – but now it’s full throttle, making my job, making my life fully cinematography.

Kirill: Would you call yourself a digital native? Did you catch the tail end of the film as the medium?

Charlie: I love that term digital native, that’s really fun. I was at the transitional period where film was still very much alive, but not being taught so much. I got my hands on it a little bit, but only enough to see how beautiful it was. It was never directly accessible to me easily.

Even today, if I ever want to shoot with film, it’s quite a challenge with production to get film going. I get maybe a year to shoot a project on film. Usually it’s a short or a commercial. I love film, but I’m a digital native for sure. I definitely grew up with it, and feel very comfortable with it.

Now everything is so good that you can cheat it so easily between the two. I did a music video years ago with the director of “Cruel Hands”, and we worked with Andre Chlebak, the colorist who did “Mandy”. I could have sworn that “Mandy” was on film. I would have bet an arm and leg on it. My first question was what film stock was used, and sure enough it was digital. And if you’ve ever seen Steve Yedlin videos, he shows you how you can make anything look like anything else with the right approach of digital control or manipulation.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What are the misunderstandings or misconceptions about cinematography?

Charlie: I’m half French and half American. When I tell my French side of the family what a cinematographer is, they’ve never heard of it. I think in Europe there’s a lot more of the idea that the author-artist is in charge of the story and the vision, including the camera work, especially in French cinema.

Our role as cinematographer changes culture to culture and depends on each collaboration with each director. I’ve seen collaborations where the cinematographer is more of a camera technician who is helping the director’s vision come alive, and those can work beautifully. I’ve seen collaborations where the cinematographer and the director are figuring it out together. I’ve seen and been in situations where directors come from more of a theater background or they have a wonderful idea with little film experience, and they’re using you to help finesse the story through filmmaking and how to show a story through a film. It can mean so many different things.

The term that I’ve come to love is that the cinematographer is shooting what the actors cannot say. Your job is to shoot the subtext of every performance and shoot the subtext of the story. Years ago I saw “Shawshank Redemption” on a plane, and I had no headphones, so I watched it on mute. But the whole time it was clear what was happening, what the characters were going through, and what the story was going towards. That’s the job of the cinematographer – that the images say everything that can’t be said otherwise.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and episodic productions, it is my pleasure to welcome James Laxton. In this interview, he talks about the changes in the industry in the last 15 years, the role of the cinematographer, and his thoughts on generative AI. Between all these and more, James takes a deep dive into his work on the second season of “Beef”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

James: The easy part of that question is that I do have a family member that’s in this industry, and I was introduced not just to movie making and story telling, but also to what goes on under the surface of how these things are made at a quite early age.

My mother is a costume designer of motion picture films, and my childhood was spent oftentimes going to visit her on school holidays. I would fly out to see her wherever she was working in the world, and wander on to a film set, sit there and watch everything – as much as my patience of that age could bear. By no means did I think I wanted to join the industry at that young age, but it was an exposure to a world that not a lot of people knew about.

Then cut to teenage James, around my high school years I started playing with video cameras, making skateboard videos with my teenage friends, and just messing about. It was the advent of videography coming to be more accessible to people, and for me that coupled with an understanding of the larger scope of motion pictures and how they’re made. A few things synergized to me finding interest in filmmaking during my late teens and early twenties.

I went to a film school, and that’s where I got even more narrowed into cinematography in that period of my early twenties. I assisted in live loading film for a long time. I was a second AC for a long time. And during those years I would find weekends or a few weeks at a time to be a cinematographer in my own right. One of those projects did well enough to go to some film festivals. It started to get some attention from other filmmakers of similar ilk, and I started to run with it. It was a longer process than maybe I’m describing, because there’s many years of it not working before it worked – and that’s par for the course for a lot of people in this industry. There’s no fast and easy access point for most people, even for someone who had a parent in the industry. It took ten years or so before it felt like it made sense by any means.

Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller in episode 201 of “Beef”. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: What are the misconceptions or misunderstandings about cinematography that you see from people in your life?

James: The average moviegoer probably might not know anything about the job [laughs]. We all know actors, and we all know writers, and we all know directors – and the general viewing audience probably has an overall sense of what those jobs are. After that, when you look at the credits list, there’s probably a lot of confusion as to what these roles do.

It’s a great job. In many ways, people largely think it has to do with the photography of a project, as the name of the job implies – and that’s not untrue. Of course I’m dealing with the cameras and dealing with lighting on the technical side of things.

Another part of the job that people either don’t know or don’t think about has to do with a lot of creative choices behind those technical choices. That part of the job probably isn’t even taught in film school all that much, to be perfectly honest. There’s a lot of conceptualization and long creative discussions, particularly with the director, but also with the filmmaking group in general. That can get into deep artistic conceptual conversations that have very little to do with what lenses you’re using.

It’s a discipline. At a certain point you need to be able to speak about art history. You need to know some version of film history. You need to be able to understand different cultures and how they communicate. It’s a job that can span a wide spectrum of interests.

The beauty of cinematography is we’re all unique as individuals, and we all come at this from a different perspective. My experience is not someone else’s experience, and therefore I make different creative choices as to where to put the camera, what lighting I might suggest for a certain scene, what colors those lighting choices might emphasize. It’s a great job. I get a lot out of it, and I continue to enjoy it.

