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Sinners gaffer @brianbartolini shared another lighting breakdown with us from the film! Sinners won 4 Oscars including @addp for Best Cinematography 🏆 Here’s the breakdown from Brian: “Sinners takes place in Mississippi around 1932. At that time, only affluent places in the South had electricity. In the film you can actually see they had to tap into the grid to get power to the Juke Joint at one point. So for motivating light sources, there was really only the practical string lights and kerosene lamps on camera interior Juke Joint, and Moonlight and some fire exterior Juke Joint. That was our light motivation. “For this video you see here we are obviously motivating from moon light in which case we try to be as single source as possible, because there’s only one moon of course. “Here we have stacked up a Hybrid HMI/Tungsten spherical balloon on a 120’ Aerial Lift with a 20’x20’ Softbox on a 12K Telehandler. “That softbox had 4- LiteGear Auroris X inside, double diffused with Magic Clothe diffusion. “Our moonlight motivated color temperature was 4700k and set at that””

🎉Congratulations, Autumn! @addp Sinners took home 4 Oscars last night, including Best Cinematography! 🏆 Here’s our 7th lighting breakdown from the film, courtesy of gaffer @brianbartolini ✨- with a few more to come this week! “Autumn operating the camera, we have a 500w incandescent light bulb inside a 22” Jem Ball, double diffused with unbleached muslin to match our 2300K white light balance throughout the interior of the Juke Joint. “Underneath the camera lens we have an Astera Helios tube at a very low level for eyelight each time he turns towards camera. MBJ and all vampires wore special red etc. contact lenses in their eyes when they played the part of vampire.”

One more lighting breakdown from Sinners (2025)! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini below! 🔥🔥🔥 For the interior Juke Joint on stage in New Orleans our “white light” color temperature we matched to was 2300K because that was the color temperature of the hanging incandescent practical string lights that Production Designer Hannah Beachler hung throughout the set to be seen on camera. All key light in the Juke Joint was motivated by those hanging practicals or the can light practicals on the ground on the set stage where they would perform. We shot 65mm Kodak 5219 film at an ASA of 320 so we needed a lot of lumens. Therefore Autumn and I decided to go old school if you will, and use tungsten/incandescent lights on this set instead of the LED film lights (we did use LED lights too, mostly for night exteriors) that are most common on set these days. For overall ambiance light and to bring up the fill we bounced Arri T12’s (12K Fresnel) and T5’s (5K fresnels) and T2’s (2K) into UNBLEACHED Muslin that Key Grip Miguel Benavides attached to the ceiling of the Juke Joint set. We also added 1/2 CTO to those ceiling bounce lights to get closer in color temperature to our 2300K Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. For more localized Key Light on actors, we used 19” (500 Watt Tungsten Globes), 22” (500 watt Tungsten globes) and 30” (1000 watt Tungsten globes) Jem Balls, almost all of them hung from above on a menace arm or from the second floor catwalk, to match the high angle light that they were augmenting/mimicking from the Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. All of these Jem Balls were DOUBLE DIFFUSED with UNBLEACHED MUSLIN to again, match the 2300K color temperature of the Hanging Incandescent String Lights that were seen on camera. We would either dim them up or down on Variac Dimmers to get Autumn’s desired shooting stop or just add BOBBINET if dimming the Jem Balls too low would start to warm the color temperature up too much.

Another lighting setup from Sinners (2025)! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Below is a detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini 🔥 “We have a 30” Jem Ball overhead at their stop mark for key. And a Lite Gear Spectrum 8 through 4x8’ Magic Cloth left of frame in the gambling room set up for Jayme, as she turns and looks toward Miles to say her lines. Jayme is stunning and easy to light and that Magic Cloth catches her wardrobe and skin tone brilliantly as she turns towards Sammie to speak.” (The BTS is from a rehearsal. )

