JUNE 2025 DROPS RECAP

VAMPIRES! ZOMBIES! PRIDE MONTH! AND MORE!

Happy Pride, ShotDeck community! 

A big thank you to those of you who came to our events at Cine Gear in LA and Tribeca in New York this past month. It was great to see so many new and familiar faces alike in LA at our Shot Talk with Don Burgess, ASC and at our After Party with Filmmakers Academy and Production Connect at Neuehouse Hollywood. And not to be outdone, we had bumper New York crowds at both our Kickstart with Canva event and our Filmmaker x Industry Mixer at the Village Social, co-sponsored by Canva, Sony and Portrait. Check out our Instagram page to see some of the highlights.

We can’t wait to see you all again at both Cine Gear and Tribeca next year, and keep your eyes peeled for more community events in the second half of 2025. And to stay up-to-date with all the latest ShotDeck news, and to get full access to the world’s leading library of cinematic reference images, sign up today for a free 2 week trial, or download our app from the App Store.

And remember that you can also access ShotDeck via Canva! Our official integration gives you access to the entire ShotDeck library directly within Canva’s interface. You can also directly access any decks you’ve built in ShotDeck in Canva.

TRY THE CANVA INTAGRATION OUT NOW!
This month, we dropped over 57,000 new shots from hundreds of films, television series, music videos and commercials. Let’s dive into what we curated!

VAMPRIES!

This month, we dropped thousands of shots from two of our most highly requested vampire titles: Ryan Coogler’s 2025 smash-hit film Sinners, and Season 1 of cult favorite television series, Interview with the Vampire.

Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their Mississippi hometown looking to start a juke joint from an old sawmill they purchase. They recruit their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a gifted blues musician, to play at the juke joint, despite his preacher father’s protestations that blues music is supernatural. But they don’t realize the evil that awaits them. Sinners also stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li and Delroy Lindo. Cinematographer Autumn Durald and Coogler originally planned to shoot Sinners on 16mm film before exploring shooting in large format. The film was ultimately shot with two film stocks and in two aspect ratios – 1.43:1 for IMAX 65mm and 2.76:1 for Ultra Panavision 70mm – allowing the film to embrace both its period setting and supernatural atmosphere. 

Interview with the Vampire is a gothic horror television series created by Rolin Jones, adapted from Anne Rice’s novels, The Vampire Chronicles. Embracing the books’ queer elements, the series stars Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Reid as Lestat du Lioncourt, and follows their relationship. The series also stars Eric Bogosian, Steven G. Norfleet and Kalyne Coleman. Lead cinematographers Jesse M. Feldman and David Tattersall shot the series with anamorphic lenses, smoke filters and even a special confetti filter to give the images a soft, vintage, dream-like quality.

ZOMBIES!

It’s not just vampires! This month, we dropped thousands of shots from two of the most influential zombie television series of all time – Season 2 of The Last of Us, and Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Walking Dead.

The Last of Us, created by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, is based on the video game series of the same name and is set decades after the collapse of society due to a mass fungal infection that transforms its hosts into zombies. The series stars Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever and Isabela Merced, and follows a hardened smuggler (Pascal) who leads a 14-year-old girl (Ramsey) who may be humanity’s last hope across the US in pursuit of salvation. Filmed in Canada as a stand-in for the US, Season 2 production designer Don Macaulay and his team had to both build and demolish sets to make them feel like authentic ruins of major US cities, using concept art from the game as a jumping-off point for the look and feel of the series.

Created by Frank Darabont and based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead portrays life in the months and years after a zombie apocalypse. A group of survivors travel in search of safety and security, constantly on the move in search of a secure home. The series stars actors such as Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Steven Yeun, Andrew Lincoln, and Jon Bernthal. Darabont and his lead cinematographers made the bold decision to shoot The Walking Dead on Super 16mm film on the Arri 416, creating a gritty, almost documentary-like aesthetic which grounded this otherwise fantastical story. 

GREGG ARAKI

This month, we dropped five films from New Queer Cinema renegade Gregg Araki, whose subversive, punk rock aesthetic would come to be a defining touchstone for adolescent rage and sexuality in the 1990s. 

Born in 1959 to Japanese American parents in Los Angeles, Araki graduated with an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and made his feature debut in 1987 with Three Bewildered People in the Night, which was made with a budget of only $5,000. His follow-up, The Long Weekend (O’ Despair), was made for the same budget, and his third, The Living End (1992), was made for $25,000, establishing Araki as the king of microbudget filmmaking. His next three films – collectively dubbed the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy – became touchstones of the New Queer Cinema movement, pushing 90s indie cinema into bold new realms, and unapologetically defining the look and feel of teenage angst for generations to come.

