The Cinematography Podcast

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

Lawrence Sher, ASC, is the cinematographer of Apex, the action thriller currently sitting at number one on Netflix. Apex stars Charlize Theron as a woman hunted through the Australian wilderness by a relentless pursuer, and it's one of the most visceral and visually grounded survival thrillers in recent memory. The entire film was shot on location in the Blue Mountains of Australia.

Key Podcast Highlights:

-How the extreme remoteness of the locations forced a documentary-inspired toolkit, including the Sony Venice bodies packed into backpacks, lightweight lenses, very few lights and a skilled drone pilot.
-Building a visual philosophy around what you can't control. Lawrence embraced shifting sunlight, unpredictable weather, and inaccessible terrain as creative assets rather than obstacles.
-Using a "documentary grammar" framework to justify camera angles and movement, drawing on the visual language of climbing films like Free Solo and The Alpinist.
-How streaming has changed a cinematographer's relationship to their work. Lawrence sees Netflix's democratizing reach as a genuine second chance for films that deserve a wider audience.

Find Lawrence Sher: Instagram @lawrencesherdp
See APEX on Netflix
Check out Shotdeck: https://shotdeck.com/
Hear our previous episodes with Lawrence Sher:
https://www.camnoir.com/ep350/
https://www.camnoir.com/ep293/
https://www.camnoir.com/ep56/

SHOW RUNDOWN:

02:32 Close Focus
13:01-56:48 Lawrence Sher interview
57:13 Short ends
01:07:44 Wrap up/Credits

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