Sinners (2025) - 16 Oscar nominations including Best Cinematography! Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp ✨ Below is a detailed lighting breakdown from gaffer Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini 🔥 For the Exterior Night shots at the end of this Surreal Montage Scene, we used a 40’x 40’ Soft Box hung from a 250 tonne, 200’ Boom Construction Crane. It had 36 (6 rows of 6 lights each) CreamSource Vortex 8’s in the box. Through FULL GRID Diffusion. Through different camera tests in Prep, we decided that our moonlight looked best at 4700K color temperature, so that’s what I had the Vortex 8’s set to for moonlight, on stage and on location too. We also had a 12K TELEHANDLER with a 20’ x 20’ SoftBox on it for more localized key lighting. It had 4- “Litegear Auroris X” (10’x 10’ each) in it. Through DOUBLE Magic Clothe diffusion. Also set at 4700K color temp. for our moonlight motivation. We also had 5- 120’ Condor Booms across the River with 2- 18K Pars each in them with ½ CTO to match the 4700K moonlight color temperature. To light the trees and deep background for more depth. We also had 40- CreamSource Vortex 8’s on the ground spread out everywhere you looked to light the trees/foliage for added depth. 4700K color temp. And as you can see in this video at the very end we used a 4k HMI Balloon for moonlight/fill light and a separate 16K TUBE balloon with Tungsten globes and HMI globes in it to match the 4700K moonlight color temp., all for fill moonlight. We tried to keep the Night Exterior moonlight source a single source (as is in real life) as much as possible to feel natural and not distract from the story at all. As is with all of the lighting in this film. If you didn’t notice the lighting at all and was just immersed in the story alone, then we did our job.

The Church I have a lot more to come. What scenes do you want to see next? “For this Church set we bounced a total of 8x 18k ARRIMAX HMIs with no color into 8'x12' Ultra Bounces for our ambient sky key light throughout the scene. We turned some on or off depending on camera position to create contrast. “ Gaffer @brianbartolini Sinners (2025) Directed by Ryan Coogler Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp CLT / Gaffer - Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini Assistant CLT - Jordan Lapsansky Key Grip - Miguel Benavides

Sinners (2025) week is back with a walk through of the lighting for Annie’s Shop! Overhead: 4x LiteGear Litemat Spectrum 8 at 6000K. Ambient fill: 2x ARRIMAX 18k with spot reflectors outside windows, bounced off 12x8 Ultra Bounce through front panes. No gels. Hard sunlight: 1x ARRIMAX 18k with 1/2 CTO gel behind wall (off-camera), direct through window. Sinners (2025) Directed by Ryan Coogler Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp CLT / Gaffer - Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini Assistant CLT - Jordan Lapsansky Key Grip - Miguel Benavides

This week I'm going to be sharing lighting breakdowns from the film Sinners (2025). This is the first of what will be many posts. A big thanks to Gaffer @brianbartolini for making this possible! Sinners (2025) Directed by Ryan Coogler Cinematographer - Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC @addp CLT / Gaffer - Brian Bartolini @brianbartolini Assistant CLT - Jordan Lapsansky Key Grip - Miguel Benavides

More behind the scenes of ‘Sinners’ Film Cinematographer/Camera Operator @addp Director/Screenwriter Ryan Coogler 📸🎞 @brianbartolini #sinnersmovie #panavision #learnfilmmaking #behindthescenes #filmcommunity

… EXACTLY 1 YEAR AGO TODAY we filmed these scenes in NOLA. In the merry month of May…. The first pic is one of my favorite shots in the film, the very first time we recognize Jack as the vampire Remmick. The other pics are close to my heart as well. The butterfly that landed on Autumns A Camera during the chain gang scene stayed and watched over us all for many takes that day and only flew away when Ethan had to change the mag to a fresh new one. This film changed lives, mine included. I have so many words to say and so many people to thank. And until I start naming names, you all know who you are. But this post is very time sensitive, I wanted to get it out tonight on its 1 year anniversary. Every day will be another 1 year anniversary of filming this movie so there will be more to come, watch this space ! xBB.

BLACK PANTHER : WAKANDA FOREVER photo dump coming soon-ish (this instagram posting crap takes forever) but first and most importantly, I want to thank everyone that built this ship. when you’re working with people that are the absolute best at what they do, and are better than you in every way, then it’s hard to fail. they carried me. I am in debt. I can’t include every crew members name but here are a very small few…. 🙅🏽‍♂️ Director: King #ryancoogler 👑 Producer: Nate Moore 1st A.D: Don Sparks DoP: Queen @addp 👑 PD: Hannah Beachler Key Grip: @dragongrips Rig Key: G Dhiensuwanna Rig Gaffer: Adam Harrison ICLS Rig Foreman: Casey Dunn Fixtures Foreman: Phil Abeyta Lighting Control: Derek Page LCP: @ilight_designs ICLS Best Boy: Jordan Lapsansky 2nd Unit CLT: @riff407 ICLS 2nd Unit BB: @jeremyschonwald CLT: @brianbartolini

... ”I wish they would only take me as I am” - Vincent Van Gogh . . ...”injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” - M.L.K. . . . ...”we must be the change we wish to see in the world” - Mahatma Gandhi