Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542296
Michael Ralla. James Alexander. 30 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E importance of capturing these performanc- es live on set justified a test shoot for this scene during prep. We found a comparable road nearby and had a stand-in actor sing and play guitar while the car moved down the dirt road. Things worked surprisingly well, and so we were confident to move forward with this approach. We learned a fair bit during that test and implemented everything that we could to make it work on the day. And then I handed over all the tracks to our post team to let them do their magic and make it the unforgettable mo- ment you see in the film. Felipe Pacheco: Also, during the Model T scenes, the car would move at different speeds, depending on the day and which section of road they were driving on, so the engine rumble underneath Sammie's "Travelin'" performance sounded different in every take. It was actually the first music scene we shot, and Ludwig and I started working on it that same night to make sure we could use the material. We quickly real- ized it was better to lean into the car noise rather than to try to clean it out to balance the takes. Sammie's vocal register overlapped with the engine's low-end, so if we blindly removed the rumble, it would thin out his voice. This scene taught us early on that every on-screen music moment was going to take serious work. Every cleanup and edit had to be surgical and intentional, to pre- serve the musicians' original performances. In the end, that attention to detail is what made it all feel so real. David Butler: Jason Freeman and I de-noised approximately 95% of the movie. Between the cameras and the insects, there was so much noise. Chris put us in position to pull that off. Jason and I would go as far as we felt comfortable, listening to the tracks on headphones. Then Brandon Proctor pushed it even further. He was the mad-scientist mixer taking everything to the edge of breaking, but that is what made everything work so effectively. In the baptism scene with Remmick and Sammie, Jack O'Connell's performance was so unique and unhinged that we didn't want to lose it. The camera, insects, water, Miles Caton's heavy breaths… we shot ADR for that entire scene, but that madman started unmuting all of my cleaned up dialogue and kept going. The score helped, but I think only a few words of ADR are used in the mix. Brandon made all that work. Chris also had them record wild takes [recordings of sound effects, dialogue, or ambient noise on set without the cameras rolling]: everything at Bert and Joan's shack, portions of the scene at the Chows' grocery store, and most of the third act. And then there were the feet. Everyone was wearing period-appropriate leather-soled shoes. Those shoes on a raised wood floor are crazy loud and they all had to go just so Benny could add feet cut in time to the music. CineMontage: From a visual effects perspective, did shooting on film for IMAX make your life and workflow more difficult or fulfilling, or both? James Alexander: The last time I was this hands-on with film, I was delivering cans of negative on my skateboard around SoHo in the early 2000s. Not only was this an interesting challenge, but there are dif- ferent aspects to working with film. We knew the image was going to have grain and weave and chromatic peculiar- ities and all that interesting imperfection that makes film so visceral and tangible and such a unique viewing experience. We knew it could be beneficial for the integration of visual effects, as those elements can help integrate the digital components of the shot into the celluloid. But we also knew it was going to be on the biggest screens in the world — 10 feet from people's eyeballs, in some cases. So we knew there was nowhere to hide. In terms of the Halo rig [a camera rig invented for "Sinners," the Halo has 10-12 action cameras that wrap around an actor's head to record their performance], data was used to create digital facial replacements, if needed, as reference to Michael B. Jordan's authentic performances for both twin characters, Smoke and Stack. Our whole approach was engineered around that. The Halo gave us the ability to record images for reference to MBJ's performance in the specific lighting conditions for every shot where a digital face replacement might be needed [to replace the face of the actor playing the twin in the same shot as MBJ]. Initially, the plan was for only 280 visual effects shots in the movie. It quickly became clear there would be many more. Our final count was 1013, with a runtime of one hour and five minutes — 50% of the film. Ralla: Later on during post, there was a lot of collaboration with Michael Shawver, whose office was right above the office that James and I were in. Lots of great ideas came from that. We often texted back and SEE PAGE 67