Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC created an immersive experience and…

DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC created an immersive experience, and made several slices of cinematic history, while shooting Ryan Coogler's box-office blockbuster Sinners on large format KODAK filmstock in 5-perf 65mm and 15-perf IMAX formats, including using KODAK EKTACHROME, which was specially manufactured in 65mm by Kodak for the production.

The movie, which takes place over the course of a sunny day and a gruesome night, revolves around Smoke and Stack, identical twins and WW1 veterans, who return home to Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta after years spent working for the mob in Chicago and lining their own pockets in the process.

The twins use their ill-gotten gains to purchase a sawmill from a racist landowner to open a juke joint – a place where blues music and local community can converge. They quickly recruit their young cousin Sammie, a gifted guitarist, plus pianist Delta Slim, to join as performers, and also enlist local Chinese shopkeepers Grace and Bo as suppliers, together with Smoke's estranged wife Annie as the cook.

As night falls, Stack reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Mary, and the joint really starts jumping, until supernatural forces and the undead close in and the place comes under blood-spattering siege.

Starring Michael B. Jordan, notably in the dual roles of Smoke and Stack, the film received critical acclaim worldwide and rapidly became a sensation at the global box office. At the time of writing Sinners had taken over $283 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2025 and comfortably beating its break-even point. The film performed especially well in IMAX theaters, taking a 20% share of all ticket sales.

Analysts have put this popularity down to Sinners defying easy genre categorization – as an auteur-driven, gangster-cum-vampire-horror, big-screen experience, with blues music at its heart, while also proving a well-researched, period drama about the harsh segregation and racial injustices of life in the Mississippi Delta – and therefore far from predictable movie franchise fare.

When it comes to historic landmarks, only a small number of present-day cinematographers have shot movies using IMAX film cameras – most notably Hoyte Van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC on director Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023). Durald Arkapaw ASC not only joined select ranks with her work on Sinners but is the first female DP to shoot 65mm in IMAX format.

She is also the first cinematographer to incorporate 65mm in its widest aspect ratio, Anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76:1), and tallest aspect ratio, IMAX format (1.43:1), in the same production. Additionally, Arkapaw can lay rightful claim to being the first, and currently the only, cinematographer to shoot in IMAX 15-perf film format using KODAK EKTACHROME filmstock.

"Sinners was a personal project for Ryan as it was inspired by his uncle, James Edmonson, and his love for the Delta blues," says Arkapaw who had previously shot Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) for Coogler. "I read the script the night before I started shooting The Last Showgirl (2024, dir. Gia Coppola) on 16mm film, and was just blown away. It was beautifully written with so much heart and soul and fluidity between genres.

"It also meant a lot to me personally. My great-grandmother was born in Mississippi and my father in New Orleans. My family still lives there, so it was important for me to understand my own history and how it connected to this story. While we were shooting the film, I kept thinking about my ancestors and how I wanted to make them proud."

Although Sinners was captured using large format film, Durald Arkapaw reveals the original intention was to shoot on a much smaller film format.

"Sinners started out as a 16mm film production," she remarks, "but it then became a 35mm film after Ryan spoke to our VFX supervisor, who suggested a more stable negative was needed for the twinning work of Smoke and Stack.

"However, just as we began to discuss shooting on 35mm film, Ryan got a call from the studio asking whether we had thought about shooting any large format. Being well-aware of my love for Anamorphic, something Ryan knows from our experience on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he brought-up The Hateful Eight (2015, dir. Quentin Tarantino, DP Robert Richardson ASC), which was shot on 65mm using the System 65 camera with 1.3x Anamorphics, resulting in a 2.76 aspect ratio. He talked about how incredible that format would be for capturing the wide vistas and emphasizing the landscape of the Mississippi Delta."

This led Durald Arkapaw to call Andrew Oran, SVP/general manager of feature sales and marketing at FotoKem, to set up a screening session of 70mm clips from movies shot in 65mm 5-perf formats. These included scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick, DP Geoffrey Unsworth BSC), The Hateful Eight and Tenet.

"Ryan fell in love with what he saw," says Durald Arkapaw. "So, we wrangled a Panavision System 65 camera, together with an IMAX film camera, and shot tests in the desert in Lancaster, northern Los Angeles County, to see how they rendered the landscape and flat horizon.

"We then screened prints of the 2.76:1 65mm footage at Fotokem, and the 1.43:1 IMAX material at IMAX's HQ in Playa Vista, and the images were stunning. After you see the beauty and scope you can capture on these formats, you can't go back."

When it came to visual inspirations, Durald Arkapaw declares, "The first reference Ryan gave me was a book of portraits taken by the photographer Eudora Welty (1909–2001), who was also a writer in the 1930s. I love photographic references and have a lot of photography books on my shelves at home, but Eudora's work was new to me."

