This Women’s History Month, ARRAY Crew has a lot to celebrate! We kicked off March by celebrating FOUR PHENOMENAL FEMALE ARTISANS who have been nominated for Academy Awards® across four below-the-line categories. We hope you take the time to get to know and celebrate the nominees by watching ARRAY Crew’s first-ever Oscars® FYC conversation. 

Spend an hour with the inspiring 94th Academy Award® nominees from ARRAY Crew. These talented women share words of wisdom related to their career journeys, the importance of infusing storytelling into their work and how they overcame challenges along the way.

THE NOMINEES

CARLA FARMER

Carla Joi Farmer is a Dept Head Hairstylist, with credits that include Dolemite is my Name, Coming 2 America, King Richard, Sylvies Love and the upcoming Film Nope, from Academy Award winning director Jordan Peele.  Carla is a Member of the Academy of Motion Pictures ,Local 706 Elected Board of Trustees member. Co-Chair of Local 706 Diversity and Inclusion Committee and Sits on The IATSE Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee.  Carla is a Veteran Hairstylist who has worked in Television and Film for over 25 years. Carla is passionate about her work and takes great pleasure in working on films that portray African American People with positive and beautiful images for the culture at large.

JENNY BEAVAN

Designer Jenny Beavan earned a reputation for detailed and historically accurate work with a host of Oscar nominations, many for her frequent collaborations on Merchant Ivory costume dramas. In this capacity, Beavan had as important a role as the actors, given the task of creating styles that were at once pleasing to the eye and appropriate for and evocative of the characters she was outfitting. Her work was nominated for the Academy Award ten times, with wins for “A Room With A View” (1985) and “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015). After impressive work designing for theater and the opera, with credits including 1973’s “Carmen” starring Placido Domingo, Beavan made her debut creating clothing for Peggy Ashcroft for a 1979 Merchant Ivory TV-movie “The Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures” and segued to the big screen assisting costumer Judy Moorcroft on the filmmakers’ “The Europeans.” In 1984 Beavan began her partnership with costume designer James Bright, an alliance that would lead to six Oscar nominations including one for their debut, the Merchant Ivory filming of Henry James’ suffragist drama “The Bostonians.” Two years later the designers would win an Academy Award for their follow-up, another Merchant Ivory film based on a literary work, E.M. Forster’s “A Room With a View.” Here Beavan added to the beautiful Florence-set production with genuine Victorian costumes, more constricting to illustrate uptight Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith) and a looser silhouette for freer spirit George Emerson (Julian Sands). In 1987, the Merchant Ivory production team (including Beavan and Bright) took on Forster again, this time tackling the homosexual love story central to his supposed semi-autobiographical novel “Maurice.” Here costumes pointed to the stark differences in class between Maurice’s first love, upper class politician Clive (Hugh Grant), and the man who brought him happiness, common gamekeeper Scudder (Rupert Graves). The following year, Beavan joined Bright in costuming “Maurice” star James Wilby in Piers Haggard’s “A Summer Story,” marking the designers’ first film work apart from Merchant and Ivory. Also that year, Beavan and Bright worked on the grand India-set adventure “The Deceivers,” directed by Nicholas Meyer and produced by Ismail Merchant. Beavan and Bright brought realistic costuming to Bob Rafelson’s swashbuckler “Mountains of the Moon” in 1990, and the following year continued their spate of adventure films with work as costume designers for the feature “White Fang.” Beavan struck out on her own again in 1991, and the extensive research she did for “Impromptu” brought that film to a higher level. Beavan’s use of authentic 19th-century fabric and patterns, her development of an appropriately masculine wardrobe for unconventional novelist George Sand (Judy Davis) and her perfect recreation of Chopin’s clothing due to her discovery of actual notes from his tailor contributed to a historically sound production. More work in the quiet, character-driven historical dramas that made her name came with Syd Macartney’s moody, atmospheric Victorian-era drama “The Bridge” in 1992. That same year, she reteamed with Bright and Merchant Ivory on the roundly acclaimed