This month, we’ve added Totally F**ed Up (1993) and Nowhere (1997) to The Doom Generation (1995) to complete Araki’s iconic Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, as well as his 2007 stoner comedy Smiley Face, his 2010 mystery sci-fi sex comedy Kaboom, and his 2014 drama, White Bird in a Blizzard. Enjoy!

TERENCE DAVIES

In June, we dropped six films from beloved queer British writer-director Terence Davies, whose films ranged from intimate personal histories set in working-class Liverpool to epic portraits of the lives of literary giants, and everything in between. 

Described in a beautiful obituary by New Yorker critic Richard Brody as “the great cinematic poet of memory”, Davies arrived relatively late in life to filmmaking, working for years as a shipping office clerk and accountant before leaving Liverpool to attend Coventry Drama School, and eventually making his debut feature, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) at the age of 43. His follow-up, The Long Day Closes (1992), was another tribute to his childhood and his Catholic upbringing in working class Liverpool, and the constant reckoning between his strict religious upbringing and his homosexuality. Though he only made nine films in his life – eight fiction features and one documentary – Davies’s contribution to cinema places him among the most influential filmmakers in both the British and Queer canons.

In addition to Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, check out his adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth (2000), wartime romantic drama The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion (2016), and his final film, Benediction (2021). Add those shots to your decks today!

ADOLESCENCE

This month, we dropped just four shots from the British psychological crime drama series, Adolescence! Why just four? Because each episode was remarkably shot in just one take – no hidden cuts, and no CGI used to blend shots together. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (who also stars alongside Owen Cooper, Ashley Walters, Christine Tremarco and Erin Doherty), Adolescence follows a family whose world is turned upside down when their son Jamie (Cooper) is accused of a serious crime. Adolescence became one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits, praised for its socio-political impact, its technical accomplishments and its performances.

Series cinematographer Matthew Lewis and his team rehearsed with the actors for weeks in the lead-up to production, with each one-hour episode shooting two takes per day, up to three weeks per episode. While the interior scenes at the police station were shot on a specially constructed set, the other episodes were filmed on location. Episode 1 used Take 2, Episode 2 used Take 13, Episode 3 used Take 12, and Episode 4 used Take 16. Check out Matthew Lewis’s Instagram page for some truly remarkable behind-the-scenes footage, and enjoy diving into our stills from Adolescence!

MUSIC VIDEOS & COMMERCIALS

This month, we dropped over 12,000 new shots from 100 music videos and commercials each! Here are some noteworthy music videos from this month’s curation:

  • Sabrina Carpenter’s new music video “Manchild” is a gonzo, stunt-filled genre-mashup shot on 16mm film in the desert, directed by Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia, the mad geniuses behind “Taylor Swif” by A$AP Rocky.
  • An oldie but a goodie, the music video for Soundgarden’s 1994 alt-rock hit “Black Hole Sun” takes suburban angst to a whole new level, with its apocalyptic early 90s visual effects by 525 Post Production in Hollywood and Soho 601 Effects in London earning it a Best Metal / Hard Rock Video victory at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
  • Sonido Gallo Negro feat. Sylvie Henry’s music video for “Yanga”, directed by Amaury Barrera, is a gorgeous tribute to Afro-Mexican culture, blending an art film aesthetic with documentary-style camerawork to tell the story of Gaspar Yanga, a revolutionary who led a colony of enslaved people against Spanish colonizers in what is now Veracruz.

And while you’re checking those and the rest of our music videos out, take a look at some of our favorite commercials from this past month:

  • People Like Us – “Name The Bias”, directed by Naghmeh Pour, is a powerfully executed PSA commercial. Shot all in one location in 4:3 digital black-and-white, cinematographer Jasper Spanning uses extreme high- and low-angle compositions to give emphasis to lyricist Yasmin Ali’s message about biases against British people with “foreign-sounding” names.
  • Gap – “Linen Moves (Jungle)” brings serious style to the studio soundstage, building an abridged one-take version of Jungle’s hit “Back on 74” music video with pop star Tyla, giving linen some never-before-seen dance moves.
  • Corona – “Time Off” is a masterclass in surf photography. Director Santi Dulce and cinematographer Agustín Claramunt mix slow-motion with undercranking, archival surf broadcast footage with underwater and forest scenes to create a poetic collage that demands to be seen over and over.
In July, we’re bringing you curations from some of cinema’s most towering artists, war propaganda films, some of the past year’s biggest new television series, and another bag full of music videos and commercials. See you then!