Maxance Vincent
Spider-Noir is an interesting show that functions at the crossroads between a Noir-inspired detective thriller and a superhero series. It allowed cinematographers Darran Tiernan and Peter Deming to play with form and experiment with both genre conventions. This proposition initially excited Deming, who spoke to Awards Radar with Tiernan during a Zoom press day:
“Black-and-white film noir, who’s not on board? Once I saw some of the dailies and the stills, I was so energized, especially because of the look that Darran and [colorist] Pankaj Bajpai came up with in prep. They went for it. You’re basically lighting your way out of a dark room, and you would see things that if you didn’t light them, wouldn’t be there. In talking to Oren Uziel, he said, “Just go for it. I know you guys like motivated light, but I don’t really care. Just make it look cool.” We’re motivated artists, so we start with the motivated light, and a lot of times that’s where it came from, but there were no handcuffs. You could do whatever you wanted with lighting, Dutch angles, split diopters. We embraced all of it, and it was just a blast.”
For Darran Tiernan, this mashup of genre initially came from showrunner Oren Uziel, “who’s probably one of the best collaborators I’ve ever worked with. His love and knowledge of film noir is unmatched. We had such a rich body of work over a long period of time to look at and be inspired by, and to jump off from in places, depending on what scenes we were shooting. I think one of the first things he told me was that it’s the detective story first and a superhero story second. You’re kind of mashing up two worlds, so as much as it would have the aesthetics of film noir, it also had to have that comic book energy.”
Listen to the full conversation below:
[Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity]
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