The Cinematography Podcast

The Audacity DP Richard Rutkowski, ASC made Vancouver look like Palo Alto, used lens filters instead of special effects to create wildfires, and dramatized the themes of the show with spotlights and framing.

Podcast highlights include:
-How Richard and his crew made Vancouver look convincingly like Silicon Valley and why establishing a sense of place was a creative priority from day one.
-Why glass filtration is still one of the most powerful tools in a DP's kit.
-Richard breaks down exactly how he built the show's haunting wildfire look using physical filters in camera, with minimal reliance on post.
-His philosophy of handheld as intimacy, choreographing the camera to follow the actor so that performance drives the frame.
-How visual motifs like frame-within-a-frame compositions and strategic spotlight placement were purposeful to the show's themes, rather than being visually inventive for its own sake.

Find Richard Rutkowski: http://see-no-evil.net/
Instagram: @richardrutkowskidp
The Audacity is streaming now on AMC+
Hear our previous episode with Richard Rutkowski on Masters of the Air. https://www.camnoir.com/ep255/

SHOW RUNDOWN:
02:02 Close focus
22:27-01:11:32 Richard Rutkowski interview
01:11:45 Short ends
01:19:14 Wrap up/Credits

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

Peter Deming, ASC on shooting Evil Dead 2 with director Sam Raimi and working with director David Lynch on Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks.

Find Peter Deming: Instagram @peter_deming

Spider Noir is now streaming on MGM Plus and Amazon Prime.

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

Cinematographers Darren Tiernan, ISC and Peter Deming, ASC are the DPs of Spider Noir, the new MGM Plus and Amazon Prime series starring Nicolas Cage as the hard-boiled 1930s New York detective version of Spider-Man. The character is based on Marvel Comics featuring Spiderman Noir, and first introduced in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Tiernan and Deming created a series that looks like a classic film noir using vintage lights, custom LUTs and a “noir vocabulary.”

We dive into:
-How the production created a dual release simultaneously in both black and white and color.
-Lead DP Darran Tiernan worked for months on LUT development and a workflow that kept every department aligned on both versions from day one. Monitors on set showed what the scenes would look like in black and white.
-Why both Darren and Peter used old tungsten lights with Fresnel lenses instead of LEDs whenever possible. Not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity for getting the hard light that defines film noir.
-How rigorous preparation, from shot decks before the first meeting to photo boards and green screens on location, allowed creative freedom to take risks in the moment when the cameras were rolling.
-Why the goal was never to recreate classic noir but to absorb its philosophy of shadow, composition and expressionistic light and apply it to this specific story. That distinction is what makes Spider Noir feel fresh rather than like a period piece.

Find Darran Tiernan: https://darrantiernan.net/
Instagram: @dazt

Find Peter Deming: Instagram @peter_deming

Spider Noir is now streaming on MGM Plus and Amazon Prime.

SHOW RUNDOWN:

03:10 Close Focus
14:42-01:06:55 Darran Tiernan interview
01:06:58-01:39:36 Peter Deming interview
01:40:40 Short ends
01:53:43 Wrap up/Credits

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

James Laxton, ASC is the Academy Award nominated cinematographer of Moonlight. His latest project is Season 2 of Beef, the acclaimed Netflix series created by Lee Sung Jin. This season explores themes of love, class, and generational cycles.

Key Podcast Highlights:
-How James and Lee built a color palette of spring, summer, autumn, and winter that stays continuous through lighting, costume, and production design to give each couple their own visual world.
-Why shooting on the large-format ARRI 265 was a thematic decision, presenting characters as larger than life symbols of forces far bigger than themselves.
-How light and framing portray the power dynamics, from a harsh, undiffused backlit golf course confrontation to wide symmetrical frames of opulence that trap characters inside the class structures surrounding them.
-How James and Lee established a shared visual language, honoring the DNA of Season 1 while pushing the show somewhere entirely new.

Find James Laxton: http://jameslaxton.com/
Instagram: @mrjameslaxton
See Beef s. 2 on Netflix
Hear our previous episode with James Laxton on Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk: https://www.camnoir.com/ep63/

SHOW RUNDOWN:

02:09 Close Focus
14:17-55:08 James Laxton interview
55:54 Short ends
01:07:09 Wrap up/Credits

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

Krzysztof Trojnar is the cinematographer of the Netflix series, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen. It’s a genuinely unsettling horror show about a woman whose anxiety about an upcoming family wedding spirals into something far darker, with Krzysztof's camera work enhancing the feeling of dread.

Key Podcast Highlights:
-How the visual language of the show deliberately evolves across episodes, moving from Steadicam to gimbal to handheld to body rig, mirroring the protagonist's psychological deterioration in real time.
-Committing to a single lens for nearly the entire show. Krzysztof shot roughly 90% of the series on a 25mm, and he explains exactly why that choice creates presence without distortion.
-Fabricating a custom 360° body camera rig from scratch, because nothing like it existed as a rental. The rig used a Steadicam vest fitted with an industrial bearing to orbit the camera around the actress in the show's harrowing final episode.

Find Krzysztof Trojnar: https://krzysztoftrojnar.com/
Instagram @krzysztof_trojnar
See Something Very Bad is Going to Happen on Netflix
Hear our previous episode with Krzysztof Trojnar on the series Baby Reindeer: https://www.camnoir.com/ep269/

SHOW RUNDOWN:

02:17 Close Focus
13:35-58:31 Krzysztof Trojnar interview
59:14 Short ends
01:07:08 Wrap up/Credits

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social