pre-World War I drama “Howards End.” 1993 saw her outfitting Nazi Germany teenage Anglophiles in appropriately slapdash ensembles for “Swing Kids” before reteaming with Bright and Merchant Ivory, creating along with production designer Luciana Arrighi a suffocating propriety that exists alongside the freedom of the rolling countryside in “The Remains of the Day.” She next designed the costumes for Caroline Thompson’s 1994 take on perennial children’s favorite “Black Beauty.” In 1995 she worked again with Bright, designing costumes for Merchant Ivory’s “Jefferson in Paris,” a tale of the noted American patriot and President’s romance with slave Sally Hemmings and time abroad in a liberty-striving France. Their costumes were illustrative of the cultural differences between the somewhat uptight colonial-era Americans and the more decadent French. That same year Beavan costumed Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility,” creating some of the more memorable and historically accurate pieces for a less wealthy family than is generally portrayed in such films and earning yet another Academy Award nomination. Teamed with director Franco Zeffirelli, she dressed “Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre” (1996) in suitably severe and plain clothes, coordinating well with the film’s somber gray atmosphere. Her period work on Philip Saville’s 1970s set “Metroland” (1997; released in the USA in 1999) was note perfect and appropriately unglamorous, proving that her skill encompassed often unattractive realism as well as romantic yesteryear costuming. 1998’s “Ever After” was a particularly challenging project for Beavan, who had to create numerous and different lushly detailed ensembles for the main characters played by Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston and Dougray Scott. Her Renaissance-era clothes were inspired by painters including the ever-present da Vinci, and her work was an especially instrumental aspect of the film, evincing both period realism and fairy-tale magic. That same year she reteamed with Zeffirelli on “Tea With Mussolini,” creating costumes for this 1930s-set ensemble piece featuring Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Lily Tomlin and Cher. Beavan’s fashion creations helped to amplify and distinguish the variety of personalities and social status in this collection of women. Eternally proper Smith was attired in suitably starched gear, while Tomlin’s sexually ambiguous character wore less fussy man-tailored styles, and Cher’s American heiress was the perfect picture of showy new wealth. In 1999, Beavan reteamed with director Andy Tennant and took on a project of epic proportions as designer for “Anna and the King.” Working closely with production designer Arrighi, Beavan created a wardrobe for the cast of the Thailand-set film that mined the nation’s rich textile roots and used traditional fabrics purchased in the Thai city of Chaing Mai although actual filming took place in Malaysia. The grand scale of the production gave the designer the task of not only costuming Jodie Foster’s Anna in appropriately unadorned, practical frocks and Chow Yun Fat’s King in elaborate royal garb, but was responsible for costuming thousands of extras. The result was a visually remarkable production that earned Beavan her seventh Oscar nomination. Beavan’s work on 2001’s “Gosford Park” earned the costumer her eighth Academy Award nomination. Robert Altman’s clever look at the strict social structure of British society on the eve of the class structure breakdown, “Gosford Park” featured all of the remarkable attention to detail the director is known for, notably represented in the costuming. Beavan not only aided the production by illustrating both the look of its 1932 setting and the delineation between the classes with painstaking accuracy, her work helped Altman achieve a multi-layered mode of storytelling, where the detail in her designs offered subtle but crucial contextual clues. That same year, she garnered acclaim for her stage costumes for the Lindsay Duncan-Alan Rickman teaming in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” a production that transferred to Broadway in 2002. Beavan continued her varied work in both theater and film, including Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” (2004), ’40s-set murder mystery “The Black Dahlia” (2006), Michael Apted’s “Amazing Grace” (2006), Edward Zwick’s “Defiance” (2008), the action hit “Sherlock Holmes” (2009), historical drama “The King’s Speech” (2010) and George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), for which she won her second Oscar.

