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28 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E Benny Burtt. Brandon Proctor. David Butler. 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 ef- fects, other times it's getting out of the way. Ralla: There's typically very little over- lap 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 immediate- ly 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" mon- tage 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. C h r i s We l c ke r : Th e re a re s o m a ny 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 "Sin- ners" 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 perfor- mances. 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 win- dows up at least to help isolate the musical performance from the wind, sound of the engine and road noise? And he's like, 'Actu- ally, 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 ob- stacles 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