How the Woman Who Shot ‘Sinners’ Could Make History at the Oscars

Arkapaw and I soon discover that we grew up in neighboring towns in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was born in Oxnard, but moved north with her mother (who is of Filipina descent) when she was two years old. While studying art history at Loyola Marymount University, she took an elective course in film, and felt drawn to it. But she couldn’t find any evidence of a successful female cinematographer—until she stumbled upon Ellen Kuras, the DP of Blow. “There was one,” Arkapaw says. “So I thought, Oh, if there’s one, there can be more.”

After studying at the American Film Institute, she worked on music videos for artists like Haim, Solange Knowles, and Janelle Monáe, and made her first major feature, Palo Alto, with Coppola. She almost met with Coogler when he was assembling his 2015 sports drama Creed, but at the time, “the studio didn’t think I had enough credits. I wasn’t as advanced as they would’ve liked,” she says.

That had changed by the time Coogler needed a cinematographer for the Black Panther sequel—and Arkapaw already had a relationship with Marvel after working on its series Loki. She and Coogler, another Northern California native, “hit it off. I think this Bay Area thing was special; it’s like I knew him already,” she says.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was an ambitious blockbuster, and the biggest film Arkapaw had ever worked on. Sinners would come with a new set of challenges. Arkapaw had to navigate the technical aspects of having one actor (Michael B. Jordan) play two characters who often interacted with each other. The opening scene of Sinners shows how she managed it without making the casting a distracting gimmick: The brothers are leaning against a car and pass a cigarette between them. It’s a simple but effective moment that allows the viewer to forget one man is playing both characters. Arkapaw says Coogler had initially envisioned the scene as showing both brothers at once. But later, “I presented an idea of moving that camera around. It made everything harder,” she says.

Arkapaw’s greatest test came when Coogler decided he wanted Sinners to be the first movie to shoot entirely on two different large formats: Ultra Panavision 70 and IMAX. She and her team had to familiarize themselves with equipment and cameras they’d never used before. “There’s a lot of technical and logistical stuff, and you want to do a good job,” she says. “But I thrive in that kind of pressurized situation.”