March 13, 2026

2026 Academy Awards nominations with Jenelle Riley

The Cinematography Podcast 2026 Oscar Special

Jenelle Riley, three-time Emmy-winning entertainment journalist and host, chats with Ben and Illya for our SEVENTH annual Oscar nominations special. With a focus on cinematography, they discuss what they liked, what will win, what should win, and their favorite movies of the year that may not have been recognized.

They discuss this year’s nominations, including the likeliest Best Picture and Best Director contenders, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. F1 is also mentioned as an outlier for the category, although the cinematography by Claudio Miranda is excellent. This year’s new category, Achievement in Casting, is celebrated as a much needed addition. The cinematography competition is a heated one, with both Autumn Durald Arkapaw and Michael Bauman as favorites, with Bauman recently winning the ASC Award. Some of the snubs this year include one of Jenelle’s favorite movies, Life of Chuck.  Song Sung Blue also didn’t receive much awards love. Last year’s awards omitted the worthy film, Thelma. 

Also discussed: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

Find Jenelle Riley on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, X: @jenelleriley
and Substack: https://substack.com/@rileywrites74/note/p-183180534
Tune in to the SAG/AFTRA foundation YouTube Channel to see Jenelle’s interviews with several of the nominees this year. https://www.youtube.com/@SAGAFTRAFoundation

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

By Illya Friedman

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January 24, 2026

DP Michael Bauman on One Battle After Another’s improv style

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 342: Michael Bauman

Cinematographer Michael Bauman recently earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography for his work on One Battle After Another. Before becoming a cinematographer, Bauman spent years as a gaffer, working under legends like Robert Elswit, Janusz Kaminski, and the late Harris Savides. This mentorship gave him a masterclass in diverse visual languages and on-set problem-solving. After serving as a gaffer for director Paul Thomas Anderson on several projects, Bauman stepped into the DP role for the features Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza.

The decision to shoot One Battle After Another in VistaVision was Anderson’s idea. Known for his commitment to celluloid, Anderson prefers old-school techniques: watching dailies on developed negative and editing with physical film. VistaVision offered a larger negative and higher resolution than standard 35mm without the massive footprint of IMAX.

The challenge, however, was mobility. Historically used for stationary visual effects shots, the VistaVision camera is notoriously bulky. Anderson wanted the opposite: a dynamic, handheld, and Steadicam-heavy aesthetic. “The language of this entire movie is camera movement,” says Bauman. “How do you take this format—with a viewing system that comes off the top at 45 degrees—and turn it into something that can capture the story the way he wants?”

Putting an experienced team together was key for the endeavor. They had to be capable of troubleshooting in remote locations far from the safety of LA or New York hubs. Their goal wasn’t perfection, but character. “In the digital world we soak in now, it’s all about a pristine image,” Bauman notes. “Blacks are super rich, whites are super crisp. We wanted to take this ‘Kobe beef’ format and turn it into a McDonald’s hamburger—in the best way possible.”

The visual identity was further refined by referencing 1970s cinema, specifically The French Connection. Bauman studied the texture and color palettes of that era to emulate its “loose and rough” style. True to form, Anderson pushed to avoid modern LED lighting, preferring tungsten sources whenever space allowed. As a former gaffer, Bauman was happy to accommodate.

Perhaps the greatest hurdle was the improvisational nature of the production. Anderson enjoys letting the actors improvise or even reshoot later. He doesn’t use storyboards or do pre-vis, so even complex scenes had to be worked out in pre-production or on the day. “Every day was just like, you had to get comfortable with the uncomfortable,” comments Bauman. “I knew we were doing stuff in a good spot when I was really questioning all of it. We had to embrace all these happy accidents. It’s free jazz all day long. It’s exciting now, but at the time I was stressed as hell!”

This spontaneity extended to the film’s climax. The spectacular car chase wasn’t fully scripted until the location manager discovered a road with rolling hills on the Arizona border. After a week of testing the VistaVision rigs on pursuit vehicles, the crew spent seven days capturing the sequence. Although it was in the wide-open desert, the characters chased each other over the undulating terrain, which allowed enough suspense to build before the spectacular conclusion.

See One Battle After Another in theaters and streaming on HBO Max

Find Michael Bauman: Instagram @baumanlights

Check out Michael’s lighting companies, LiteGear and Lux Lighting.

