For Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending vampire film, “Sinners,” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot 65mm on steroids in both IMAX and Ultra Panavision 70. Durald Arkapaw is now the first female DP able to embrace shooting 15-perf IMAX 65mm — with hopefully many more to come. The film was also the first pairing of IMAX with the anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 on the same film.
The result is one of extreme, almost heady disparity in aspect ratios (1.43:1 for IMAX 65mm and 2.76:1 for Ultra Panavision 70) that allow the film to emphasize both its period trappings and supernatural atmosphere. Yet Coogler didn’t originally conceive of “Sinners” in large format. The director first thought of the film as being a good fit for 16mm.
“Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack, who flee Al Capone’s Chicago to open up a juke joint back home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. As Coogler and Durald Arkapaw began to reckon with both the blues and the horror of the story, they realized “Sinners’” otherworldly take on the Jim Crow South and the macabre impact of the blues as “the devil’s music” demanded the larger expanse of 65mm.
“I read the script and I was just blown away,” Durald Arkapaw told IndieWire. “The visuals just jumped off the page, and I could already see in my head how layered and textured the light would be for the scenes that he wrote. And then when we started talking more in early prep, the conversation of large format came up. And so it elevated everything I had read because it was already so visual. And so we were very excited by exploring 65mm.”
They went to FotoKem and looked at 70mm prints of “2001: A Space” and “The Hateful Eight,” the Quentin Tarantino Western that revived the seldom-used Ultra Panavision 70 after nearly 50 years (best exemplified by “Ben-Hur”).
Then they shot Ultra Panavision test footage in the Lancaster desert. “Ryan brought up Ultra Panavision because he was really interested in the kind of flat horizon of the Mississippi landscape and being able to see that,” said Durald Arkapaw, who first worked with the director on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” “And how far people would travel to meet up, and workers in the cotton fields, and the kind of weight of the sky and the texture of the ground.”
They shot IMAX test footage as well, which blew them away. “I don’t see this story in any other format now that we’ve shot it,” she continued. “Ryan’s friends with Chris [Nolan], and I had a conversation with his cinematographer, Hoyte [van Hoytema]. He was very encouraging about taking [IMAX] and using it to the best of your ability and not feeling encumbered by it.”
Durald Arkapaw, who’s been a film lover since her college days at the AFI, was thrilled to be creating big visuals in large format. Plus, she shoots a lot in anamorphic (her favorite film is “There Will Be Blood,” which served as a major inspiration).
“I always take care to make it feel grounded and realistic, because it’s very important to Ryan that we’re building real worlds with real characters that have depth,” Durald Arkapaw said. “And then the horror aspect of it all was important, too. ‘The Thing’ is one of his favorite films that was also shot anamorphic. It has a lot of tension and tight spaces and darkness and mood. And so, for me, it’s like trying to build that contrast into the negative.”
During prep, Coogler sent Durald Arkapaw some photographs from the Farm Security Administration that production designer Hannah Beachler shared with him. “These were from around 1935 and were shot on Kodachrome slide film and had this beautiful color saturation and depth to the image, depth to the blacks, to the shadows,” she said. “So those were a big inspiration and reference for us, making sure that all skin tones have this depth and look beautiful.”
Kodak provided 65mm 5219 and 65mm Ektachrome film stocks. The latter was a large format first to capture workers jumping off a truck and walking toward the camera for some joyous portraiture-like shots.
In terms of cameras, Durald Arkapaw chose the IMAX MSM 9802 and MKIV Reflex, along with the Panavision System 65 Studio. These were accompanied by the following lenses: Panavision IMAX (50mm and 80mm) and Panavision Ultra Panatar 1.3x anamorphic. In addition, Dan Sasaki, Panavision’s vice president of optical engineering, made a bespoke 80mm Petzval lens with an aggressive field curvature, which increased de-focus toward the edges of the frame. This was used for a phantasmagorical scene toward the end of the film.
The director and cinematographer crucially explored during prep what could and couldn’t be shot in IMAX because it’s such a noisy camera for dialogue scenes. They wound up devoting nearly 30 minutes to IMAX. Of course, the bravura vampire fights inside and outside the juke were in IMAX. But so were several emotional moments, too.
“The IMAX sequences are used as a candid look into the characters,” Durald Arkapaw said. “The 2.76 anamorphic frame feels so cinematic. You’re watching a movie through the most beautiful of lenses, and then when you step into the IMAX world, it almost feels like a look behind the curtain and into the soul of the character. This pulls you deeper in, and it becomes an experience. This ebb and flow in formats is very immersive and engaging.”
In fact, Coogler switched one of two opening scenes inside a church used as a framing device from Ultra Panavision to IMAX because its soul-searching intensity was better suited for the format. “Sinners” begins with a horribly shaken Sammie (newcomer Miles Canton) entering his pastor father’s church service in Clarksville with his broken guitar. The movie then flashes back to reveal the unworldly events of the day before.
“We had shot the opening of the church scene in Ultra Panavision when [Sammie] goes inside in the morning to find his guitar and meets his father,” Durald Arkapaw said. “And when he returns to the church, Ryan decided he wanted to shoot that IMAX. It was not prepped as IMAX, and then we changed systems. I find that really lovely ’cause it allows you to see that space and have a different emotional relationship with it ’cause it’s shot two ways.”
But the movie’s extraordinary highlight in IMAX is a surreal musical scene inside the juke that occurs when Sammie makes his electrifying debut with the blues song, “I Lied to You” (from composer Ludwig Göransson and Grammy-winning songwriter Rafael Sadik). He’s suddenly joined by an array of multicultural musicians and dancers from the past and future and together they perform Göransson’s “Magic What We Do (Surreal Montage).”
The live performance was shot in a single day as a oner using the 80-pound IMAX camera on a steadicam, which winds its way around the juke in two sections. The performance is so explosive, in fact, that it sets the roof on fire and blows it away. For that, the camera tilts up for a VFX takeover of the actual burning roof, which they shot a plate for on the last day of filming. Then it transitions into a 50-foot Technocrane pull out for an exterior night shot in another location with the vampires.
For Durald Arkapaw, it was quite the challenge in IMAX, requiring prep, previs, and rehearsal to work out the precise camera moves. Framing and focus were key in getting all the performers in the shot, who are seen very briefly. But one of the many benefits of the large format was showing off the colors and textures of designer Ruth Carter’s elaborate costuming in such vivid detail.
“It was a beautiful scene that Ryan wrote, and it had many layers to it,” Durald Arkapaw said. “And it grew to something bigger when we shot it. Everyone was very inspired by it ’cause it had so much meaning. Ryan is so specific about representing different cultures. It’s very important to him. It’s all departments working together on a very high level. All of these cultures woven together.”
Yet “Sinners” needs to be seen in IMAX 70mm at one of 10 select locations to enjoy the full frame experience of 1.43:1.
“The IMAX frame is so different,” said Durald Arkapaw, “because your eye needs to be able to scan the image, whereas traditional films allow you to see the image without moving your eyes across the screen. This is why my love for widescreen photography, along with center weighted framing, lends itself to these two formats so well. The guidelines for how to frame can stay consistent across both formats. This allows for the two formats to stand out as different, but a stylistic through line can be achieved to tie both worlds together.”
