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ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING www.postmagazine.com 17 POST SEPT/OCT 2021 Only Murders in the Building This Hulu series' look draws inspiration from classic murder mysteries BY MARC LOFTUS H ulu's Only Murders in the Building is a comedic crime drama involving three strangers — all living in the same Upper West Side apartment building — who share an obsession with true crimes. When a grisly death takes place inside their building, Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putman (Martin Short) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) employ their own investigative techniques to find the truth, and at the same time, record a podcast to document their findings. The 10-episode series premiered on August 31st, with new episodes roll- ing out each Tuesday. Nat Jencks of PostWorks, New York (postworks. com), served as colorist for the series, working with long-time collaborator Chris Teague, who shot the show. "We've been working together for probably over a decade — countless feature films and TV shows together — including a (Netflix) series called Russian Doll, which Chris won the Emmy for 'Cinematography' for," says Jencks. "I love working with Chris. We share a lot of aesthetic values. One of the things that I think is really interesting about Chris's work is, he works on a really wide variety of genres, but in his comedy work, he takes a much more naturalistic approach — a more sophisticated approach — than is often done…Russian Doll exem- plified that quite well. Only Murders in the Building is a totally-different aesthetic than Russian Doll, but it's similar and in the sense that it's a lot more interesting visually than your typical comedy fare." For Only Murders in the Building, Jencks says that he and Teague took a lot of visual cues from older murder mysteries and film noir. "When Chris and I started talking about the look of the show, Chris shared stills with me from films like (Alfred Hitchcock's) Rear Window. We don't actually want it to look exactly like Rear Window. It's not meant to be those films, because it's a modern show and it has a totally different way of shooting it. So rather than trying to exactly emulate that, it's sort of trying to be in the same room as it, and sort of reference a lot of those visual ideas." Jencks worked to develop a look early on, noting the film stocks used at the time films like Rear Window (1954) were made. "Those films were shot right at the dawn of Sony's Venice was the show's primary camera.