Dolby Creator Talks

Independent film financing can be one of the most mysterious — and most essential — parts of getting a movie made. In this illuminating panel discussion, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker (and Dolby Creator Lab Grant winner) Carlos López Estrada leads a practical conversation about how projects move from script to package to market, what financiers are actually looking for, and what emerging filmmakers can do to give their films the best possible chance of getting made.

Joining the discussion:

- Marissa Frobes – Media Finance Agent, CAA

- Chris Quintos Cathcart – Independent Financier and Co-CEO of Unapologetic Projects

- Riel Roch-Decter – Producer (“Earnhardt”) and Co-founder of MEMORY

This is another installment of our ongoing “Satellite Sessions” series, which we’re bringing to you in partnership with Antigravity Academy and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment.

Follow @antigravityacademy and @capeusa for more information on even more upcoming panels.

Antigravity Academy

CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)

For more inspiring Satellite Sessions just like this one, be sure you are subscribed 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.

Front of house mixer Vince Casamatta joins us to discuss how he helped transform Maroon 5’s residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas into a powerful live Dolby Atmos® experience. He reflects on everything from pre-production to the subtle live spatial decisions that make the technology disappear behind the music, always in service of the songs and the emotional impact of the show.

“The format has to serve the art and not the other way around. And I think we were really able to do that by making movements and making decisions that maybe audience members didn't even know were happening, but on a subconscious level, they felt it.”

—Vince Casamatta, FOH Mix Engineer, Maroon 5

Stay connected!

- Listen to Maroon 5 and many other classic and contemporary artists mixed in Dolby Atmos on enabled streaming music services.

- Check out Maroon 5 tour dates here.

Interested in creating content in Dolby Atmos? Check out our FREE resources to give you a jump start!

- Dolby Atmos Music Accelerator: https://www.dolby.com/creator-lab/music-accelerator/

- Dolby Atmos Essentials Course: https://learning.dolby.com/

- Dolby Atmos Music Support: https://professional.dolby.com/music/Professional-resources/

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.

Today we welcome acclaimed horror filmmaker Lee Cronin back to the show, alongside sound designer and supervising sound editor Peter Albrechtsen, to discuss their delightfully gory new horror film, “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.” As with their previous collaboration, 2023’s hit “Evil Dead Rise,” Cronin and Albrechtsen embraced sound design from the earliest stages of the creative process, using it not only for maximum impact, but also to sharpen the film’s storytelling.

“I actually found the edit on this one quite stressful… We would have been in big trouble without early sound in it. Because of the way it was written and the nature of it, and how the tension needed to be built. At times, it was quite hard to find the shape of scenes without sound that was very, very clear in its signposting of where we were headed, ultimately. Sometimes you’re cutting something and you can dig into a bit of a library, but quite early on we actually needed design to help us craft the sequences.”

—Lee Cronin, Director and Writer, “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy”

Be sure to check out “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” now playing in theaters and Dolby Cinemas® 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.

Legendary mix engineer Kevin Madigan joins us to discuss his pioneering work helping create Santana’s live Dolby Atmos residency at House of Blues in Las Vegas and what it takes to reimagine one of rock’s most iconic sounds for a live audience. He also reflects on his work at Larrabee Studios in Los Angeles, building out the Dolby Atmos® room and mixing music from Santana’s landmark album “Supernatural.”

“The music felt 3D and you were immersed in it. And we do have a lot of elements to do that with the Santana band and within the music. There’s a lot of percussion, keyboards, B3, congas… So, bringing that out into an immersive feeling [for] the audience was kind of easy to do! And if there was cool moves to do at certain points in a song… it can do a rotation around the audience. It’s a really cool moment for the audience, but it’s not distracting, it’s not gimmicky… The audience got used to it pretty quick. It just sounded like a huge, immersive mix that’s really engaging and magnetic and draws the audience into the song.”

—Kevin Madigan, FOH Mix Engineer, Santana

Stay connected!

- Listen to Kevin Madigan's mixes of tracks from Santana's “Supernatural” album, as well as many other classic and contemporary artists in Dolby Atmos, on enabled streaming services.

Interested in creating content in Dolby Atmos? Check out our FREE resources to give you a jump start!

- Dolby Atmos Music Accelerator: https://www.dolby.com/creator-lab/music-accelerator/

- Dolby Atmos Essentials Course: https://learning.dolby.com/

- Dolby Atmos Music Support: https://professional.dolby.com/music/Professional-resources/

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.

Composer Daniel Pemberton returns to Dolby Creator Talks to discuss his inventive new original score for “Project Hail Mary.” In conversation with guest host Jon Burlingame, Pemberton breaks down how he built a custom musical language for the film using everything from wooden blocks, body percussion, treated vocals, bowls of water, and even a squeaky water tap recorded on his iPhone. He also reflects on balancing the film’s vast sci-fi scale with its intimate emotional core, and how experimentation, failure, and discovery shaped one of his most ambitious scores yet.

“Developing all your own sounds… I call it mixing your own paints. You've basically spend a long time mixing paint colors rather than buying it off the shelf. And that's how you get stuff that feels very original, like this. And I've got millions of these and most of them don't work. You spend ages when you experiment. When you have time to fail, you have time to create ... Hopefully there'll be something in there that'll work.”

—Daniel Pemberton, Composer, “Project Hail Mary”

Be sure to check out “Project Hail Mary” now in theaters 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.

