The Cinematography Podcast Episode 372: Brett Pawlak When Brett Pawlak walked into prep for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he wasn’t chasing a bigger, shinier version of the superhero aesthetic, but a simpler, pared down character tale. “For me, what I approach anything with is just the story,” Pawlak says. “You inherit everything that Spider-Man brings anyway. So the best thing I could do was really look at the script, look at the story, and just support that as much as possible. The Spider-Man part is kind of taken care of, to be honest. All I have to do is support
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 372: Brett Pawlak When Brett Pawlak walked into
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 371: John Matysiak Director Potsy Ponciroli and cinematographer John Matysiak had previously worked together on the 2021 indie Western, Old Henry. However, when Ponciroli first handed Matysiak the script for Motor City, it was a much different story. The 1970’s-set crime drama read less like a screenplay and more like a novel. “When Potsy first shared the script with me, it was 90 pages of prose,” says Matysiak. “It was this action-heavy, descriptive telling of this world, this underbelly world of Detroit. So it was always this idea of, ‘Hey, read this script- there’s no dialogue,
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 371: John Matysiak Director Potsy Ponciroli and cinematographer
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 370: Julia Swain The charming romantic comedy Voicemails for Isabelle reunited cinematographer Julia Swain with director Leah McKendrick, and gave Swain the opportunity to film in a genre she hadn’t tried before. The two had made the 2023 indie feature Scrambled together on a much smaller budget. This time, they had leveled up to a Netflix and Sony co-production, with a $30 million budget. Even with a bigger budget, time was short. They shot the film in just 33 days in Vancouver with two days in San Francisco. “There’s obviously things you have to adapt to on
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 370: Julia Swain The charming romantic comedy Voicemails
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 369: Michael Bauman, ASC Fresh off of shooting One Battle After Another, cinematographer Michael Bauman, ASC began work on Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story. He and director Max Winkler built a show that had to convincingly move between the 1940s, Hitchcock-era Hollywood, 1970s grindhouse horror, and the 1980s true-crime cases Ed Gein’s story went on to influence. “One of the things that we talked about was the differences in light from Ed Gein’s world into the Hitchcock world, and the use of sun and hard light versus soft light. And so it was just trying
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 369: Michael Bauman, ASC Fresh off of shooting
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 368: Gustav Danielsson, FSF Instead of leading with grand, sweeping Game of Thrones melodrama, HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a bit more of a buddy comedy, with plenty of action and drama. At first, cinematographer Gustav Danielsson, FSF was concerned about how to hook an audience with a smaller character drama set in the Game of Thrones universe. “It starts out very slow. There’s not a lot of drama. That was a little bit of a worry for me and for the director,” Danielsson says. “How do we capture the audience in this
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 368: Gustav Danielsson, FSF Instead of leading with
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 367: Cinematographer Matt Ball Emmy-nominated cinematographer Matt Ball has returned to the show to talk about Season 2 of Tucci in Italy. Shot over roughly seven months between January and July 2024, Season 1 and 2 were filmed concurrently. Hosted by actor Stanley Tucci, Tucci in Italy takes a different approach to travel and food, primarily exploring what can be found off the beaten path, rather than the heavily touristed areas. Season 2 features Italy’s islands and edges: Sardinia, Sicily, Verona, Naples, Campania, and Le Marche, a region popular with Italians but largely unknown to American or
The Cinematography Podcast Episode 367: Cinematographer Matt Ball Emmy-nominated cinematographer Matt Ball