Spider-Noir, Amazon's Nicolas Cage vehicle, comes in two distinct varieties: moody noir and lush color. The key to pulling off the show's distinctive looks was using dual LUTS and returning to the pre-LED era of lighting tools.
How do you make a show that is both exquisite homage to classic 1940s noir simultaneously with one that feels as visually lush in classic Hollywood color? The cinematographers behind Amazon Prime series Spider-Noir have managed it by leaning into old-fashioned lighting designs and vintage tools.
“Spider-Noir was about completely embracing the look and technology, frankly, of film noir when it was created,” explains Peter Deming, the veteran DP who lensed David Lynch’s neo-noirs Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. “A lot of the lighting units we're using were very traditional lighting that I started my career with in the business that have now sort of taken a back seat to LED lights.”
Rather than relying heavily on modern fixtures, the cinematographers dusted off older equipment, including Mole-Richardson units, Fresnels and other vintage hard-light sources. The result is a dramatic visual black and white style built on deep contrast and sculpted shadows.
“Lost Highway is noir-ish, but it’s modern. It’s not a hard-light film,” says Deming, who shot episodes 5 & 6 of Spider-Noir. “Here we’re using hard light, and lighting faces with hard light with a precision and edge that only those sources can produce.
“It was terrifying at first to light faces with hard light again, but then you get the hang of it.”
“LED technology certainly gives you a lot of control and has become the mainstay of modern production, but it also sort of pushes you towards softer light,” he says. “It was clear to me that we needed to go back to using older fixtures and rewire my brain accordingly.”
The series was originally conceived to be shot and streamed solely in black-and-white. However, on the first day that Tiernan joined pre-production he and the rest of the creative team were asked whether a full color version was also possible.
“There was a request for a color version,” recalls Tiernan of a meeting with showrunner Oren Uziel. “It had to be one that we were really happy with and that meant one that could exist without compromising the noir foundation.”
This triggered an extensive period of testing with colorist Pankaj Bajpai, who developed two LUTs (one monochrome, one color) applied to the RAW Venice 2 negative.
Dozens of stills from BW classics like Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Sunset Boulevard, The Killing and The Night of the Hunter were pinned to production office walls alongside early noir-themed color films like Niagara.
“Once we discovered the recipe, everyone was moving in the same direction,” Tiernan says. “We would monitor in black and white, except for focus pullers who required color. Even before we'd do a take, I'd be flicking between them to see. Within a few days, you get very used to that because this is the way we are creating this world."
Tiernan describes the process as “a constant collaboration, where color had to be exciting but could never infringe on how good the black-and-white looked. We never went into a day of shooting not understanding what something could look like.”
The show’s graphic novel origins were equally influential. Spider-Man: Noir first appeared in 2009, as part of the Marvel Noir universe. Tiernan studied the original issues and cites executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s SpiderVerse animated film series as a major touchstone. “The angles they chose and the energy in the action sequences were really inspiring,” he said.
He also looked to the stark framing of Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter a 2009 graphic novel based on the fiction by Donald Westlake about a professional thief (which John Boorman translated to screen in 1967 as Point Blank).
Working with storyboard artist Jay Martin, they translated these influences into compositions and lighting designs which Tiernan describes as a hybrid between film noir, comic-book and pulp fiction.
The color version itself evolved into “a heightened, Technicolor-inspired” interpretation of the noir world. Influences ranged from early color photography books such as The Colours of Life (a book of colorised BW early 20th century stills) and noir cinematographer John Alton’s Painting with Light from 1948 to the bold psychological palette of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Rather than competing with the gritty monochrome presentation, the saturated color grade was designed to complement it.
Beginning to grade his episodes, Deming was surprised to learn that Bajpai had barely touched the first pass. “That’s a testament to Kevin Britton, our DIT, who kept such a great eye on the look and would re-time things within the day so they matched.”
Neither cinematographer altered their creative approach, regardless of which version would ultimately be viewed. “You’re lighting based on the content of the scene,” says Deming. “You’re going for a noir look, and those aspects are in the color version as well. You’re just shooting the best way to tell the story.”
Yet audiences consistently report different emotional responses. “People say the black-and-white feels darker, more dramatic, and they’re probably right, despite both editions using identical performances and compositions,” Tiernan remarks.
“Film noir cinematography is really about the psychology of what’s going on, telling the story in a visual and graphic sense. Being allowed to do that is exciting for any cinematographer.”