With “Spider-Noir,” starring Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, the web-slinging, crime-fighting private eye in ’30s New York, we get two vintage-looking options: a high-contrast, shadowy, black-and-white version, and a Technicolor-esque alternative (“True-Hue”) that pops in primary colors.
Which you’re watching definitely shapes your view of the strange world that the hard-boiled Reilly inhabits, where noir and sci-fi converge with gangsters and other mutant “Supers” (including Jack Huston’s Flint Marko/Sandman).
MGM+/Prime Video’s eight-episode series was inspired by both the Marvel comic “Spider-Man Noir” and the monochromatic version of the character voiced by Cage in Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s animated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” (They executive produced “Spider-Noir.”)
“This was enormously challenging, but once the task was laid out in front of us, everybody rose to the occasion of trying to figure out just how to do this, because it hadn’t been done before. Things have been converted after the fact,” said co-showrunner Oren Uziel, a noir specialist who previously served as a writer on Lord and Miller’s “22 Jump Street.” He developed the series with superhero expert Steve Lightfoot of Marvel’s “The Punisher.”
The initial plan was to shoot only in black and white to capture the iconic Expressionistic look. But when the additional request for color came during prep, a new visual strategy and workflow were devised to accommodate both formats simultaneously.
“The question of whether or not the technology allowed us to do that was unknown when we first started,” Uziel explained. “There’s lots of programs for steering the information for what it’s going to look like, but it was challenging to find the right palette that would make the color of the lipstick or the walls look good in both formats. But I didn’t want a color palette that was standard. It had to have its own value and tell a version of the story that would be just as interesting.”
Nicolas Cage, in black-and-white and color, in “Spider-Noir.” (Aaron Epstein / Prime)
While they shot in black and white on set with a digital camera and customized image mapping, the conversion was done in parallel: colorizing the monochrome footage with different mapping and fine-tuning.
Final corrections were done in post by cinematographer Darran Tiernan (“The Penguin”) and senior digital intermediate colorist Pankaj Bajpai. Tiernan shot six of the eight episodes, and cinematographer Peter Deming — a longtime David Lynch collaborator (“Mulholland Drive”) — pitched in for the trippier Episodes 5 and 6, which reveal Reilly’s Spidey backstory.
For Tiernan, the black-and-white prep showed off the versatility of noir in John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon,” Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” and Orson Welles’ “The Lady From Shanghai,” which served as a model for replicating the look of the film stock.
However, Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel,” a cultish detour, was a surprise revelation.“That had a deep impact on me,” Tiernan said. “One of the things that it did, which was kind of new, was how Preminger moved the camera. It felt contemporary. He’d move the camera eight or nine times in the diner to give you a beautiful new frame of two or three characters speaking.”
For color, Tiernan referenced early hand-tinting of black and white, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpiece “The Red Shoes” and Alfred Hitchcock’s dreamlike “Vertigo,” which was his touchstone.
“We just wanted to have as much wow as the black and white [aided by vintage lenses and period lighting],” Tiernan added. But he found each experience different: The monochrome was mysterious and dangerous, while the color was glamorous and romantic.
“ In contemporary cinematography … hard light isn’t used as much, and we found that this was all part of the process of getting the recipe together,” Tiernan explained. But one of the hardest adjustments was embracing unmotivated light, which was a staple of noir’s heightened atmospherics.
Li Jun Li, in black-and-white and color, in “Spider-Noir.” (Aaron Epstein / Prime)
Among the most striking sequences is an interlude in Episode 1 where nightclub singer/femme fatale Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) performs “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” She’s seductive in both formats, especially with the moving lights, but her gold spike headband and gold dress are eye-opening in color.
“The whole point is Ben Reilly gets captivated by her, and this is the lock in,” suggested Tiernan. “Also, in the second part of the song, she floats away from the stage and the camera brings her over all the tables. This is meant to psychologically tell you how he’s feeling.”
Deming, who arrived after shooting began, swung into action quickly to get up to speed for his two episodes. “The black and white was especially aggressive, which you really needed to pull off this vintage look,” he said. “But even the color was not ordinary.”
For Episode 6, Deming made great use of a small lab set, where Reilly wrestles with emotional demons after being drugged. This is where the monochromatic lighting turns especially atmospheric. Deming goes old school to distort Reilly’s focus and bombard him with harsh spotlights. “These were tricks that I was very familiar with,” he added.
Uziel hopes this will stop modern viewers in their tracks. “If you’re coming to the show by way of ‘Spider-Man’ and the comics, black and white might open you up to a new aesthetic,” he said. “And if you’re a noir fan who pops on the color, you might enjoy a comic book aesthetic that you’re not familiar with.”