"She took B&W photographs of people in depression-era Mississippi, in their homes, at work and in their daily routines. They are beautiful, soulful pictures that capture a place and a moment in time. I knew exactly what Ryan was after when I saw those photographs. They became a powerful guide in helping me understand the emotional connection Ryan wanted the audience to feel."

Diving into cinematic references, Durald Arkapaw says she and Coogler referenced The Thing (1982, dir. John Carpenter, DP Dean Cundey ASC) for its sense of horror and tension. The pair also drew inspiration from Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, dirs. Joel & Ethan Coen, DP Bruno Debonnel AFC ASC) for its musical significance, along with There Will Be Blood (2007, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, DP Robert Elswit ASC) for its qualities as a cinematic parable.

Sagaciously, knowing that IMAX was firmly in the visual mix for Sinners, Durald Arkapaw contacted Van Hoytema, and reveals, "Hoyte was very gracious, and I got a strong sense of his love for the IMAX format. His advice to me was to go out there and make the film as I normally would.

"My focus puller, Ethan McDonald, asked Keith Davis, Hoyte's focus puller, to work with us on our desert test shoot. His contribution was beneficial, allowing us to gain insight into the IMAX cameras thanks to his expertise."

The DP confides that, during prep, she also sought the counsel of DP Jody Lee Lipes ASC in relation to the twinning work for Smoke and Stack. Lipes shot all six episodes of HBO's I Know This Much Is True (2020, dir. Derek Cianfrance) starring Mark Ruffalo as twin brothers, on KODAK VISION 3 500T 5219 35mm film, and describes Lipes' thoughts about that process as "super-helpful."

Under the working title of Grilled Cheese, and braving sweltering temperatures in excess of 100°F/38°C and 80% humidity, production on Sinners took place over the course of 66 shooting days, between April and July 2024, at locations across southeastern Louisiana. Along with interiors shot on sets constructed at Second Line Studios in New Orleans, physical locations included Donaldsonville, Thibodaux and Bogalusa, along with Braithwaite, where the exteriors of the lumber mill-turned-juke joint were built on a unused golf course.

Working with Panavision, Woodland Hills, and IMAX Corp, Durald Arkapaw selected Panavision System 65 Studio, System 65 High Speed cameras, plus IMAX MSM 9802 and IMAX MKIV film cameras. She worked closely with Panavision's lens guru, Dan Sasaki, to customize a set of Panavision Ultra Panatar 1.3x squeeze Anamorphics, a brace of Panavision IMAX optics in 50mm and 80mm focal lengths, and a bespoke Panavision 80mm IMAX Petzval lens for the shoot.

"Although the Ultra Panatars and the Panavision IMAX lenses have different looks, they both have a softness and nice fall-off around the edges," she says. "The IMAX frame is unique because your eye has to scan across the image, whereas traditional formats let you take in the whole frame without moving your eyes as much. That's why my love for widescreen photography, combined with center-weighted framing, translates so well across both formats. The framing guidelines can stay consistent, which allows each format to feel distinct while still maintaining a stylistic through line that ties both worlds together."

"I really enjoyed using the Petzval lens for the dreamlike scene at the end of the film, when Smoke is handed the baby he and Annie lost. In post-production, we applied that lens profile to a 2.76:1 close-up shot of Annie in her home from earlier in the film. It created a subtle visual echo between the scenes that deepened the emotional connection."

Along with her love for Anamorphic photography, Durald Arkapaw loves to operate the camera. The Panavision System 65 Studio camera weighs 100lbs, which meant it needed a substantial fluid head or remote head. However, the DP says she had no trepidation in having an IMAX camera on her shoulder, and was supported by her dolly grip Corey Corona when the camera was cut.

"When you shoot with IMAX cameras, which weigh around 65lbs, you have to figure out your own relationship with them, how to frame with them, how to hold them, and how to move with them on your shoulder," Durald Arkapaw explains.

"At first, it can feel uncomfortable on the shoulder, but you soon become accustomed to it and learn to compensate for what feels like carrying a mini fridge around. It was a little awkward for me, as I'm a left-eye operator, so I had to use the on-board monitor. A full 1,000 ft IMAX magazine can run for two and a half minutes before you need to reload."

Durald Arkapaw says that working out which scenes to shoot in IMAX versus widescreen, while also having to bear in mind how the final movie would be displayed in theaters, required thoughtful discussions with Coogler. Additionally, IMAX film cameras are known for being loud due to their mechanical workings, making it difficult to record dialogue. This meant having to factor ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) into a visual equation for dialogue-heavy scenes.

