With great lighting comes great visibility. In the case of Prime Video’s Spider-Noir, set in the shadowy and sultry world of New York City during the Great Depression, the blend of filming in traditional hardboiled detective black and white and more modern-day color was of the utmost importance.
Showrunner and executive producer Oren Uziel along with cinematographer Darran Tiernan took inspiration from classic films The Night of the Hunter, The Third Man and The Killing to bring that touch of noir to life. “[Initially] we talked a lot about light for the black-and-white viewing. And hard lighting that we don’t see that often right now [in films],” Uziel told Deadline in an interview for the craft series The Process.
“We certainly don’t,” Tiernan added. “And I think in the last 20 years, LED technology has turned up. So therefore, it’s giving people a huge amount of control. But there’s always been a tendency to use soft light and direct soft light. So, for me, I had to kind of reverse engineer my brain and go back to the beginning.”
“I’m a big fan of the noirs of the ’40s and ’50s and a big fan of Spider-Man, and the idea of mashing them both together was incredibly exciting.” Uziel said.
At some point during the early stages of production it was decided that the series should also be filmed in color. While this gave audiences the option to choose their own adventure with their viewing experience, it presented quite the technical feat for camera operators, especially during the Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) introduction to Ben Reily (Nicolas Cage) sequence that features an alluring performance of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” For example, Cat wears an eye-catching dress complete with a golden crown of spikes and deep red lip. “Because [there’s so much] gray tonality in black and white, her lips could have come across as green.” Uziel explained.
Tiernan added: “It became apparent, as we got closer to what the recipe was going to be, that we’d have to give cameras to the [different] departments.”
“It was one camera being told two different formulas. So, we were shooting at once, but you have to be able to know how it’s going to look.” Uziel said.
The team also looked at music videos for shooting inspiration. “We treated this whole singing piece as if we were shooting a music video, but in the 1930s. I even remember Nic actually saying when we were going this take that we were tracking in on his face, he said, ‘Get ready for the love connection!’ And he gave it.”
To find out more about how the impacts of visuals and color coding on Spider-Noir, watch the video above.
