Sinners In IMAX Is ‘An An Out-Of-Body Experience' Says DoP Autumn Durald Arkapaw

Forbes

21-04-2025

Autumn Durald Arkapaw going handheld with an IMAX film camera on location with "Sinners".
Only a select few cinematographers have shot movies using IMAX film cameras, but on Sinners, the new thriller-cum-vampire movie from writer/director Ryan Coogler, another name can now be added to that exclusive roster — Autumn Durald Arkapaw.
Sinners isn't technically the first time Arkapaw had framed for IMAX, having done so on her previous collaboration with Coogler, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. However, that movie was shot with IMAX-certified digital cameras, and, as Arkapaw said on a Zoom call with Forbes, 'To me, true IMAX is 15 perf, 65-millimetre film.'
IMAX 70mm film, as explained with great enthusiasm by Ryan Coogler in an engaging YouTube video, is most closely associated with Christopher Nolan. As he was already friends with the legendary director, Coogler sought his advice, while Arkapaw got in touch with Nolan's cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema. 'It was a lovely call—the work that they do is inspiring'.
The conversation meant that instead of being intimidated by the IMAX cameras, she was fired up by his enthusiasm. 'You could hear it in his voice. He's very passionate about it'.
Her excitement only grew after she and Coogler viewed IMAX test shots. 'It was gorgeous! There really is no way to explain the feeling you get when you're in a theater looking at a print of 15 perf 65 IMAX footage. I can sit here all day and kind of describe it and use words like immersive and larger than life, but when you sit there in the theater and you're able to actually look at footage that you shot, it's as if you're melting into the screen. I guess that would be my kind of ethereal way of putting it.'
On Sinners, Arkapaw is doing things with IMAX that even the likes of Hoytema have not. Not only is she the first female director to work with real IMAX cameras, but she is also the first to work on a movie shot on both IMAX film and the Ultra Panavision, respectively presenting both the tallest possible aspect ratio (1.43:1) and the widest (2.76:1). Completing a hat trick of firsts, Arkapaw can also lay claim to being the only cinematographer to shoot with IMAX EktaChrome film stock, which was created by Kodak especially for the movie.
EktaChrome is known for combining clean and crisp images with rich and accurate color hues but had never been made for IMAX 1570 stock.
"Ryan and our producer were having conversations about Ektachrome and they were able to pull it off. Because it's also a timing thing, right? You know, can you make it, how much can you make, and when can you get it to us? Stuff like that. We had a few rolls, and we were able to shoot with some of it. It was fun!'
However, the calm and collected Arkapaw seemingly takes in all these firsts as effortlessly as she carried the notoriously heavy IMAX film cameras while shooting.
Ryan Coogler, with a mounted IMAX 70mm film camera, directing Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo in ... More "Sinners".
While some cinematographers might have delegated the task, Arkapaw made light of having to handle the 100lb camera. 'It's part of my job to put heavy things on my shoulder.' As she explained, though, 'the IMAX camera goes through a 1,000ft roll of film in two and a half minutes before it has to be changed, so it's not on your shoulder forever!'
Originally conceived as a 16mm project, Coogler and Arakapaw then decided on 35mm to provide more resolution headroom for the 'twinning' VFX (Michael B Jordan plays identical twins in the movie). However, when Warner Bros approached Coogler about shooting on large format, they were able to scale up their ambitions. 'He grasped at the opportunity. He was very interested in that kind of scope image to tell the story with the flat horizon of the Mississippi landscape.'
IMAX film cameras are also notoriously loud and, as such, the initial plan was to save for scenes without dialogue, but as they and the actors got more comfortable with it, they started to be 'braver'. She describes a dialogue-heavy scene with Jack, who enters frame on his feet, and then goes inside the farmhouse to meet Joan and Bert.
'We didn't think that we would be shooting that on IMAX but as we started shooting the format and fell in love with it, and having discussions with actors, him having discussions with his actors —because obviously that's a choice, you know, that impacts them—we shot them in Imax knowing that he would be doing ADR. And I think we're better for it, because those scenes are so beautiful.'
Sinners convincingly roots the viewer in the southeastern state in the 1930s, making the transition to the supernatural seem even more unsettling. In terms of influences, Arkapaw namechecks the 1930s writer and photographer Eudora Welty and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood — her favorite movie. Her prep room was also lined with Kodachrome slide films from the Farm Security Administration, the agency established in the late 1930s to deal with rural poverty. 'They don't make Kodachrome film anymore, but they're just so vibrant and have so much kind of texture and this emotional quality.'
Arkapaw says that when shooting she had to cater for three aspect ratios with the camera viewfinder having indicators for 2.76, 1.90, and 1.43. To ensure no one misses out on critical picture information, she ensured that everything essential was in the middle of the image. 'I tend to center-punch so everything important is in the center of the frame, whether you're watching a thin ratio or a tall ratio.'
However, IMAX expansion is not about essential picture information – it's about that extra sense of immersion. As Arkapaw puts it, 'Your eyes are just wide open — it's a kind of an out-of-body experience.'
Some IMAX film enthusiasts who have seen Sinners have commented that the image is less sharp than the 700m images they are accustomed to from Christopher Nolan films. However, Arkapaw confirms that this is a deliberate stylistic choice. 'I tend to like softer lenses.'
She also used older vintage lenses with the Ultra Panavision camera to match the 1930s setting. 'I do feel like there's a really nice kind of soft quality to our lensing and then pairing that with the 65 gave it a really nice look'.
Sinners is available in numerous formats, and it's no surprise that she says that the IMAX 1.43:1 film print is her favorite. However, she also has a lot of love for the five-perf constant 2.76:1 aspect ratio 70mm print, which she describes as 'gorgeous.'
She also confirmed that she QCed all the standard digital DCP and the Dolby Vision print, aside from the HDR by Barco version, which, due to her filming schedule, was delegated to Fotokem's Kostas Theodosiou, the colorist who worked on all of Christopher Nolan's films.
Regardless of the final format, though, it was capturing on larger format film that was vital to achieving the look they wanted. 'It's really great to know that no matter what, it still all has that film texture.
Sinners is currently showing in theaters in several formats. Ultimately, Autumn Durald Arkapaw says she feels blessed to have had the chance not only to shoot a VFX-heavy movie on film, but to know that audiences have a chance to see it exhibited on film too. 'It's just really nice to be able to have final release prints so that they could see the beauty of the actual texture of what we shot, you know?'