APRIL 2025 DROPS RECAP

FILM NOIR ESSENTIALS, ARAB-AMERICAN CREATORS, AND 2025’S BIGGEST NEW TV SHOWS

Hello, ShotDeck community! This month, we added a whopping 74,000+ new shots to our library from hundreds of new films, series, music videos and commercials. You can access them all by signing up today for a free 2 week trial, or by downloading our app from the App Store to get full access to the world’s leading library of cinematic reference images.

A big thank you to those of you who joined us in Hollywood Park on April 10 for Canva Create! We loved getting to meet some of our Day 1 community members, as well as introduce ShotDeck to a whole host of new creators. Our official integration with Canva 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 added new shots to our library from iconic modern-day auteurs, a collection of classic noir films, work from Arab-American creators, music videos and commercials, and two of 2025’s biggest television series. Here’s a closer look at our curations!

FILM NOIR ESSENTIALS

Double crosses, dead ends and dark secrets…this month, ShotDeck curated a selection of 11 essential entries in the film noir canon. A term first coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, film noir has become synonymous with an era in American cinema ranging from the early 40s to the late 50s, where late- and post-WW2 pessimism gave rise to a genre of movies characterized by their dour outlook on people and the society they operated in. 

Noir films of this era often featured characters that have since become well-known storytelling tropes: the cynical detective, the femme fatale and the morally ambiguous man in power. But they’ve become equally well-known for their visual style – low-key, black and white cinematography with high contrast ratios, oblique camera angles, smoky interiors and venetian blinds creating sharp shadows from hard light sources. The noir era is responsible for some of the most influential films ever made, and this month’s curation is a murderers’ row of titles. There’s Charles Vidor’s romantic thriller which made Rita Hayworth a household name, Gilda (1946), and Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece starring Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place (1950). We also have the brutal crime thriller White Heat (1949), the sumptuous mystery from Otto Preminger, Laura (1944), and Samuel Fuller’s romantic crime thriller, Pickup on South Street (1953). You can check those titles out, as well as the rest of this month’s Film Noir curation, on ShotDeck now – and while you’re at it, check out our Instagram post on Film Noir’s cinematic legacy!

CATHERINE BREILLAT

In April, we curated a selection of five films from the director who critic J. Hoberman called “France’s foremost bad girl”, Catherine Breillat. Self-confessed as wanting “to bring my audiences to the things that they would normally find immoral and reprehensible” because “I find those things just the opposite”, Breillat’s work has been characterized by her unflinching focus on female sexuality, obsession and transgression. These themes often emerge from underneath a visual language of harmony and almost comical bucolic “purity”, resulting in films that, like Breillat’s filmmaking practice itself, have often been met with both controversy and admiration.

Check out this month’s curation of Breillat’s work – the 2010 adaptation of Charles Perrault’s grisly fairytale, Bluebeard, and the deconstruction of another fairytale from the same year, The Sleeping Beauty. There’s her 1999 film about a sexually frustrated schoolteacher, Romance, and her semi-autobiographical drama, Abuse of Weakness (2013), as well as her 2023 masterpiece about a family falling apart, Last Summer. Check those titles out, as well as the coming-of-age drama, Fat Girl (2001), all live on ShotDeck!

MR. ROBOT

This April, we dropped thousands of shots from Season 2 of the acclaimed thriller television series, Mr. Robot. Created by Sam Esmail and starring Rami Malek, the series follows Elliot Alderson, a disgruntled young programmer who works as a cyber security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. The series also stars Christian Slater, Carly Chaikin, Michael Cristoffer and Stephanie Corneliussen. Season 2 of Mr. Robot was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Cinematography for Director of Photography Tod Campbell.

Composition was one of the most important visual tools to Campbell and Esmail, and in an interview with Deadline, Campbell described their approach. “In this story, you put him down in the corner of the frame so it feels like he can’t escape. It’s the way he feels in his head so it really worked… We’re constantly feeling like the floor’s undulating beneath him… Obviously, New York City plays a part in this story. We wanted to feel Elliot very small in this large, large place. The giant wides where he’s very little were important to help convey that.”

