By Kristin Marguerite Doidge
“You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.”
That’s the haunting premise of “Sinners,” the 1930s blues-infused, supernatural genre-bending film written and directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther” and “Creed”), starring Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers who return to their Mississippi hometown seeking a fresh start, only to discover a darker evil awaiting their arrival. The film explores themes of trauma, race relations, and the healing power of music. Featured in the cast are Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, and Delroy Lindo.
“Sinners” was designed with IMAX in mind and shot by cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw on proprietary IMAX 15/65mm cameras. CineMontage recently caught up with the post team, including picture editor Michael P. Shawver, visual effects supervisor Michael Ralla and visual effects producer James Alexander, as well as supervising sound editor Benny Burtt, sound designer/re-recording mixer Steve Boeddeker and re-recording mixer Brandon Proctor, supervising ADR editor and supervising dialogue editor David V. Butler, production sound mixer Chris Welcker, and music editor Felipe Pacheco.
CineMontage: How did “Sinners” compare to other Coogler projects in terms of how you collaborated with him and other departments to achieve his vision for the film?
Michael P. Shawver: As an editor, you always want to — in all your cuts — show the director that you know what movie you’re making. Ryan does extensive research about every little thing, and so does every member on the team. Everybody has something to offer. We all love movies — we all got into this for a reason. And I think that we consider ourselves on the team; whether we’re actively working or not, we’re always there for each other. I believe that comes with Ryan trusting us. He’s fought really hard to keep the people he’s worked with throughout the years, and that trust shows through here.
Benny Burtt: Of all Ryan’s movies, “Sinners” felt like the most collaborative. While he was free to make the “Black Panther” movies his own, the films still had to fit within the context of the greater MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. On “Sinners,” this was his original story and characters. He had the freedom to do whatever he wanted. One of Ryan’s strengths is that he is open to opinions and ideas from anyone.
Brandon Proctor: Because the film is a sneaky musical, we had pre-production meetings to discuss how to capture the music on set. We knew there would be IMAX cameras that could be quite loud, and we wanted to make sure we got the best recordings. That was when we suggested that [music editor] Felipe [Pacheco] be on set for the filming process in the way you might have the picture editor. He worked closely with composer Ludwig Göransson and Chris Welcker on set and helped maintain consistency. There were also some tests done in advance that either Benny or I would clean up and send back so Ryan could get an idea of how the tracks might sound after.
Michael Ralla: Ryan encourages an incredibly high level of collaboration, and with the film being so stunningly genre-fluid, everyone could find an angle to contribute from — which also meant we were all trying to deliver our absolute A-game. In his world, casting decisions do not stop behind the camera. As I was telling my visual effects producer James when I asked him to join me, “Ryan doesn’t make films with a bunch of people, he makes films with his friends — and it is a privilege to be invited to join this group of long-term collaborators.” Even deep into post, we were still reaching out to production designer Hannah Beachler and wardrobe designer Ruth Carter to make sure decisions touching their respective areas of expertise were in line with their vision for the film. I was constantly going back and forth with director of photography Autumn Durald to make sure our visual effects work matched her photography and lighting when we produced full CG shots (and there are quite a few). [A full CG (computer-generated) shot is a visual in which every element in the frame is created digitally using computer-generated imagery (CGI)]. Just because we can create almost anything digitally doesn’t mean we always should.
CineMontage: How did you work with Ludwig Göransson to support his score for the film?
Proctor: We have worked with Ludwig and Ryan for 12 years and had an idea of what we could expect. Ludwig changes and adapts his score in a unique way for every film, and this was the first time that we had a combination of pre-recorded and live music. We worked hard to make sure the dialogue and music felt integrated and consistent between the departments.
Dialogue and music that was recorded on set were sent back and forth between Felipe Pacheco and David Butler during the editing process for cleanup, and I had the same processing chains in the music and dialogue ProTools. There was a crazy amount of music that almost added up to more music than picture in the beginning stages of the mix, since often the score would play on top of the source from the juke joint.
During the mixing process, Ludwig worked closely with Felipe and me to pare down music and add elements from the multitracks. There were even fun moments when Ludwig would ask me to chop the choir and loop it to make it sound like it was sampled. It was super-collaborative and ever-changing.
