#WandaVision Kicks Off Its Awards Run with a DGA Nomination for Director Matt Shakman

Director Matt Shakman, who took on the directorial duties for the highly acclaimed Disney+ miniseries WandaVision, has earned a Directors Guild of America Award nomination in Movies for Television and Limited Series category. WandaVision’s success has led critics and audiences alike to openly convey their desires for the show to go big in the upcoming awards season. Fan reactions were mostly directed towards Elizabeth Olsen’s phenomenal acting performance. For now, director Matt Shakman is the one who is getting praised for his remarkable conception and its execution from behind the scenes arena.

Matt Shakman’s direction is viewed as visibly amazing by many, as witnessed by the Disney+ audience, and he deserves all the credit and appreciation. Matt’s execution of the sitcom-themed storyline and idea for filming those sequences in front of a live audience made that aspect of the show more connecting, especially after the reason for the “sitcom reality” was revealed.
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WandaVision was a display of Matt’s astonishing direction skills, his understanding of camera work, his knowledge of using colors, and his ability to use comedy to tell a mystery-thriller story. WandaVision was highly diverse and detailed when it came to the direction and set execution. The show was set in different timelines and paid homage to all the sitcoms of those respective times, starting with The Dick Van Dyke Show and ending it all with The Office. There were theme songs featuring melodies of different ranges, which again were inspired by the sitcoms of different decades.

Matt Shakman even shot the show in black-and-white to keep the significance and integrity of those sitcoms alive and intact. Matt Shakman also excelled in shifting those sitcom eras per episode, which was visually visible through the changing quality of camera, films, graphics, VFX, and color palettes. That’s one feat quite difficult to achieve. To pull off a nine-part series with ever-shifting paradigms in the technical specification of film-making is alone a tough job, and the flawless manner Matt has executed these shifts is considered amazing by quite a few Marvel fans and TV fanatics.

Matt Shakman’s DGA nomination is the first awards recognition for WandaVision. If nothing else, everyone is expecting acting nominations for Olsen, Bettany, Parris, and Hahn. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if Randall Park got an Outstanding Guest Actor nomination during the Emmys. As for Matt Shakman, this is his second nomination at the DGA; he was earlier nominated in the Dramatic Series category for his work on the hit series Game of Thrones.

In the Movies for Television and Limited Series category, Matt Shakman will meet strong competition from Scott Frank, who’s nominated for his work on The Queen’s Gambit. Others nominated are Susanne Bier for The Undoing, Thomas Kail for Hamilton, and Lynn Shelton for Little Fires Everywhere.

Grabbing a nomination in a major category, right after its conclusion is a big achievement for WandaVision. Despite the great work in writing and directing, previous MCU outings have mostly been only recognized for their visual effects. It wasn’t until 2018’s Black Panther that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was recognized at border and greater levels, as the movie became the first superhero adventure to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. But given that WandaVision has pretty much flabbergasted quite a few at most levels and aspect of film-making and production, there is a huge potential for the show to make it critically big at award functions this year. Matt Shakman’s DGA nomination might just be the start of a long streak.

Topics: WandaVision, Disney Plus, Streaming