RAMY

This month, we also added Season 1 of the comedy series Ramy to ShotDeck! Created by and starring Ramy Youssef, the series follows Ramy, a first-generation Egyptian-American, as he navigates his family, his love life and his spirituality in and around his New Jersey home. Season 1 also stars Hiam Abbass, May Calamawy, Amr Waked, Mo Amer, Laith Nakli, Rosaline Elbay and Steve Way. Season 1 of Ramy held its world premiere at SXSW 2019, won a Peabody Award for Entertainment.

Season 1 lead cinematographer, Adrian Peng Correia, wanted to create a lighting and color language that was rooted in naturalism, while still allowing room for experimentation. In an interview with Awards Daily, he said “There’s a certain baroque-ness to the nature in the way a lot of the faces are played and I wanted them to have these big key lights wrapped around their faces, almost in the style of a modern Rembrandt, where it would showcase the completeness of their faces. If we were in a room that was a little bit brighter, I’d still try to keep the faces in a little bit of a shadow… It was like a counteractive choice to make the color a little bit more experimental.”

LEE CHANG-DONG

In April, we completed our collection of films directed by South Korean master Lee Chang-dong! A pioneer of socially conscious filmmaking in Asia, Lee’s films helped bring South Korean cinema to the world stage, with his 2018 masterpiece Burning becoming the first South Korean film ever shortlisted for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. 

Born in Daegu, Lee studied Korean literature at Kungpook National University before working as an Assistant Director on a film for a script he wrote, To the Starry Island. It was four years later that he released his first feature directorial effort, the neo-noir crime film Green Fish. Check that out, as well as the other three films from this month’s curation. We have the reverse-chronological drama about the life of a man who commits suicide, Peppermint Candy (2000), the romance film about an ex-con and his victim’s daughter, Oasis (2002) and the comedy-drama about a grandmother who enrolls in a poetry class after the discovery of a family crime and early-onset Alzheimer’s, Poetry (2010). Add them to your decks today!

SEVERANCE

Time to go back to Lumon! This month, we dropped thousands of shots from Season 2 of Severance. The smash-hit series picks up with Mark (Adam Scott) and his efforts to reunite with his wife, and also stars Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, and Patricia Arquette.

Series Production Designer Jeremy Hindle designed the now iconic look for Lumon drawing from sources of inspiration such as staples of mid-century modern architecture, Jacques Tati’s iconic comedy Playtime, and actual office space from the 60s-80s. The exterior of the offices were filmed at the restored Bell Labs building in New Jersey, a place of great scientific innovation through the 20th Century which has now become a cult tourist attraction for fans of the show.

THE WHITE LOTUS

And… it’s also time to go back on vacation! This month, we added Season 3 of The White Lotus to our library. The anthology series created by Mike White takes us this time to Thailand, and stars  Natasha Rothwell, Walter Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Aimee Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger. 

Series Production Designer Cristina Onori built the look of the show around the Four Seasons Koh Samui, where the cast and crew both filmed and lived. In addition, Anantara Bo Phut in Samui served as the show’s exterior entrance and reception area, Anantara Mai Khao in Phuket as the spa, and Rosewood Phuket as the dinner restaurant. These spaces were adapted alongside studio sets to achieve White and Onori’s vision for specific furniture and textiles matching different groups of characters as the audience followed them through the show.

MUSIC VIDS & COMMERCIALS

In April, we dropped over 11,300 new shots from a collection of 200 music videos and commercials.

Check out brand new music videos from artists such as Travis Scott, FKA Twigs, Lucy Dacus and Hanumankind, as well as recent classics from David Bowie, Moses Sumney and Skepta.

On the commercials front, we have thousands of new shots for you to add to your decks from work featuring brands such as Reebok, Etsy, Doctors Without Borders and Instacart. Check them out today!

In May, we will have curations to share from major international filmmakers past and present, television series from AAPI creators, some of 2025’s first major new releases and a whole host of new music videos and commercials. Get set for a big summer!