PAMELA MARTIN

PAMELA MARTIN (Editor) is a feature film editor who earned an Academy Award nomination for David O. Russell’s gritty 2010 boxing biopic, “The Fighter,” while also collecting her second American Cinema Editor’s Eddie nomination for the project. She was previously nominated for the ACE honor for her editing on another Oscar-nominated  Best Picture, “Little Miss Sunshine,” in 2006. She went on to work with Dayton/Faris on  “Ruby Sparks” and “Battle of the Sexes.”    Martin first worked as a dialogue and sound editor early in her career before  earning her first feature editing credit, coincidentally on Russell’s own big screen debut,  the 1994 comedy “Spanking the Monkey.”    Some of her other feature credits include “Operation Finale,” “Free State of Jones,” “Hitchcock,” “Youth in Revolt,” “Saved!,” “Slums of Beverly Hills” and “The House of Yes.”   Martin graduated from N.Y.U. film school, where she studied several different  crafts before choosing film editing as a career path. During her senior year at the  university, she landed her very first professional assignment for a PBS documentary series  before gaining further experience when she was introduced to Ang Lee (and his editor,  Tim Squyres), for whom she served as assistant editor and also dialogue editor on his  early feature films: “Pushing Hands,” “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man  Woman.”    Her commercial credits include Volkswagen, Holiday Inn and Hewlett Packard.  She also served on the feature jury at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and serves as a  mentor to other young editors through the ACE Diversity Program. 

GERMAINE FRANCO

GERMAINE FRANCO is a unique award-winning composer working in Hollywood today. Her work includes collaborating with film directors, storytellers, and production teams on studio blockbusters, independent features, documentaries, television series, immersive attractions, as well as concert and choral music. Franco is the first Latina to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Score, to be invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Music Branch, and to receive the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature (COCO). Recently, Germaine completed the score for Disney’s acclaimed animated musical Encanto, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score, an SCL Award nomination for Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film, and an Annie Award nomination for Best Music in a Feature. The film was directed by Byron Howard, Jared Bush, co-directed by Charise Castro Smith, produced by Clark Spencer and Yvett Merino. Other recent projects include composing and producing the score for the Universal Studios Beijing Resort immersive media attraction Kung Fu Panda Land of Awesomeness, for which she also garnered an SCL Award nomination, for Outstanding Original Score for Interactive Media. Germaine scored two No.1 Netflix films, Work It, directed by Laura Terruso and The Sleepover, directed by Trish Sie in 2020. Franco also completed the score for the Curious George: Go West, Go Wild animated feature for Universal Animation, streaming on Peacock TV. Other work highlights include co-composing the epic adventure score to Paramount’s live-action film Dora and the Lost City of Gold, directed by James Bobin. Her score for Little, directed by Tina Gordon Chism for Universal Studios, includes a mix of orchestral, hip hop, R&B and gospel music. She created the lively score for Curious George: Royal Monkey, directed by Doug Murphy, for Universal Animation. Franco co-wrote and produced the main title theme song for the hit Nickelodeon show The Casagrandes. In 2019 Franco was the only woman and woman of color to score two of the 100 top-grossing films (Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Little) across the entire industry. Previously in 2018, Franco was one of three female composers to score a major studio project with her work on Tag directed by Jeff Tomsic for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. She also completed the features Someone Great for Netflix, Life-Size 2 produced by Stephanie Allain for Freeform TV, and the series Vida for Starz. She composed the score for Dope, directed by Rick Famuyiwa which premiered at both the Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals to critical acclaim. Her work on the Oscar®-winning Pixar film COCO (2017) spanned over four years. Franco co-wrote and produced five of the six original songs with screenwriter and co-director Adrian Molina, including “Un Poco Loco”, “The World Es Mi Familia” and “Proud Corazón”. She produced, orchestrated and arranged the 2018 Oscar®-winning song. She contributed additional music and co-orchestrated the score, giving the film its authentic Mexican sound. At the 2018 ASCAP Screen Music Awards, Franco was recognized with the Shirley Walker Award. She is a Sundance Music and Sound Design Lab Fellow and holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in music from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Germaine’s work can be heard in concert halls around the world including the Walt Disney Concert Hall with The Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Puerto Rico Symphony, The National Symphony Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Houston Symphony, The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, The San Francisco Symphony, The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and The Taipei Symphony Orchestra. Franco has performed as a percussionist with several major international orchestras and artists, including the Belgian Radio Orchestra at the World Soundtrack Awards, the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Hollywood Symphony, the World Orchestra, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Jack Black, Sergio Mendes, Sheila E. and Judith Hill. Franco performed keyboards, and both Latin and orchestral percussion on her recent score to Encanto.