Kirill: What would you say are the bigger changes in your part of the world in the last 15-20 years?

James: Like so many industries at this point in 2026, we’re seeing the advent and the impact of AI, and how it can help create ideas and make story-driven choices. Rewind a few years back, and you have the conversations about visual effects around ‘2000s. Between then and now, there’s the advent of digital photography and digital cinematography. The cameras that are coming out are pretty impressive. Rewind further back, and it was different film stocks that were coming out and changing the ability to photograph under different lighting scenarios. These would probably round the top five of the bigger ones.

Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin in episode 201 of “Beef”. Courtesy of Netflix.

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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and episodic productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Julie Schubert. Julie is an Emmy Award winner for her work on “House of Cards”, and later she worked on “Mindhunter”, “Jessica Jones”, “Daredevil”, “Manifest”, and many other productions. In this interview, Julie takes a deep dive into her work on “The Diplomat” for which she just received an Emmy nomination for outstanding casting for a drama series.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Julie: My name is Julie Schubert, and I’m a casting director. I’m based out of New York, but when I work, I work internationally, which is quite exciting. You get to experience a lot of different places and a lot of different people.

I wanted to be an actor ever since I was a kid, and then I went to college and I realized that I was quite bad at it [laughs]. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I still wanted to be in the industry in some capacity. My family is in the restaurant business, and as great as that is, that is not a place I wanted to end up. So I got a bunch of internships while I was in college, and one of them happened to be in casting – and that was the best thing for me. You get to work with actors all the time, which I love. You get to work on a lot of different projects in a lot of different worlds, which I love. And you never have to be seen, which I also love.

No one really knew what casting was at that point when I was entering the industry. It didn’t exist in any kind of conversation about what you could do, and you had to almost “happen” upon it. Now it’s a much more prevalent craft, which is fantastic. This year was the first time that casting directors were honored with Oscars for their work, which should have been done a long time ago. BAFTAs are eligible for it, Emmys are eligible for it, and you have these venues where our work is recognized for the craft that it is. There’s also a documentary called “Casting By” that I would highly recommend watching. It gives a great look at the history of it, of what casting is, the subjectivity and the art of casting. Everyone should know what that is.

Kirill: What are the most common misconceptions or misunderstandings about what casting is or isn’t?

Julie: It depends on who you are. There’s a lot of misconception among actors that casting is a gatekeeping profession – that you have to get through us to get jobs. The way I reframe it is that we actually are the best advocates for actors that there possibly could be. We are the ones that are watching what you do on stage and on film. We are having those conversations with our creatives about why you are the perfect person for the roles that we’re currently working on. That’s the biggest one which for me is about reframing that we are your advocates, we are your allies, we are partners in this, and we are not the enemy.

Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler in episode 302 of “The Diplomat”. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: How big of an event was it to see the new category for best achievement in casting to be added to this year’s Oscars?

Julie: It was great to see it joining the other beautiful stages like the BAFTAs and the Emmys. Recognizing the art behind it is hard because it is so subjective – but so is directing, editing or costume design. A lot of those folks who have been recognized for their work wouldn’t be recognized without the cast that they put in front of them that they get to work with.

A lot of what we do is work with those collaborators to help shape what’s on screen, telling the stories that they want to shape, because we know those actors best. We know what they’re capable of, and the kinds of stories that they can tell, and finding a way to make it cohesive and make sense. How many times do you watch something, and you say that was such a great story, but that one actor didn’t feel like they fit into it. Part of casting is to find that seamlessness where you fall into the world and you walk away from it fully believing in it.

You can imagine everyone was so elated seeing this art – that not a lot of people understand – finally getting its due. I learned from incredible casting directors like Juliet Taylor who should have won 15 Oscars already. She’s top of the top. She worked with Mike Nichols and Woody Allen, and her career spans decades. You look at so many movies on all of those lists of must-sees, and she cast them. And without her casts, they wouldn’t be what they are. People are getting their due, and it was exciting to see it.

Kirill: Do you feel that it is more interesting, exciting, challenging for you to be working on an episodic production versus working on a feature film?

Julie: I like them both, and they’re just so very different. Episodic is long-form storytelling, so you get to live in the world for such an incredibly long period of time. But within that come its own unique challenges. You do want to keep it fresh. You want to keep it interesting. You want to make sure that there’s cohesion from day one, episode one of season one, to episode eight of season 20, depending if you’re lucky enough to get that many seasons. And you want to be able to see their trajectory and the arc of it, and be able to follow it and not feel like there’s any misstep. There’s a lot more responsibility in that regard because it is such long-form.

I love the slow pace of film. You take your time. You get to think about every piece in a very specific way. And it’s finite. A lot of times with film you ultimately get your first choice, because you’re not potentially having an actor lose an opportunity later on that may be something that they’re more excited about, or the arc is different, and that’s what they’re sort of leaning in towards.

The thing that I love about “The Diplomat” in particular is because the scripts are so good and the characters are so wonderfully fleshed, we got the first choices that we wanted for each role – which is a little unheard of in the series world.

(L to R) Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler in episode 305 of “The Diplomat”. Courtesy of Netflix.

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