Bafta Guru

“follow your instinct... leave space to be ambushed. if a character has got life it’ll take you to places that you’ll never expect” Paul Laverty director Ken Loach, writer Paul Laverty, producer Rebecca O'Brien and actors Hayley Squires + Dave Johns discuss the real-life stories that inspired I, Daniel Blake

Actor Emma Stone, writer/director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz discuss Hollywood influences, the rollercoaster journey that brought La La Land to the screen & the struggle of working in a genre lots of people think they hate...

Werner Herzog shares the inspiration behind his documentary about the past and future of the Internet, and insight on how he approaches conversations with the people he puts on camera.

Writer/director Maren Ade and actor Sandra Hüller have great advice for controlling your laughter while shooting a comedy...

Writer-director Babak Anvari on finding his cast and his "less is more" approach to creating horror on screen.

Writer-director James Schamus talks about adapting Philip Roth's novel Indignation for the screen in his directorial debut.

Actor-writer-director Alice Lowe on getting the most out of your cast and working on perhaps the first pregnancy revenge satire...

George Amponsah and Dionne Walker discuss A Hard Stop, their documentary about the events that led up to and followed the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan.

Director Oliver Stone shares why he wanted to tell Edward Snowden's personal story, how he found his cast and experiences from set.

Director Richie Smyth and producer Alan Maloney discuss the making of their historical war drama.

Ron Howard discusses the making of his documentary charting the early years of The Beatles.

Naomie Harris tells us why she took her part in Moonlight, shares why director Barry Jenkins and her co-stars were a delight to work with, and reveals how she shot her BAFTA-nominated performance in just three days(!).

actors Casey Affleck + Michelle Williams + writer-director Kenneth Lonergan discuss collaboration, rehersal and tapping into the intense emotions required for Manchester By The Sea

"stay humble, stay open, never say 'that won't work, there's no audience for that'...if something sticks with you it's a sign that you should follow it and see where it takes you." Producer Jeremy Kleiner discusses getting started in the film industry, working as exec producer of Brad Pitts's production company Plan B and the making of Moonlight, The Big Short and 12 Years a Slave.

Actors Steven Mackintosh and Kara Tointon, producer Chris Croucher and executive producer Sharon Hughff discuss eight-part ITV drama The Halcyon.

Writer Sally Wainwright and actors Chloe Pirrie, Finn Atkins and Charlie Murphy discuss the making of the one-off BBC drama. To Walk Invisible follows the remarkable Brontë sisters who came from obscurity to create some of the best-known novels in the English language. The drama revolves around the three sisters’ increasingly difficult relationship with their brother Branwell, who in the last three years of his life sank into alcoholism and drug addiction.

The look of film and TV involves the vision of loads of people - at different ends of the process are the costume designer and the colourist, who help create a complex and subtle palette of colour for the film. They never meet, until now! We set up BAFTA-nominated costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ (The Imitation Game, Ex Machina, Assassins Creed) and colourist Aiden Farrell (Utopia, Downton Abbey) for a chat about their process. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMri-IwIxJg Explore more meetings across film, tv and games on guru.bafta.org

Director is one of the biggest roles on any film or TV programme. The person hired to deliver a vision, and get the best out of their cast and crew in order to bring the script to life. Working with actors and capturing performance is key; how does that change when your key performer is a clay sheep? Animation director Richard Starzak (Shaun The Sheep) sat down with live action TV director Richard Laxton (Him & Her, Burton and Taylor) to talk about capturing performance, onscreen storytelling and being worried you might get ‘caught out’.

‘Herding cats’ is a good way of describing the life of a producer - they are usually the first and the last people in the process, responsible for keeping everyone on track to deliver a big, creative, expensive project. How does this process change between making a BAFTA-nominated game or a BAFTA-nominated film? LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway producer Michelle Drucker meets Brooklyn and Wild producer Amanda Posey, finding common ground across their industries.

Atonement, Steve Jobs + The Imitation Game make-up artist Ivana Primorac meets The Witch + The Levelling casting director Karmel Cochrane to ask, what is our job? Bringing characters to life is key to creating engaging film and TV. Casting the perfect performer or working with an actor to create the look of their character are processes which are closely linked but casting directors + hair and make up designers never meet... until now!