Burtt: I’m always impressed by the things Ludwig comes up with. His music can often blur the lines between music and sound design, so we’re always careful to try to make sure any design we’re adding where there’s music, works with the music. Sometimes a new or updated cue will come in where we had some existing design. We’ll ask, do they work together? Do we need both? How can we best propel the story on screen at this moment, and we’ll adjust from there. Sometimes it’s tweaking our effects, other times it’s getting out of the way.
Ralla: There’s typically very little overlap between music and visual effects during post, and especially not during the shoot or pre-production. It was quite the contrary on this film — especially for the surreal montage. We had weeks of back-and-forth between Ludwig and us doing pre-viz, with multiple rehearsals and tests during which he was improvising music and reacting to things as they were ideated and immediately tested. It was an incredible experience, and an absolute collaboration feast, with everyone being fully engaged — and I truly believe you can feel that in the final product. It is full of heart and soul.
CineMontage: What are some of your favorite music sequences from this film?
Proctor: I love the “I Lied to You” montage of the past and future. The first time I saw it on temp [mix] 1, I had goosebumps. And the energy and excitement of “Pale Moon” was incredible to mix. There are so many elements we had to sync from the live music, recorded music, foley, sound effects, loop group, etc. All the food groups had to work together musically. But some of what makes those scenes work so well is that they are paired with the quiet moments, as in “Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?” The film has so much range, from these subtle moments to super-fun bangers.
Steve Boeddeker: Ryan’s always open to experimenting, and we did that a lot. But it was written and shot around music and race relations, so we had to be respectful. I absolutely love the juke music scenes, and working with Brandon to bring them alive was a treat.
Chris Welcker: There are so many memorable musical moments throughout “Sinners.” But the most daunting one for me when I came into this project was the scene when Sammie and his cousin Stack were driving, and we hear Sammie play guitar for the first time. When I initially interviewed for this job with Ryan, I went into it kind of blind. Due to the secrecy of this project, I hadn’t yet gotten to read the script, which is kind of uncommon for me going into an interview with a director.
Ryan knew I had experience working on music-focused films and told me that “Sinners” would have a ton of music throughout that would revolve mostly around the blues. Initially, I’m thinking, OK, so we’ll probably have some slide guitars, microphones, amplification, things like that. And he’s like, ‘No, it’s going to be a period film set during the Jim Crow era in the Mississippi Delta region, and it’ll all be acoustic performances. Then he’s like, ‘We have this one scene in particular where this character, Sammie, is going to be riding with his cousin in a car, and he’s going to be singing and playing slide guitar.’ And he said it’s not a playback scene. Sammie would be played by Miles Caton, who is an amazing singer who had studied guitar just for this role. Ryan and Ludwig wanted to record and use that performance that’s happening on set in the finished film. And I’m thinking, OK, now we have a moving car. We’ve got an acoustic blues guitar being played and some live singing.
I start asking if we will have the windows up at least to help isolate the musical performance from the wind, sound of the engine and road noise? And he’s like, ‘Actually, it’s going to be a real Model-T Ford and it’s going to have a convertible top that will be down. And it’s going to drive on a dirt and gravel road.’ He just kept layering sound obstacles one after the other. So there is every single thing that could be working against us in that kind of scenario.
Prioritizing the authenticity and the importance of capturing these performances live on set justified a test shoot for this scene during prep. We found a comparable road nearby and had a stand-in actor sing and play guitar while the car moved down the dirt road. Things worked surprisingly well, and so we were confident to move forward with this approach. We learned a fair bit during that test and implemented everything that we could to make it work on the day. And then I handed over all the tracks to our post team to let them do their magic and make it the unforgettable moment you see in the film.
Felipe Pacheco: Also, during the Model T scenes, the car would move at different speeds, depending on the day and which section of road they were driving on, so the engine rumble underneath Sammie’s “Travelin’” performance sounded different in every take. It was actually the first music scene we shot, and Ludwig and I started working on it that same night to make sure we could use the material. We quickly realized it was better to lean into the car noise rather than to try to clean it out to balance the takes.
Sammie’s vocal register overlapped with the engine’s low-end, so if we blindly removed the rumble, it would thin out his voice. This scene taught us early on that every on-screen music moment was going to take serious work. Every cleanup and edit had to be surgical and intentional, to preserve the musicians’ original performances. In the end, that attention to detail is what made it all feel so real.
