Noah Chamis, ICLS Illuminates “Only Murders in the Building” with Astera

New York gaffer Noah Chamis, ICLS (You Deserve Each Other, The Half of It, Project Runway) practices a mix of technical precision and creative play in his lighting, a combination that positively shines throughout Hulu’s season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. Part of the series’ unique flamboyancy comes from its evolving ‘look,’ which changes season-to-season to suit the tenor of its major mystery. For season 5’s ‘mob-inspired’ storyline, Chamis, along with director of photography Kyle Wullschleger, set out to craft a vibrant visual language while building on the series’ foundational look. With this new avenue for experimentation, the gaffer turned to LunaBulbs and HydraPanels for flexible, camera-friendly lighting that keeps pace with the fast-moving mystery mayhem.

“It’s a unicorn job,” Chamis says. “Everyone on Only Murders is very friendly, everyone is laughing all the time, the days are relatively short, and we never work overnights. It’s just joyful.” Shot on stage at Cine Magic Studios Studios, the show is meticulously orchestrated, including the carefully designed set pieces, from the Arconia’s three main apartments to season 5’s underground gambling den. Starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, with a rotating roster of celebrity guest stars, the show is a charming modern satire of murder mystery and true crime genres.

It’s an environment that fosters and rewards creativity. “I always encourage my crew—what fun things can we build? What kind of whiz-bangs or gadgets can we come up with?” the gaffer says. “Even if something doesn’t make it into the final shot, it’s worth trying.” Of Chamis’ favorite ‘whiz-bangs,’ the easily maneuvered, wireless Astera Titan Tubes, Helios Tubes and LunaBulbs stand out in helping shape the world of Only Murders.

The old Arconia–the titular ‘Building’–is a character unto itself and the rich set piece is integral to many murder-mystery hijinks. Season 5 introduces new depths in the form of a hidden basement where New York mobsters run a gambling den. Inspired by New York’s Grand Central Oyster Bar, production designer Patrick Howe created a room of vaulted ceilings lined with hundreds of exposed bulbs. For Chamis, this striking aesthetic came with a big lighting challenge.

“This is a room that has hundreds of bare light bulbs in it,” he describes. “I have to think about managing intensity, color, contrast, shadows, the actors moving, the boom moving, and multiple cameras! All those alarm bells go off in your head.” Using incandescent bulbs would be a nightmare because they suffer from color shift when adjusting intensity. Chamis opted for Astera LunaBulbs.

The lightbulb lookalike LEDs are designed with Astera’s Titan LED Engine color science, to offer precise wireless control over intensity and color while rendering flicker-free illumination. Taking advantage of the covert shape and ability to screw directly into AC-wired bulb sockets, Chamis and his team implemented 178 bulbs throughout the set.

“If I used traditional household bulbs, we’d be dimming them down and everything would start going orange. But with the Lunas, I could bring everything down together without worrying about color shift. That was huge,” Chamis says. “There are also a lot of Steadicam shots that track through the space. We’re always worrying about camera shadows, boom shadows. Being able to cue bulbs on and off as people move through the room, without any color change, was incredibly liberating.”

It wasn’t only during the shoots that the lights played a part–behind the scenes, the LunaBulbs were the life of the party. “My programmer Alex Crowe had a ‘party mode’ button,” Chamis laughs. “We’d turn it on for people’s birthdays, Friday night wrap games, even the wrap party itself in the casino set. It was just fun. Every Astera product is unbelievably versatile.”

A key location of several big ‘a hah!’ moments is a mobster-owned dry cleaners shop located above the gambling den, at street level alongside the Arconia. The set features dated industrial fluorescent fixtures. To integrate a controllable subtle seediness Chamis rigged Astera Titan Tubes with magnet-mounts inside fluorescent housings.

“Whenever I see a tube fixture, I start thinking about what Astera product can fit in there,” he admits. “Anytime there’s fluorescent lighting, it’s Titans, Helios, or Hyperions for me.” Comprised of 8 pixels which can be individually colored, flashed and programmed from the AsteraApp, the baton-shaped LED lights offer highly controllable alternative to gas tubes.

“It’s a dry cleaners owned by the mob, it’s not supposed to be clean and pretty. With the Astera Tubes we can futz with the look and add grunge or green,” Chamis describes. “There’s a POV shot looking up at Steve Martin and directly above him there’s all these Titans dressed as fluorescents. You’d never know it wasn’t the original bulbs.” It’s a picture-perfect portrait of a NYC laundry mat. “If I’m doing my job right the lights should blend in–and look beautiful–but you will never question what you’re looking at.”

The best lighting like the perfect crime disappears into its surroundings. The kind of cunning illumination only possible on a stage abounds in Only Murders, where every decision is the product of careful calculation. Astera fixtures are embedded in Chamis’ workflow and the close combat of lighting on set. “Outside the windows, we might have big tungsten lights, HMIs, moving heads,” he says. “But close in, it’s tubes, HydraPanels, PixelBricks—small whiz-bangs we can grab quickly.”

It’s in the everyday details that the Arconia apartments really come to life. “Every refrigerator has a HydraPanel in it.” The electricians place one or two panels into the appliance, going so far as to wiring them into the original door-activated switch. “Then when the door opens, you get that realistic glow.”

The Arconia set is a historic building, with unique accents particular to the turn of the century. That includes candelabras and other niche lighting fixtures with no ready-made film equivalent. But Chamis is far from discouraged. “I have a wonderful friend Devin Hollinger who is a 3D printing wizard,” the gaffer explains. Using 3D printing techniques and his lighting know-how, Hollinger can create an envelope in any almost any shape to fit over a LunaBulb LED.

Such custom adaptations allowed Chamis to place LunaBulbs in practical fixtures that normally wouldn’t have worked with LED solutions. “I was able to put Lunas in places I couldn’t use NYX bulbs before,” he says. “They’re small enough, they look right, and I still have full color control.” With no accessories (in ‘slim mode’) the Luna is a tiny 1.06” x 1.06” x 3.6” allowing it to fit inside, for instance, a custom torpedo candelabra shell. “You can modify them however you want and even if someone looks directly at them, they’d never know it wasn’t the original bulb!”

The easy flexibility of Astera has made them a constant in Chamis’ toolbox for the fast-paced, multi-camera comedy. “It’s always two cameras, sometimes three,” Chamis explains. “We’re not turning around and re-lighting. Actors are blocking everywhere; Steadicams are moving through the set constantly. Having lights that are fast, reliable, and controllable is everything.”

Season 5 of Only Murders in the Building is available to watch now on Disney+ and Hulu.