‘Sinners’ Cinematographer on Filming Jack O’Connell’s Entrance

Ryan Coogler sent his cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw the script for “Sinners” the night before he began filming Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl.”

“I read it and I was blown away, because if you don’t know anything about the script and you read something like that, it’s so unique,” ​​Arkapaw says. She responded to Coogler’s scenario by sending him a lengthy email. “I just shared all my thoughts on how it made me feel, the visuals that stood out, and what I liked about it.”

Set in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow era, “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan as identical twins Smoke and Stack, who return to town after encountering the Chicago mob. The twins mobilize the local community to help build a juke joint. However, when the sun sets, vampires appear and wreak havoc on the town and the juke’s opening night.

Arkapaw made history when she became the first cinematographer to shoot 65mm film in IMAX.

But this decision was made during the testing process. Coogler had previously used the Super 16 format while filming “Fruitvale Station,” a format he wanted to return to. Sitting down for Variety’s Inside the Frame, Arkapaw said: “It started to progress as we had more conversations with the visual effects supervisor. Because of the twin aspect in the film, the 35mm format had a more stable gate and was more user-friendly for the type of work we needed to do. So we started thinking about the film in 35mm. And then Ryan got a call from the studio him asking if we had talked about large format, and that prompted him to open his film. think about it.

The two traveled to the desert near Lancaster, California, and tested the 35mm and 65mm IMAX formats, with Coogler showing a keen interest in emphasizing the landscape – an idea inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” which was shot on 65mm film with the Ultra Panavision 70mm. “We screened these tests at FotoKem and at IMAX headquarters. Once you see what you’ve created, you can’t unsee that content.”

One of the vampires, Remmick, is played by Jack O’Connell. In the film, he appears almost halfway through the film, falling into frame with a farm in the distance while birds circle above him. Arkapaw says it was one of his favorite scenes, revealing that Coogler’s script actually opened with the sequence. “I remember when I read it, I was blown away, because I was like, ‘Where did he come up with this thing?’ He’s very good at writing things that jump off the page and excite people. And that comes from his love of cinema and theater. You watch “Jaws” or “The Dark Knight,” and you have these scenes that wrap their arms around you, and you feel like you’re part of the scene. And that’s how he wrote that scene.

Arkapaw says Coogler discussed the scene with editor Michael Shawver and ended up putting it lower in the timeline. “It was one of my favorite scenes, and it read like a Western. I was very excited to shoot it, and I could see it in my head as I read it. It’s Remmick’s entrance into the movie, trying to get close to this desolate farm where he meets these two farmers. He’s trying to get into the house and take cover because he claims he’s being chased by Choctaw Indians.”

The key to the scene was getting this entrance right. Coogler wanted it to be grand. Arkapaw says, “It was important to Ryan that you give a hint that he can fly. Jack jumped out of the box, and we did that a few times to get it right because Ryan wanted it to look a certain way. You’re close to the camera, and it just hints that maybe he flies, that he has supernatural powers. Later, obviously, in the scene, you see that he’s a vampire because you meet him again in the back room of the hall. nursery. »

Another aspect of the scene was to compare it to the magic hour when the sun sets. It was important to see the sun break through the horizon and understand what that meant for the narrative. Arkapaw had two days to shoot the sequence. She says: “We shot it for a day and then went back to finish some work, which gave us more time to film it in camera. »

It hasn’t all been easy. The shots with the Choctaw watching the sun set were all filmed in camera. “The IMAX camera jammed right before we were going to film this shot of him looking at the sun on the horse. You see over his shoulder the sun setting. But we were able to fix the jam, and we literally rode right before it set.”

As for her historic shoot, Arkapaw says she wanted the format to sing, and this was a great example of what it did. “We had cameras on cranes, and there are a lot of animated shots like in an old western, where you can follow the horses. It’s a beautiful scene.”