Support Ben’s short film, The Ultimate Breakup! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theultimatebreakup/the-ultimate-breakup-short-film?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=the%20ultimate%20breakup&total_hits=2

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

By Illya Friedman

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January 10, 2026

Caleb Heymann: the cinematic playground of Stranger Things

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 341: Caleb Heymann

Cinematographer Caleb Heymann has been a key architect of the Stranger Things aesthetic since the tail end of Season 3. After starting as a second unit DP, Heymann was promoted to lead cinematographer for the blockbuster Season 4, and now its fifth and final season. The crew dedicated a full year to filming Season 5, spanning from January through December 2024. While the desert dreamscape was captured on location in New Mexico, the bulk of production remained in Atlanta.

Seasons 4 and 5 traverse a variety of locations, each requiring vastly different palettes. Heymann views each environment within the Stranger Things universe as a “cinematic playground.” To ground the show’s supernatural elements, the production leans heavily on location shooting and in-camera effects. “There are definitely certain anachronistic visual elements that we wanted to pay homage to,” says Heymann. “The lightning can be a little over the top. It intentionally rides that line between expressive and theatrical. But I think we try to not overdo it, because everything in front of the camera is already taking you there.”

The production constantly balanced both digital and physical effects. “We always try to push it and see what we can get in camera. The art department does an incredible job and builds us huge sets,” says Heymann. Creating the Upside Down was a monumental task for the art department, who must redress nearly every location for night shoots. The iconic vines, for instance, are physically constructed by “nether technicians.” To make the dimension’s signature hellish glow, the crew often used practical red lighting on set rather than relying solely on post-production color grading.

Heymann and the Duffer brothers selected a different camera system for each season, choosing cameras that best fit the story’s needs. For Season 5, Heymann needed a distinct visual motif to represent Will’s “trance state” and the POV of the demogorgons and demo dogs. He stacked two center-spot diopters, which blended the image while losing focus at the edges. To heighten the disorientation, the team shook the camera manually and with a camera shaker on a Technocrane.

“It was absolutely a dream experience already being a fan of the show to be able to come in and join this group of awesome people who work on it and to ultimately get to work with the Duffers,” says Heymann. “I learned a lot from them, just in their attention to detail and sensitivity to camera movement. And they’re always about pushing everybody to do their best work.”

See Stranger Things Season 5 streaming on Netflix.

Find Caleb Heymann: https://www.calebheymann.com/
Instagram @calebheymann

SHOW RUNDOWN:

01:53 Close Focus
06:45-01:00:06 Caleb Heymann interview
01:01:10 Short ends
01:08:39 Wrap up/Credits

Support Ben’s short film, The Ultimate Breakup! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theultimatebreakup/the-ultimate-breakup-short-film?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=the%20ultimate%20breakup&total_hits=2

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

By Illya Friedman

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December 2, 2024

Special Episode: A tribute to Adam Somner, Assistant Director, Producer for Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu

We were incredibly saddened by the loss of 1st Assistant Director and producer, Adam Somner. You can hear his fantastic energy, enthusiasm and entertaining storytelling as a guest on The Cinematography Podcast. Here we have re-posted his 2021 episode in memorial and tribute to his blockbuster career. He will be greatly missed.

The job of the assistant director is to work in concert with the director and the DP to get everything done on a movie set. As a 1st AD, Adam Somner is trusted by the industry’s top directors to anticipate their needs, motivate the crew, figure out the schedule, and drive the entire production forward to finish each day on time. He finds the best way to keep everything moving smoothly on set is though humor, high energy and uniting everyone as a group, persuading people to do things on the schedule and timeline needed to complete the job.

Adam’s father, Basil Somner, worked for MGM Studios in England, and through him, Adam got a job as a runner/production assistant at age 17. He began working on movies in the late ’80’s, like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Superman IV, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He worked under many assistant directors, observed how they took charge on set, and decided he was really interested in becoming an AD.

Adam has worked on eight Ridley Scott films to date, as well as several of the late Tony Scott’s films. He was first hired on a Ridley Scott film as a third assistant director on 1492: Conquest of Paradise and White Squall, then moved up to second assistant director on Gladiator, (with DP John Mathieson) where he learned how to manage a huge crew of extras and background action from the 1st AD, Terry Needham. On Black Hawk Down, Adam was promoted to first assistant director for the second unit. Black Hawk Down was shooting in Morocco, and the second unit was responsible for most of the helicopter sequences, with lots of moving parts and extras, involving real Black Hawk helicopters and real U.S. military soldiers. After Black Hawk Down, Adam got the call to begin working with Steven Spielberg on War of the Worlds, where he quickly learned to read Spielberg’s mind and keep an eye on the details. He’s worked with Spielberg on ten films now, including Munich, Lincoln, and Ready Player One.

