Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The film Sinners has broken records for many reasons. The movie received the most nominations for one film in Oscar's history. 16 total. Then there's the film's cinematographer. Autumn Durald Arkapaw is the first woman of color to be nominated in the best cinematographer category and only the fourth woman ever. Her work shows range. She shot Ryan Coogler's Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever, capturing the spirit of a huge action movie. Her independent chops can be seen in the hauntingly beautiful film The Last Showgirl.

Sinners stands out in the scope of Autumn's work because the movie was shot entirely on two large format lenses, IMAX and Ultra Panavision 70, which we'll find out what that actually means in practice. Please welcome Oscar-nominated cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw. She is part of our big spotlighting Oscar-nominated talent who work behind the camera, in this case, with the camera. It's nice to meet you, Autumn.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Nice to meet you. Pleasure.

Alison Stewart: When Ryan first told you the idea for this film, how did he describe it to you, and what was your immediate reaction?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Well, he actually-- I didn't know what I was getting. He sent me the script, and I knew it was going to be a period piece, and I knew that he wanted to shoot on film. That's all I knew. He sent it to me the night before I went into principal photography on Last Showgirl. I was in Vegas in my hotel room. He sent it to me, and I read it. Obviously, you can imagine if you didn't know what you were about to read and you read something like that, your mind just-- my mind up. I was like, "Damn, this is very good. Where did this come from?"

Since we don't live in the same town, and I was about to start a movie, I wrote him a long email just with my thoughts. Then, finally, when that movie wrapped, we always have a phone call, where he goes over what it means to him and where the idea came from, and gives me a reference or two. We just talk about it. My most important thing is to really know what he's after and what his vision is. He's my biggest inspiration, really.

Alison Stewart: That was interesting. You wrote a long email. I wondered what you would do with your thoughts initially. Do you picture-board them? Do you write notes to yourself? Do you refer to old movies? How do you go about having a vision for what this could be? It may change, but initially.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: No, it's a good question. I think a few months ago, I went back and looked at that email-

Alison Stewart: All right.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: -which was fun. I might do it now after this talk, because I'm trying to remember what I wrote. I think it's a very honest, genuine reaction, to be honest, because this is my friend as well. Ultimately, I'm proud of this friend on one side of it. I'm like, "Damn, this is good. Where did this come from? This is great writing." These are the things that popped out for me. I'll just say, in the script, it started out with the farmhouse scene with Jack jumping into frame. That is not how the movie opened.

Alison Stewart: That's my favorite scene. It's one of my favorite scenes in the whole thing.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: It is my second favorite scene. You can imagine, when you start reading it. I remember I asked him later, I was like, "What made you start out like that?" He's like, "Well, I wanted to grab the audience." It's a very cinematic way to get someone involved into a world and a script, and it did. It worked. That was, obviously, my first comments on the email was about that scene. By the way, that scene wasn't supposed to be shot in IMAX originally. It was supposed to be in the 5 perf Ultra Panavision 70, which is the wider aspect ratio. He decided to turn it into IMAX later. It's nice to hear it's your favorite. It looks like that because he made that decision, so it was nice.

Alison Stewart: It's amazing. He's dropping out of the sky at the worst possible moment for him. What's your favorite scene? If that's your second-favorite scene, what's your favorite scene?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: This sounds funny now because it's what opens the film. [chuckles] It sits the church scene, what they decided to open the film. Those are my two favorites. I would have to go with church first. It was just a very emotional scene, emotional day. I like everything that went into that, like the building of the set that Hannah Beachler, she made that from scratch. The costumes, the characters, Saul Williams, Miles Caton, these performances in there are beautiful. I felt like I was at church, so special.

Alison Stewart: We're focusing on the cinematography category today for our Big Picture series spotlighting Oscar nominees who work behind the camera. My guest is Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the Sinners cinematographer. You said you knew Ryan Coogler before. When did you guys first meet?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: We met through-- Bradford Young is a good friend of mine. I met him really early on, I think, after graduating AFI. One of my biggest inspirations as a DP, but also in life, to be honest. It just happens that he's a DP, so he's like a brother to me. He recommended me to Ryan early on when he needed a DP for Creed, because Rachel Morrison, who's also a friend, was having a baby. The schedule wasn't working out, so Bradford suggested me. It did not work out. I think the studio didn't think I had enough credits at the time, so we did not meet.

