The Cinematography Podcast Episode 364: Christian Sprenger, ASC Christian Sprenger, ASC and producer/director Hiro Murai first met right out of film school on a commercial. The two have spent the last 11 years collaborating on Atlanta, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and now Apple TV+’s breakout hit, Widow’s Bay. While working with actor Donald Glover on Atlanta, the trio decided to just make something that they thought was good, no matter what the network had to say. Sprenger says that freedom carries forward into all of their projects. “The language that we started building, and that we’ve continued building on Mr.
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 364: Christian Sprenger, ASC Christian Sprenger, ASC and
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 363: Peter Konczal, ASC When cinematographer Peter Konczal, ASC began production on Netflix’s Black Rabbit, the goal was to make something gritty and intense. “It was never meant to really be a pretty show,” Konczal says. “It was always meant to feel more raw.” That rawness, though, was the product of an extremely deliberate and hands-on toolkit that he lead DP Igor Martinović built together. They started with a custom LUT: low contrast, with a deliberately soft toe. The production’s lenses were detuned, and Martinović smoked the glass filters over candle flame. The crew nicknamed the
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 363: Peter Konczal, ASC When cinematographer Peter Konczal,
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 362: James Whitaker, ASC When he was researching the look for DTF St. Louis, cinematographer James Whitaker, ASC found a striking image while scrolling Instagram. “I came across an image of Sharon Tate from 1968 sitting at a cafe in Paris,” Whitaker says. “It just had this beautiful quality to it. Really strong blacks. You could tell it was shot on slide film. It had sort of a warm skin tone.” The photograph, along with suburban street photography, became the visual inspiration for the entire series about male friendship, loneliness, and a murder mystery in the
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 362: James Whitaker, ASC When he was researching
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 361: Richard Rutkowski, ASC Cinematographer Richard Rutkowski, ASC has spent decades lensing visually distinctive shows such as The Americans, Jack Ryan, and Masters of the Air. His latest project, AMC+’s The Audacity, presented a different kind of challenge: a sharp, character-driven drama about billionaire tech culture. Shot almost entirely in Vancouver, the show needed to feel unmistakably like Palo Alto. “We worked really hard to get Vancouver out of the frame,” Rutkowski says. The solution was part location strategy, part lighting philosophy. Stages were lit to suggest bright California sun outside and darker interiors within. A
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 361: Richard Rutkowski, ASC Cinematographer Richard Rutkowski, ASC
The Cinematography Podcast Bonus Episode: Peter Deming Peter Deming, ASC discusses his early career, shooting Evil Dead 2 with director Sam Raimi, and working with director David Lynch on Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks: The Return. Deming’s first feature was Hollywood Shuffle with director Robert Townsend, which took months to make as Townsend had to keep raising money for the film. Evil Dead 2 also took several weeks to make as Sam Raimi was extremely ambitious in how he wanted it to look. Deming and Raimi both came from making homemade Super 8 films. “We both had the
The Cinematography Podcast Bonus Episode: Peter Deming Peter Deming, ASC discusses his
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 360: Darran Tiernan, ISC and Peter Deming, ASC The live-action Amazon Prime/MGM series Spider Noir starring Nicolas Cage is built around the trenchcoated, black-and-white 1930s New York incarnation of Spider-Man. He was first seen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and is based on a Marvel comic book character. Cinematographers Darren Tiernan, ISC and Peter Deming, ASC were presented with a special creative challenge with Spider Noir. How do you shoot a modern streaming series that looks, feels, and breathes like a classic film noir and make it appeal to contemporary audiences? The answer involved dusting off
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 360: Darran Tiernan, ISC and Peter Deming, ASC