<\/p>\n
Hi y\u2019all. Welcome back to Top of the Line, IndieWire\u2019s roundup of Craft stories. I won\u2019t trouble you with a pun about how summer has heated up what the Craft Team is up to because we simply don\u2019t have time for that. But whether you\u2019re looking for closure on the \u201cHacks\u201d<\/a> series finale or \u201cThe Boys\u201d<\/a> series finale, we have you covered. We\u2019ve gotten lost in the \u201cBackrooms\u201d<\/a> and marooned ourselves on \u201cCape Fear.\u201d<\/a> We\u2019ve profiled some \u201cVery Important People\u201d<\/a> and some very important 3D printers<\/a>. Whether you\u2019re looking to hang out with TV\u2019s most beloved Night Shift<\/a> or you have even spicier takes on \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 <\/a>than our own Jim Hemphill, there\u2019s been a lot of cool crafty stuff on IndieWire written just for you.<\/p>\n But today I am here to talk about \u201cSubway Takes,\u201d Kareem Rahma\u2019s YouTube series that profiles the takes of both regular riders and more famous celebrities sneaking onto public transit for their takes on everything from romance to AI to the social contract around potlucks. Rahma\u2019s one of a number of Internet creators running local, as it were, to more traditional talk and chat show formats, with increasingly fun and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 viral results. But it\u2019s also a good blueprint for how to shoot something quickly, with a low profile, in fluid conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cSubway Takes\u201d looks pretty simple: Just a couple camera setups around Rahma and whoever his guest is, seated on a train. But I was curious how the show actually gets made, fully in public, and how Rahma\u2019s finessed the hooky, simple format over the years he\u2019s been at it and expanded \u201cSubway Takes\u201d to other transit systems in London, Chicago, Berlin, and beyond.<\/p>\n Between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on trains running between Manhattan and Brooklyn is the main answer to the OG NYC \u201cSubway Takes\u201d schedule. The team \u2014 which used to be just Rahma and two friends and has now doubled its (still tiny) footprint to include a rotation of camera crew and producers \u2014 wants to provide the least amount of disruption to regular riders. The low shooting footprint is important \u2014 when big celebrities, they can have big teams of their own, and that very quickly can fill up a train car \u2014\u00a0as is waiting on cars that are mostly empty so that the shoot can give regular riders as much space as possible. As a result, Rahma hasn\u2019t encountered anyone upset that he and his team are shooting.<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone wants to chime in, they chime in, and I\u2019m happy to have them on the show. There\u2019s not been anyone who\u2019s trying to cause a ruckus or create chaos,\u201d Rahma said. \u201cUnless you\u2019re, like, Cate Blanchett or J. Lo, sometimes you\u2019re just mixed with other people. So I\u2019ll shoot like four friends and then, like, Eric Andr\u00e9, who\u2019s technically a celebrity but is also a peer and is also normal, so he just comes on with everyone else. We don\u2019t make any special accommodations.\u201d Indeed, part of the draw of watching \u201cSubway Takes\u201d is that anyone and everyone could be on \u201cSubway Takes.\u201d<\/p>\n Whoever the guest is, the jaunt over the East River also provides Rahma with more uninterrupted time to dig into their takes. As with most things, it\u2019s impossible to engineer to go viral. Rahma just thought interviewing people on the subway would be a good idea. Or at least, an interesting experiment to try and potentially fail.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m literally not working in Hollywood, so let me go do this thing that will probably fail,\u201d Rahma told IndieWire. \u201cI actually thought it was a really dumb idea because I\u2019ve had so many of those that I was like, \u2018What are the odds that this one\u2019s good?’\u201d<\/p>\n But the odds were in \u201cSubway Takes\u201d favor. This is in no small part due, Rahma believes, to the deft editing that balances just on the edge of the platform, so to speak, to distill ten or fifteen minutes of conversation down into a reel or a short-length amount of video. \u201cOur editors make something that seems so simple feel really dynamic, really engaging, really fast-paced, and at the same time not cheap and not slop,\u201d Rahma said.<\/p>\n Rahma wants the show to be the most sophisticated series about the stupidiest subways precisely as a way to stand out from and to combat so much of the slop content we\u2019re all subjected to in the Year of Our Lord 2026. \u201cI think in a world where everything feels fake, and sometimes is fake with AI and such, it\u2019s a breath of fresh air to see something so normal, and just like real life. You turn on the news, and those people are lying to you. You turn on your social media apps, and those people are lying to you. You watch a video, and you find out it\u2019s fake and they\u2019re lying to you. And then you see \u2018Subway Takes\u2019 and you\u2019re like, \u2018OK, those people are not lying to me.\u2019 There\u2019s this stupid, real, funny conversation that\u2019s also smart at the same time,\u201d Rahma said.<\/p>\n The show gets to be that way in part because of how Rahma\u2019s grown as an interviewer over shooting friends, celebrities, and random people with opinions over and over and over again. He doesn\u2019t try to overthink his approach to setup, prep, or filming, just tries to be a friend to the guest and set them at their ease. But he\u2019s now had a few interviews where he\u2019s realized that it can be a very different level of challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an episode with Bill Burr that was really hard for me,\u201d Rahma said. \u201cThis guy just totally destroyed me in the first 15 seconds; made me feel like I was bad at my job. And then I got it back on track after like 10 or 15 minutes, and by the end of it, he was chummy and happy and complimented me on my skills. So that was one of the first times where I was like, \u2018OK, maybe I do have a certain skill that has been developing.\u201d<\/p>\n As for which subways Rahma wants to sneak a sophisticated show about stupid takes next? \u201c I\u2019m really interested in exploring a Japan season, but I know that their train etiquette is a lot different than New Yorkers\u2019 train etiquette, so I haven\u2019t figured it out. I think South Korea, Seoul, would also be really cool. I want to make it out to Asia,\u201d Rahma said.<\/p>\n Bullet Train Takes are perhaps coming soon, \u00a0but in the meantime, you can check out \u201cSubway Takes\u201d on YouTube. And we\u2019ll be back with another Craft Newsletter next week.<\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi y\u2019all. Welcome back to Top of the Line, IndieWire\u2019s roundup of Craft stories. I won\u2019t trouble you with a pun about how summer has heated up what the Craft Team is up to because we simply don\u2019t have time for that. But whether you\u2019re looking for closure on the \u201cHacks\u201d series finale or \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2457496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[472303],"class_list":["post-2457495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-kareem-rahma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Top-of-the-Line-Whats-Your-Take.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457497,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457495\/revisions\/2457497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2457496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}