Fast forward many years later, when he was looking for a DP for Wakanda, because Rachel decided to direct and schedules weren't aligning, she texted me, and she said, "Ryan wants to talk to you. I think it would be a good fit." She spoke to Ryan about me, and then we had a Zoom call. That was the first time we met on a Zoom. The first time we met in person was in the production office.

Alison Stewart: That's wild. I like that idea of another person recommending you for a film and not just keeping it to themselves.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes, no, I've built a whole career that way. I think my most important relationships are with people that were my friends that thought I would get along with someone else really well and work well with them. I think that makes for a great filmmaking team.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's talk about the two large formats. I'm going to pretend like I understand them. I sort of understand them, IMAX and Ultra Panavision 70. For those of us who aren't cinematographers, would you explain what each is, and perhaps the challenges with each?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes. At the base of it all, it's shot on 65 millimeter film, so it's all one stock. However, the stock is being put into two different camera systems. One system is the Ultra Panavision 70, which is a Panavision system, and that's using five perforations of the 65 millimeter film. It's going into a camera that's the movement is vertical, and it's exposing five perforations at a time, and that's the widescreen image that you see. Most of the movie is shot with this format in a 2:7:6 aspect ratio, widescreen, anamorphic.

The other system that we wrangled was the IMAX system. That's five perforations on 65, and that's going through the camera horizontally. Very loud camera. Not a sync sound camera. Gives you a taller image, and you're exposing 15 perforations. It's the first time any movies ever combined the two together, which means we're shooting the film, we have both of those systems. We go through the script, and we choose which scenes are going to be which.

It goes back to what you were saying before is you can't really use it when you're doing dialogue because the camera's too loud. It's a big machine that's loud. Ryan made a decision to shoot some dialogue-heavy scenes with IMAX, so you're doing ADR after the fact. On set, you have a guide track. It's too loud, but it makes for a better, beautiful scene, and now your favorite scene, because we were able to shoot this dialogue scene with this beautiful format. That's, in a nutshell, what the film is shot on.

Alison Stewart: You said it's the first time that this has been done.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Combine the two together.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Is it because it's so challenging?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: It's a big aspect ratio shift. As you know, there are not many movies that choose to do that. Christopher Nolan is someone, in the movies he's made, where he has done that. That would be my biggest reference in watching a movie, like The Dark Knight, and going to City Walk and seeing the bank scene. Then it's switching to a smaller aspect ratio, and I like that. I think with Ryan, he's taking a big leap to do that. We tested it, and we felt it was right for the movie. Yes, it's a brave choice. When you work with a brave filmmaker, that's where it comes from is just believing in it and then it working out. Obviously, it worked out.

Alison Stewart: It makes me wonder how much of your job has to be prepped in advance if you're going to use that kind of planning.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes, no, there's a lot of prep. I have an amazing camera team. Amazing team in general, my whole crew, but it does. It takes a lot of logistics, exceptional craftspeople at their job. Then, also, in planning, Ryan and I, we do storyboarding for the whole film. More complex scenes, you have to previs. It doesn't mean that things can't change, but everybody has to be collaborating at the highest level, but also needs to know what they're doing. You have to be very good at your job because the format itself requires patience and respect, for sure.

Alison Stewart: Does it leave much room for improvising?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes, it does. I think we come at it like that. Ryan is someone who I think-- we always want to draw off of what's in front of us. We have exceptional actors. If I see Michael and then he walks into a space that Hannah's built, and I have an idea that we thought about Ryan and I in prep, but Michael wants to do something else on the day, you want to capture that emotion and the light in the space, and you have to feel it. I think we work off of that. We're very much a team that works off of emotion. That's paramount to anything, but planning is what helps you organize the whole shoot. Filmmaking is difficult, especially in the South in the summer.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask about the South in the summer, because we get to see the cotton fields. It's so bright, and it's so wide, and you can almost feel the heat off the screen when you were looking at that particular scene. Could you tell me a little bit about what you wanted to accomplish with that scene?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Oh, yes. You mean the driving shots when they're going-- most of those things? Unfortunately, in New Orleans, there is no cotton in the fields at the time. It's cane. It's a lot of cane. The most important thing is that we're shooting in space, on the roads. We're doing it with a biscuit rig, which means it's a process trailer that has someone that drives the car is in a pod on this process trailer that's driving it, and then the actor is pretending to drive. It allows them to not be on a stage pretending to drive. They're pretending in a space under the sun, under that heat, as if they're looking out to cotton fields. Cotton was added later into the shot.