A 1st AD is responsible for coordinating most of the background action. Adam’s ability to work on big sets with lots of action, extras and special effects led director Paul Thomas Anderson to hire him for There Will Be Blood, and Anderson has since become a personal friend. Adam finds Anderson’s on-set approach to be very thoughtful and measured. Unlike the action-heavy films Adam has worked on, he knew it was important to keep the crew and background actors quiet and subdued on Anderson’s films with heavy dialog, such as The Master and Phantom Thread.

For The Wolf of Wall Street, Adam was thrilled to work with director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto had Adam sit in during their preproduction shotlisting process, so they were all thoroughly prepared. Scorsese loves shooting scenes with complex background action, and Adam delivered. He carefully rehearsed all the extras in different stages of panic as the brokers watched the stock market crash. For the famous in-flight orgy scene, Adam wasn’t totally sure how he wanted to deal with not just one sex scene, which is hard enough, but several at once. So he decided to hire a choreographer to help rehearse and plan all the action, making sure each background player knew exactly what they were doing and taking care that everyone was comfortable with their role in front of the camera.

Adam was excited to work with Alejandro González Iñárritu on some of Birdman, and as the 1st AD on one of the may units shooting The Revenant, where Iñárritu and the DP Emmanuel Lubezki “Chivo” wanted everything shot and rehearsed during magic hour. Rehearsals were incredibly important on both Birdman and The Revenant, since Iñárritu and Chivo shot many scenes in one single shot.

Adam’s most recent project was director Steve McQueen’s Blitz, and his last film with director Paul Thomas Anderson will be out in 2025.

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com

Website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

By Illya Friedman

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June 26, 2024

Baby Reindeer cinematographer Kryzsztof Trojnar

Netflix’s Baby Reindeer is a dark comedic thriller that chronicles the true story of a struggling comedian, Donny (Richard Gadd) as he’s stalked by a seemingly harmless woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning). As her pursuit of him escalates and becomes progressively unhinged, the audience learns more about why Donny may be so passive about stopping her advances.

Cinematographer Kryzsztof Trojnar reunited with his fellow Polish film school classmate, director Weronika Tofilska, on Baby Reindeer’s first four episodes. The show’s unique origin, a one-man stage play, proved a valuable resource for Kryzsztof. He immersed himself in the audio recording alongside the script, capturing the story’s rhythm and intensity. “It was all about how we create that intensity, how we create the intrusion of Martha, how we show her overtures in that pub.” says Kryzsztof. “It all has to be really close and really intense that as an audience you feel that intrusion.”

Both Kryzsztof and Tofilska were inspired by Coen brothers movies and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, admiring their treatment of character-driven narratives. Kryzsztof made sure to keep the perspective of the story firmly in Donny’s first person point of view. Wide-angle lenses frequently frame him in the center, and the use of Steadicam shots keep up the frantic pace of Donny’s increasing unease.

Kryzsztof and Tofilska chose lighting and a color palette they jokingly called “decomposing body” for Baby Reindeer. It creates a stylized world with a LUT heavy on earth tones of yellow, brown, and green. Against those colors, naturally lit moments and other hues stand out with a jarring vibrancy. Kryzsztof also favored unflattering, hard lighting for Donny as he feels more haunted and hunted by Martha. Martha, on the other hand, is lit in a flattering way, as she admires and flirts with Donny, making him feel adored.

Find Kryzsztof Trojnar: Instagram: @krzysztof_trojnar

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras www.hotrodcameras.com

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

By Illya Friedman

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March 23, 2022

Jenelle Riley, Variety’s Deputy Awards and Features Editor, discusses the 2022 Academy Awards nominations

Long-time friend and colleague Jenelle Riley of Variety magazine chats with Ben and Illya for our third annual Oscar nominations special. They discuss what they liked, what will win, what should win, and their favorite movies of the year that may not have been recognized.

Here’s a rundown of some of the nominations discussed in this episode, as well as great films that were not nominated this awards season. Listen to our interviews with some of the nominated DPs and other noteable films of the year!

