Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541514
S I N N E R S | P E R S P E C T I V E 5 7 At first, I put the vampire part aside. Now, I love the supernatural. Especially vampires. And if I felt guilty, it would be a guilty pleasure. But the bigger world was a lot to bite off (no pun intended) and I knew I needed to go as in-depth as I could, with the time I had, into researching the Mississippi Delta in 1932. I started with researching cotton gins and sawmills in the region, the companies that ran the big mills in the bigger cities and the independent mills run by small businessmen, the cotton revenue in the state vs. the lumber industry and the plight of Mississippi before, during and after the Great Depression. Sawmills died out in Mississippi in the 1920s, so it seemed reasonable that there would be a long-abandoned sawmill ready to convert into a blues club. First, I really got a handle on the process of how lumber is milled, the innovation of the machinery between the early 1800s and the late 1920s, and the functional vernacular of small and large mills, and the people who worked in the mills, local vs. migrant, as some mills provided dormitory- type accommodations. Then I could get an initial layout to Ryan while he was writing, giving him the room to conceptualize the blocking and flow of the scenes. This saved a lot of time during a tight preproduction. I did the same for cotton gins and eventually, Ryan settled on a sawmill. I thought a sawmill was perfect for creating the Juke Joint. There was something about it that screamed horror film. As I continued researching, looking through thousands of black-and-white images of Clarksdale and surrounding towns from the early 1900s to mid-1940s, I came upon photographs of author Eudora Welty, who was born in 1909 and A. INTERIOR JUKE JOINT. PEARLENE SINGS ON STAGE AS THE CROWD STOMPS AND DANCES TO THE MUSIC. PRODUCTION STILL.