There's all these layers of making it what you see and making that feel like they're really driving through the cotton fields. I think the most important thing is that we're doing it for real. The car is under the sun in the actual space. That's important to me is to make sure that the driving stuff is for real, because I hate driving stuff when they're pretending to drive on a stage and you're seeing a comp of plates of stuff that doesn't match the actual lighting in the frame.

Michael's in a three-piece suit, so he's very hot. All of them are. It's not a comfortable situation, but they're acting at the highest caliber, and they're very good people. They're kind. As far as when we're filmmaking, they want to make the best shot. It was cool that everyone reacted like that, and they felt like they were actually in that space.

Alison Stewart: A lot's been said about Hollywood that they don't do particularly a good job about lighting Black actors, and you do. What would you like to share with other cinematographers out there about filming Black actors?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes, I've talked about this a lot. [chuckles] I think, for me, it's like, I don't-- just because-- First of all, if it's foreign to you, if you're not a Black person or you're not a person of color, maybe your inclination is to over-light something that is darker. You're afraid of underexposure, you're afraid of someone getting upset that they're not lit enough. There's that stigma for people. For me, because I am a person of color, and I understand different skin tones, and I like the way they sit in a darker zone, I also appreciated Bradford Young is someone who I'm very close with, and I appreciated the work that he did early on on film in general, and there's such a beauty to that. I saw that. That inspired me.

Moving forward, I think you have to be brave. You have to be brave with your exposures. You have to understand that people can look beautiful in the shadows, and light it in a way that you're showcasing the reflective nature of something. You're not over-lighting something because it's dark. Within the darkness, there's beauty, there's different tones, there's different colors. It's just an appreciation that I understand, and I know deep down inside what that should look like. Ryan supports me in that process because someone is going to say something's too dark, obviously, but you have to be like, "Trust me, I got this. This is the way that it should look. This is where the beauty is in the darkness sometimes."

Alison Stewart: My guest is Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the Sinner cinematographer. She's nominated this year for an Academy Award. Okay, you've got two Michael B. Jordans. Oh, couldn't the world have two Michael B. Jordans? [laughs]

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: He's the loveliest.

Alison Stewart: Truly. I don't even know him, and I just say that. I can tell from his spirit that he's a good soul.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Exactly. His spirit. That's a great comment.

Alison Stewart: You do have to shoot him as two different characters. What was the most challenging part about shooting two Michael B's?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: I think, for me, and I know this with Ryan as well, is the actor's doing most of the work. First of all, it's not easy to be in front of a camera in general. I've experienced this recently, so I feel for them. To do that, to have one performance, to change your whole mindset, to go off set, maybe you have 30 minutes, obviously you're being rushed, to come back as another person and perform again and do the same thing over again as a completely different person, there's so much beauty and power in that. He did it exceptionally.

He's doing most of that. I don't want to mess that up. I want to make sure that I'm capturing that in the best way that is real. He's doing everything. He has to, the A side, the B side, and we're putting those together. We're matching lighting. We're making sure that camera movement feels of the space. It feels right. Then we're working with VFX because there is a simple way to shoot twinning, which is a locked-off camera, and you put the two shots together. Then there's a more complex way. I want to move the camera around, or I want to put on Steadicam, or now Michaels may be fighting each other, so he's touching himself.

There are different layers of how complex twinning can be, and it's our job to make sure that we're all on the same page. It's very tedious on set, but that at the end of the day, we're doing justice to his performance. Because at the core of all of this work, making it look real, making it look beautiful, is the performance. I think just really respecting him. Ryan and him are very close and want to make sure that we do right by him and that it feels real to the audience because there's so many people now. They're like, "Oh, I thought he was two people." We've done our job well.

Alison Stewart: We spoke to Raphael Saadiq last week about his work on I Lied to You. The song is certainly featured in the film, and aspects of the film, certain emotional aspects, supernatural aspects of the film. How did you think about your positioning during that film? You're moving during that one sequence when the spirits in the skies open up.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: I think Ryan wrote it as something that would be-- he wrote it as one paragraph. It was one dense paragraph in the script. He put it in italics. He reminded us of that because I couldn't remember.

Alison Stewart: In italics? He put it like, "Pay attention to this."

