MARCH 2025 DROPS RECAP
OUR 200TH TUESDAY DROP! PLUS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH, BLOCKBUSTER TV, AND MORE!
Hello, ShotDeck community! This month, we celebrated the incredible milestone of dropping our 200th Tuesday Drop! To all of you who have been along for the ride – whether you came on board during our early BETA days or as recently as last week – thanks for being a part of this crazy project with us. We love being your home for cinematic inspiration, whether you’re prepping a shoot, upping your technical knowledge, or just looking for beautiful images. Here’s to 200 more! And for those of you who are new to ShotDeck, you can sign up today for a free 2 week trial, or download our app from the App Store to get full access to the world’s largest library of over 1.7 million cinematic reference images (and counting!).
And a reminder that ShotDeck is available in Canva as well! 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. Click here to try it out. And if you’re in LA on April 10, join us in Hollywood Park for Canva Create, where you’ll have the chance to win swag, limited edition merch, and up to a YEAR FREE of ShotDeck!
This month, we added over 59,000 new shots to our library from iconic female filmmakers, music videos and commercials, and blockbuster television series. Here’s a closer look at what we curated for you!
LINA WERTMÜLLER
This month, we dropped hundreds of shots from seven entries in the filmography of Italian maverick writer director Lina Wertmüller, whose razor sharp sexual and political fables blazed an unforgettable trail through the second half of the 20th century. Born to a father descended from Swiss nobility in Rome in 1928, Wertmüller began working in theater before transitioning to film, where she spent several years as Federico Fellini’s assistant. After working with Fellini on 8 ½, Fellini introduced Wertmüller to cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, who went on to shoot Wertmüller’s 1963 debut feature, The Basilisks. Wertmüller was prolific throughout the 60s, especially in television, but it was in the 70s that her work in film began to make waves on the international scene. The Seduction of Mimi (1972) and Love and Anarchy (1973) were both nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and in 1977, Wertmüller became the first woman nominated for an Academy Award for her war comedy masterpiece, Seven Beauties.
A controversial filmmaker who was met with adoration and hostility in equal measure throughout her career, Wertmüller’s status as a feminist pioneer in cinema was somewhat belatedly recognized, but her films endure as some of the most unique and resonant of their time. Check out titles such as Swept Away, All Screwed Up, The Belle Starr Story and Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil on ShotDeck today!
AGNÈS VARDA
Eleven new titles from the Godmother of the French New Wave. This month, we expanded our collection of films from international art-house icon Agnès Varda, whose relentlessly personal and independent sensibility forever expanded the definition of what a movie could be. An art history student who originally intended on becoming a museum curator, Varda found her way to films via stills photography, a practice that she continued to rely upon for her work in motion pictures (we hope she would’ve loved ShotDeck!), and that contributed to her interest in blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction.
Our collection of titles from Agnès Varda this month is a celebration of the breadth of her work. You can add shots to your decks from her very first feature film, La Pointe Courte (1955), a penetrating study of a failing marriage, or from the charming and intimate documentary about the lives of people on her own street in Daguerréotypes (1975). There’s Documenteur (1981), a quiet study of a divorced mother and her child living on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and Faces Places (2017), her delightful collaboration with street photographer JR, who she criss-crosses France with taking large-scale photographs of the people they meet.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the rest of the films from this month’s Agnès Varda collection, which include Jane B. by Agnès V., One Hundred and One Nights, Mur Murs, The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès, as well as many more of Varda’s films on ShotDeck now.
RUTH E. CARTER
In March, we expanded our collection of films celebrating the work of legendary American costume designer, Ruth E. Carter. A two-time Academy Award winner known for her ongoing collaborations with directors such as Spike Lee, John Singleton and Ryan Coogler, Carter started working as an intern for City Stage’s costume department, followed by the Santa Fe Opera, before moving to Los Angeles to work at their Theater Center. It was there that Carter met Spike Lee, who hired her to work on his second film, School Daze (1988). It sparked one of the most impactful Director-Costume Designer collaborations in the history of American cinema, and Carter’s work on Lee’s films such as Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990) and Malcolm X (1992) remain touchstones for costume design in film.
Carter won Academy Awards for her work on the superhero films Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and in 2023, the North Carolina Museum of Art hosted a retrospective exhibition of her work, displaying over 60 of her original garments. This month, we curated 6 new titles to add to our collection of Carter’s work: the 2015 Spike Lee musical Chi-Raq, historical drama The Butler, Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama about slavery Amistad, sci-fi thriller Serenity, John Singleton action crime film Four Brothers, and the Tina Turner biographical drama What’s Love Got to Do With It. Check those out, as well as the rest of our Ruth E. Carter collection, on ShotDeck today!
THE SYMPATHIZER
In March, we also added the 2024 miniseries The Sympathizer to our library! Created by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, and based on the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer is based on the story of The Captain (Hoa Xuande), a North Vietnamese spy serving in the South Vietnamese army who is forced to flee to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War. While living in a community of South Vietnamese refugees in Southern California, the Captain continues to secretly spy on the community, while struggling between his original loyalties and his new life in America. The Sympathizer also stars Robert Downey Jr., Toan Le and Sandra Oh.
Lead cinematographers Kim Ji-yong and Barry Ackroyd worked with Park and McKellar to create a look that embraced the multi-faceted and at times fractured identity of both the central character and the show itself through its visual language. Bright, high-contrast, even almost blown-out lighting designs disrupted the conventional soft, golden appearance of 70s Los Angeles, while cameras were often on dollies and mounted with hand-controlled zoom lenses instead of motorized zoom controls to give an aggressive and unpredictable quality to the images, giving the environments the Captain occupies with a sense of danger and foreboding.
BRIDGERTON
The blockbuster romantic television series of this decade is finally on ShotDeck! This month, we dropped all 3 seasons of Bridgerton. Created by Chris Van Dusen and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, Bridgerton is based on the book series by Julia Quinn and follows the close-knit siblings of the Bridgerton family as they navigate social season, where eligible nobility and gentry are introduced into society. Bridgerton is set in an alternative London Regency era in which George III established racial equality, and the series has become synonymous with its reimagined lens on the social and racial politics of the era.
Bridgerton has become one of Netflix’s biggest hits of all-time, injecting new life into the canon of British period shows and films, and launching the careers of actors such as Phoebe Dynevor, Regé-Jean Page, Simone Ashley, Nicola Coughlan, Luke Thompson, Charitha Chandran and Hannah Dodd. Lead cinematographers Jeffrey Jur, Alicia Robbins and Diana Olifirova filmed the series using the Sony Venice and ARRI Signature Prime lenses, leveraging its color rendition, dynamic range and lack of noise, even when pushed to ISOs of 2500 to deliver a pristinely detailed 6K digital image that aimed to capture details of production and costume design as cleanly as possible.
MUSIC VIDS & COMMERCIALS
They’re back! This month, we added over 11,000 new shots from 200 new music videos and commercials to our library.
On the music videos side, there are new releases from superstars Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar and HAIM to check out, as well as older jams from Frank Ocean, Thom Yorke and LCD Soundsystem.
And in commercials land, check out shots we added from work representing brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Beats, The North Face, Taco Bell and many more!
We’ve got tens of thousands of new shots coming your way in April, with titles dropping from two modern-day international master filmmakers, curations celebrating Arab American creators, two of 2025’s biggest television series so far, and collections containing some all-time classic movies. See you soon!