Annette
The Sparks Brothers
The Power of the Dog, Ari Wegner
Jane Campion
Zola
Dune, Greig Fraser
Denis Villeneuve
Nightmare Alley, Dan Laustsen
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Bruno Delbonnel
Westside Story, Janusz Kominski
Steven Spielberg
King Richard, Robert Elswit
Cyrano, Seamus McGarvey
Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson
Belfast, Haris Zambarloukos

Find Jenelle Riley on Instagram and Twitter: @jenelleriley and Variety: https://variety.com/

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/oscars2022/

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

By Illya Friedman

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May 19, 2021

Adam Somner, first assistant director, on Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu, movies Black Hawk Down, War of the Worlds, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant, and more

The job of the assistant director is to work in concert with the director and the DP to get everything done on a movie set. As a 1st AD, Adam Somner is trusted by the industry’s top directors to anticipate their needs, motivate the crew, figure out the schedule, and drive the entire production forward to finish each day on time. He finds the best way to keep everything moving smoothly on set is though humor, high energy and uniting everyone as a group, persuading people to do things on the schedule and timeline needed to complete the job.

Adam’s father, Basil Somner, worked for MGM Studios in England, and through him, Adam got a job as a runner/production assistant at age 17. He began working on movies in the late ’80’s, like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Superman IV, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He worked under many assistant directors, observed how they took charge on set, and decided he was really interested in becoming an AD.

Adam has worked on eight Ridley Scott films to date, as well as several of the late Tony Scott’s films. He was first hired on a Ridley Scott film as a third assistant director on 1492: Conquest of Paradise and White Squall, then moved up to second assistant director on Gladiator, where he learned how to manage a huge crew of extras and background action from the 1st AD, Terry Needham. On Black Hawk Down, Adam was promoted to first assistant director for the second unit. Black Hawk Down was shooting in Morocco, and the second unit was responsible for most of the helicopter sequences, with lots of moving parts and extras, involving real Black Hawk helicopters and real U.S. military soldiers. After Black Hawk Down, Adam got the call to begin working with Steven Spielberg on War of the Worlds, where he quickly learned to read Spielberg’s mind and keep an eye on the details. He’s worked with Spielberg on ten films now, including Munich, Lincoln, and Ready Player One.

A 1st AD is responsible for coordinating most of the background action. Adam’s ability to work on big sets with lots of action, extras and special effects led director Paul Thomas Anderson to hire him for There Will Be Blood, and Anderson has since become a personal friend. Adam finds Anderson’s on-set approach to be very thoughtful and measured. Unlike the action-heavy films Adam has worked on, he knew it was important to keep the crew and background actors quiet and subdued on Anderson’s films with heavy dialog, such as The Master and Phantom Thread.

For The Wolf of Wall Street, Adam was thrilled to work with director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto had Adam sit in during their preproduction shotlisting process, so they were all thoroughly prepared. Scorsese loves shooting scenes with complex background action, and Adam delivered. He carefully rehearsed all the extras in different stages of panic as the brokers watched the stock market crash. For the famous in-flight orgy scene, Adam wasn’t totally sure how he wanted to deal with not just one sex scene, which is hard enough, but several at once. So he decided to hire a choreographer to help rehearse and plan all the action, making sure each background player knew exactly what they were doing and taking care that everyone was comfortable with their role in front of the camera.

Adam was excited to work with Alejandro González Iñárritu on some of Birdman, and as the 1st AD on one of the may units shooting The Revenant, where Iñárritu and the DP Emmanuel Lubezki “Chivo” wanted everything shot and rehearsed during magic hour. Rehearsals were incredibly important on both Birdman and The Revenant, since Iñárritu and Chivo shot many scenes in one single shot.

Adam is currently working on Killers of the Flower Moon with director Martin Scorsese.

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/ep125/

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com
Sponsored by Aputure: https://www.aputure.com/

Website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQIhe3yjQJG72EjZJBRI1w
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

By Illya Friedman

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November 18, 2019

Mihai Mălaimare Jr.- DP of Jojo Rabbit, The Master, The Hate U Give, Youth Without Youth on working with Taika Waititi, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson

Cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr. discusses his experience of shooting three films with Francis Ford Coppola and working with Paul Thomas Anderson on The Master. For his most recent film, Jojo Rabbit, Mehai and director Taika Waititi developed a very vibrant and colorful look for the film to emphasize Jojo’s fantasy world.

By Illya Friedman

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