Getting a project made in the entertainment industry can be a mystifying process. But one thing is for sure: nothing would happen without the Hollywood assistants who help champion them and assist (and, yes, sometimes cajole) the executives into getting a green light. To help shed some light on all this, filmmaker Carlos López Estrada hosts another insightful Satellite Session, featuring a panel of top executives, producers, agents, and assistants, to explain how Hollywood assistants work, and why they are so essential to the entertainment industry. As well as how it could be a pathway “in,” for those of you aspiring to build a career here yourselves.

Joining the discussion:

- Abhijay Prakash – President of Blumhouse

- Keenen Kunsh – Assistant to Abhijay Prakash, Blumhouse

- Christina Chou – Motion Picture Literary Agent, CAA

- Brendan Kim – Assistant to Christina Chou, CAA

- Mindy Ramaker – Creative Producer and Former Assistant to David Lynch

- Caroline Tsai – Assistant to Jenn Han (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”)

This is another installment of our ongoing “Satellite Sessions” series, which we’re bringing to you in partnership with Antigravity Academy and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment.

Follow @antigravityacademy and @capeusa for more information on even more upcoming panels.

Antigravity Academy

CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)

For more inspiring Satellite Sessions just like this one, be sure you are subscribed 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.

https://tinyurl.com/k7nu9zs5

Check out our playlist of exclusive interviews with the 2026 Academy Award® nominees via the link above. Categories and nominees include:

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

- Frankenstein, with Dan Laustsen and Director Guillermo del Toro

- Marty Supreme, with Darius Khondji

- Sinners, with Autumn Durald Arkapaw

- Train Dreams, with Adolpho Veloso

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

- Bugonia with Jerskin Fendrix

- Frankenstein with Alexandre Desplat

- Hamnet, with Max Richter

- Sinners, with Ludwig and Serena Göransson

BEST SOUND

- F1: The Movie

- Frankenstein

- One Battle After Another

- Sinners

- Sirât

Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

Alt link to playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC4e6_QLepbQXk1s6dbTa9bCdVfDAU_W5

Learn more about the Dolby Creator Lab and check out Dolby.com. Connect with Dolby on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Join us for a behind-the-scenes conversation with Academy Award®-nominated cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw about her work on “Sinners” — and the creative choices that shaped the film’s look from the very early stages of conception. Autumn breaks down how she and director Ryan Coogler developed the visual language together, from camera and lens selection to lighting strategies designed to support performances, tone, and mood, especially in those challenging night scenes. Along the way, she reflects on collaboration, preparation, and the real on-set problem-solving that is always involved in filmmaking.

“How our team collaborates: It’s the authority [director Ryan Coogler] gives each department to pour themselves into it… everyone has a say, your opinion matters. Any great filmmaker knows that it’s never about one department… When we approach stuff, we want the lighting to be a character, but we also want it to feel of the space — and so that requires us to collaborate very closely with production design… When you give people that respect and you consider them and you give them that authority, they work very hard for you and they care.”

—Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC, Director of Photography, “Sinners”

Be sure to check out “Sinners,” now streaming on HBO Max, in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®.

Check out our playlist of exclusive interviews with the 2026 Academy Award® nominees.

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 us for a behind-the-scenes conversation with the Oscar-nominated sound team behind “One Battle After Another,” as they share how they shaped the film’s world through sound—from intimate character moments to large-scale action. They discuss what it takes to capture great audio on set, build powerful sequences in post, and blending dialogue, effects, and music into a mix that plays on the biggest screens — plus how their collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson guided the sonic identity of the movie from start to finish.

“Knowing Paul [Thomas Anderson] — and knowing any director — something happens on set, sound-wise and [in] production, and [if] you don’t have a reference for it… it could potentially be a problem. You have the cars — the actual cars — you have the drivers, you have the road, you have the permits. Can we just spend a little time and try and get some good recordings of these vehicles? Because they’re going to be really useful. It’s such an iconic sequence. People are like, ‘oh man, that chase at the end of the movie is amazing.’ And we worked and worked and worked on that sequence trying to find what that was supposed to be.”

—Chris Scarabosio, Re-recording Mixer, Supervising Sound Editor, and Sound Designer, “One Battle After Another”

Joining today’s conversation:

- José Antonio García - Production Sound Mixer

- Tony Villaflor - Re-recording Mixer

- Chris Scarabosio - Re-recording Mixer, Supervising Sound Editor, and Sound Designer

Be sure to check out “One Battle After Another,” now streaming on HBO Max, in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®.

Check out our playlist of exclusive interviews with the 2026 Academy Award® nominees.

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.

Academy Award®-nominated cinematographer Darius Khondji joins us to discuss his stunning work on “Marty Supreme.” In this episode, Khondji unpacks his bold visual approach with director Josh Safdie, from shooting on film with classic anamorphic lenses and expressive close-ups to building a richly textured 1950s world through production design, lighting, and color. He also shares how collaboration across every department shaped the film’s emotional power.

“Anamorphic can be very minimal… The important thing is the way it renders closeups; it makes people bigger than life, like black and white does… The real old classic anamorphic of the fifties—I wanted to go back to this feeling… Anamorphic is like a magnifier. And Marty is seen through the film like that.”

—Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC, Director of Photography, “Marty Supreme”

Be sure to check out “Marty Supreme,” now available for at-home purchase or rental, as well as in select theaters, in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®.

Check out our playlist of exclusive interviews with the 2026 Academy Award® nominees.

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.