"During production, my ground glass had four framing ticks on it – 1.43:1 and 1.90:1 IMAX, plus 2.76:1 and 2.39:1 widescreen. When operating and framing I had to make sure that these different formats would be cohesive down the line in editorial – such as having adequate headroom – but I enjoyed that pressure. Ryan and the editor, Michael Shawver, did a brilliant job in making the format transitions flow elegantly."

Preferring to retain a consistent texture across the day/night interior/exterior scenes, Durald Arkapaw went with just one filmstock – KODAK VISION 3 500T Color Negative Film 5219. And that would have been that, apart from the irresistible temptation to also use a batch of large format KODAK EKTACHROME 100D Color Reversal Film 5294, manufactured by KODAK specially for the production.

"As with the lenses, the choice of film stocks always involves important considerations," she says. "For our Lancaster test shoot, we shot some KODAK VISION 3 5207 250D Daylight stock and also tested pulling and bleach bypass processing at FotoKem.

"We really liked the look and feel of the 500T in the 65mm 5-perf and 15-perf IMAX formats when processed normally and ultimately decided to shoot the entire picture using just the 500T. You get so much resolution when shooting on 65mm film, and it's an incredibly immersive visual experience. However, you can still feel the grain, depending on how you expose it."

"I shoot wide open, so using the 500T on day exteriors meant having to use a lot of ND filters, and sometimes the image in the eyepiece was difficult to see. There wasn't really any way around it – so we'd rehearse the move without the ND, commit the image to memory, then pop the ND into the tray and roll the camera for real.

"To make things more complex we had the IMAX and Panavision cameras variously on cranes, Steadicam, a chase car and a Technodolly. My focus pullers, Ethan McDonald who assisted me on A-camera, and Andrae Crawford who supported Josh Medak on B-camera, were fantastic. And when you watch the film on the big screen you will see what wonderful work they did."

Durald Arkapaw says it was a genuine thrill to shoot using KODAK EKTACHROME in 15-perf IMAX. "Ryan used it for a flashback sequence where Smoke sits on a trunk before the Hogwood shootout, remembering the juke being setup," she explains. "I captured some handheld portrait-style shots with the IMAX camera, not knowing exactly where they'd land in the cut. Ryan used them so beautifully in that sequence, and it ended up becoming a real iconic moment in the film."

As for lighting Sinners, Durald Arkapaw teamed up with her longtime gaffer, Brian Bartolini ICLS. The lighting for the night scenes was based around achieving color temperatures of 2300K white light for the interiors, with moonlight set at 4700K.

"I've worked with Brian for over ten years," she notes. "We share similar taste and visual sensibilities, and we both love shaping light in a way that feels stylistic but true to the story. On this film, we had the opportunity to really lean into darkness and shadow to heighten the drama."

The juke joint interiors, shot on stage at Second Line Studios, involved 19, 22 and 30-inch Jem Balls, fitted with 500W and 1,000W bulbs, which could be dimmed up or down as required on Variacs, and were double diffused with unbleached muslin.

Along with the Jem Balls that keyed the actors, light from ARRI T-12 12K Fresnels was bounced into the ceiling, where unbleached muslin had been rigged. A modicum of CTO was used to match the Fresnels to the 2300K white light. Outside the set, above the juke joint, an additional 70 ARRI SkyPanel S60 spacelights were hung and calibrated to 4700K for the exterior moonlight.

The juke joint exteriors, which were shot on location in Braithwaite, involved a 40 x 40-foot softbox, containing 36 CreamSource Vortex 8s being suspended from a 250-tonne/200-foot boom construction crane, with the light coming through full grid diffusion at 4700K. Also on hand was a 12K telehandler with a 20 x 20-foot softbox for more localized key lighting of the actors, which contained four Litegear Auroris X sources, using double magic cloth and also set to 4700K. Additionally, a 4K HMI balloon, plus a separate 16K tube balloon, provided by SkyLight Balloon Company, were used for moonlight/fill light.

To light the trees and the background from across the river, the production used five 120-ft condor booms each using two 18K Pars, with 1/2 CTO. More than 40 CreamSource Vortex 8s were then spread around on the ground to light the trees/foliage for added depth. A further 30 CreamSource Vortex 8s, set in pixel mode, were used to create the fire effects for the dancing night exterior surreal sequence. They also supplemented with fire bars for real fire light/effects throughout the shoot.

"When you collaborate with Ryan, it's always a journey filled with bravery and inspiration, and you get to dive deep into entirely new arenas," reflects Durald Arkapaw about her experience shooting Sinners.

"Alongside exploring my own ancestral connections to the time and place of the story, it was a profound experience to create lasting, emotional images using 65mm and IMAX 65mm film formats. During production, I truly felt we were making something rare, meaningful and important together. It means the world to me that audiences have responded to Sinners with such appreciation and heart."