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes, exactly. He said it in a Q&A recently. He was like, "I think that just meant we need to figure this out." [chuckles] It was very cute. I was like, "Oh, yes, it's true." Again, with the thing, there's respect. I read it. It's beautifully written. It was so imaginative. It's a brave choice. You're reading a script, and all of a sudden, it takes a left turn, and it causes you to open up your mind. It's educating you. It's making a statement. It's beautiful. I like that. I like that kind of thing.

I like someone being brave like that, to be like, "I'm going to interrupt this movie now, and I'm going to go this direction. I want people to go with me, and they're going to believe in me. I'm going to say something important." I like that. I want to help execute that in a way that feels of the space and be collaborate with all departments. Logistically, he wanted to be one fluid shot, but you can't really shoot that whole thing in one shot on the system that we're using because it can only shoot for 75 seconds. Generally, you can shoot for two and a half minutes on the mag, but we had to cut it in half because it's too heavy for the operator to hold. You can only hold it for 75-second loads.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: That means that you have to really plan to make sure that, where are the stitch points? You work with VFX, you work with Ludwig, you work with Raphael, you work with the choreographer. Sorry. Everybody has to be on board, and it's a very big team effort. At the core of it is making sure it's fluid, it feels elegant, it can work within the space. We have to work with lighting to make sure that we're lighting it in a way you can see 360. It's a very logistical shot, but at the end of the day, you want to make sure it's a beautiful shot, and it says something and means something because he wrote it so well. You don't want to mess it up.

Alison Stewart: Autumn, you're the first woman of color to ever be nominated for an Oscar in this category. If you win, that'll be another first. Either way, you're a first. How do you think about holding that, the first?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: I'm here, I'm standing next to Ryan every day on set, and I'm just proud to be there with him telling these stories for our community, for people that look like us to go to the theater, to see themselves up there on the screen, for the girls to message me, and say, "Oh, now I can do this, because I see you're doing this." That's what makes that first important. It's not just that me as an individual is the first to do this, but what is that first? Especially since it's for this film. It could be for a different film, but this film, most importantly. I'm very proud of that. Whatever happens, it means a lot just being able to talk to people, talk to you.

Alison Stewart: Who was the first person who made that impression on you?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: I would say, and I've mentioned this before, Ellen Kuras is a cinematographer that I admire deeply, that I'm now friends with. I remember like it was yesterday. I was looking up DPs because I had to do my homework because I didn't have anybody in the film business in my life. I was like, "Okay, I like this job. What does this job mean?"

I was looking it up, and I started looking up who shot the movies that I appreciated the most or that I was watching that were inspiring me. I couldn't find a woman's name, so I was like, "Oh, damn, there's not many women doing this," so slightly discouraging. Then I looked up Blow, and I found her name. I was so excited. I was like, "Yes, there's a woman doing it. Great. I can do this now."

Alison Stewart: She was amazing. I think she did the cinematography for Lee?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Oh, of course, and directed.

Alison Stewart: Yes, right, Kate Winslet, who played--

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: She had a cinematographer, but she is a director. She directs now and still shoots sometimes with her constant collaborators, but yes, she directed that.

Alison Stewart: You're really big into photography?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Who do you love?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Gordon Parks. It's like Helen Levitt. These are core people when I was studying art history at LMU that I think it was a lot of social documentary photography, to be honest, which is actually at the root of the reference Ryan gave me, because he gave me something. Eudora Welty was a reference. Just humanity being captured in one image and having that person travel around and look at everything around them. I really enjoy that stuff, because that's what we're doing.

We're playing make-believe. So I'm trying to create a real-world based off of something that happened before my time. That's why photography, I think, is so beautiful, because it's my job to make the audience feel like they're back in the '30s with Michael.

Alison Stewart: Where were you when you found out that you got an Oscar nomination?

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: I was at home, actually, with my husband, my son. It came out, we could go on your time, because it was 5:00 AM my time, so I had to get up early and watch it. I was just sitting there, and I was watching the feed. Then it kept happening. I was like, "Oh, my friend, my friend." Then 16, so it was pretty cool.

Alison Stewart: That is pretty cool. My guest has been Autumn Durald Arkapaw. She is the cinematographer for Sinners, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer. Thanks for being with us. We really appreciate it.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Oh, thank you, Alison. You're lovely. No problem.