David Butler: Jason Freeman and I de-noised approximately 95% of the movie. Between the cameras and the insects, there was so much noise. Chris put us in position to pull that off. Jason and I would go as far as we felt comfortable, listening to the tracks on headphones. Then Brandon Proctor pushed it even further. He was the mad-scientist mixer taking everything to the edge of breaking, but that is what made everything work so effectively.
In the baptism scene with Remmick and Sammie, Jack O’Connell’s performance was so unique and unhinged that we didn’t want to lose it. The camera, insects, water, Miles Caton’s heavy breaths… we shot ADR for that entire scene, but that madman started unmuting all of my cleaned up dialogue and kept going. The score helped, but I think only a few words of ADR are used in the mix. Brandon made all that work.
Chris also had them record wild takes [recordings of sound effects, dialogue, or ambient noise on set without the cameras rolling]: everything at Bert and Joan’s shack, portions of the scene at the Chows’ grocery store, and most of the third act. And then there were the feet. Everyone was wearing period-appropriate leather-soled shoes. Those shoes on a raised wood floor are crazy loud and they all had to go just so Benny could add feet cut in time to the music.
CineMontage: From a visual effects perspective, did shooting on film for IMAX make your life and workflow more difficult or fulfilling, or both?
James Alexander: The last time I was this hands-on with film, I was delivering cans of negative on my skateboard around SoHo in the early 2000s. Not only was this an interesting challenge, but there are different aspects to working with film.
We knew the image was going to have grain and weave and chromatic peculiarities and all that interesting imperfection that makes film so visceral and tangible and such a unique viewing experience. We knew it could be beneficial for the integration of visual effects, as those elements can help integrate the digital components of the shot into the celluloid. But we also knew it was going to be on the biggest screens in the world — 10 feet from people’s eyeballs, in some cases. So we knew there was nowhere to hide.
In terms of the Halo rig [a camera rig invented for “Sinners,” the Halo has 10-12 action cameras that wrap around an actor’s head to record their performance], data was used to create digital facial replacements, if needed, as reference to Michael B. Jordan’s authentic performances for both twin characters, Smoke and Stack. Our whole approach was engineered around that. The Halo gave us the ability to record images for reference to MBJ’s performance in the specific lighting conditions for every shot where a digital face replacement might be needed [to replace the face of the actor playing the twin in the same shot as MBJ].
Initially, the plan was for only 280 visual effects shots in the movie. It quickly became clear there would be many more. Our final count was 1013, with a runtime of one hour and five minutes — 50% of the film.
Ralla: Later on during post, there was a lot of collaboration with Michael Shawver, whose office was right above the office that James and I were in. Lots of great ideas came from that. We often texted back and forth until late at night, even after leaving the office, which fleshed out some of Ryan’s ideas — for instance, the CG birds and fireflies.
Adding to what James said about working with film: The moment you’re shooting on 65mm, you’re falling back into a 25-yearold production pipeline. Ryan is a filmmaker who comes from the Marvel world, so he uses visual effects in the best possible way as an effective tool for storytelling purposes. We had a feeling about how high our visual effects shot count would actually go, and it was an interesting challenge to push more than a thousand visual effects shots through that pipeline and back onto 65mm film. At first, I admittedly wasn’t convinced why, but once I saw the final release prints, I understood — and I would take that challenge again, this time with some thoughts and ideas.
CineMontage: What do you hope audiences took away from the film, especially the in-theater/IMAX experience of watching it on the big screen?
Boeddeker: I was at the Oakland premiere, and Ryan and his family, including his grandma, were there. Suddenly, players from the Golden State Warriors walked in and took up two rows. But the highlight for me was this older woman sitting next to me and asked me what I did, and I told her and she said, “it’s not scary is it? Because I hate scary.” I told her it has its moments, but it’s deeper than that. Every time there was a loud jump scare she would whack me and say, “Stop it!”
Shawver: The ownership that viewers take from this is remarkable. I mean the amount of everything from fiction to backstories that they’re writing, or all that cosplay; people are talking about Halloween costumes for all the characters.
Burtt: I hope audiences come away realizing the value of seeing movies on the big screen and remembering how fun it is to sit in a theater with a bunch of random people, sharing an experience together. This was a fun movie to see with crowds. People screaming, laughing, yelling at characters to get back inside, or cheering when a bad guy gets taken out. The movie is different. It’s original, and I think people liked that. I hope studios see the response this film gets and continue to take chances on different ideas.
