Behind the Lens: An Inside Look at the VFX of Sinners

Image Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

By Luis Zonenberg

The following includes quotes from an event hosted by the Q&A Agency. 

As Oscars season draws to a close, many are curious to see which film will take home the coveted award for Best Picture. While it might seem that Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is geared up to win, there are other films that could swoop in by surprise. None stick out more than Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which made history with its 16 Oscar nominations! The press tour is currently underway, with Coogler and many of the film’s cast and crew sharing all the praise and awards the film has already received. 

In the midst of Sinners’ Oscar campaign, some of the crew decided to make a pitstop for a webinar hosted by the Q&A agency via Zoom. The Q&A agency is a platform founded by Adam S. Gordon, a Tony-nominated producer for many Broadway plays like Kinky Boots, Pippin, and The Color Purple. He founded the agency with the intention of connecting film and TV fans with cast and crew members of many different film productions. 

I was fortunate enough to attend one such event on February 19, watching a live webinar via Vimeo that featured the VFX supervisor and artists who worked on Sinners. I was unable to attend the Zoom webinar, but fortunately I was able to catch an encore recording of the webinar broadcasted live on Vimeo. 

The webinar featured four different VFX artists, as well as VFX Supervisor, Nick Marshall. They took turns responding to each question, with one of the big ones asking how they balanced the use of CGI with the real locations and practical effects. 

“There wasn’t really an appetite to do big full CG crowds on this show, but we did have shots out the train station that required some pretty major environment extensions with quite a lot of crowd as part of that,” Marshall stated during the Q&A. “Not only do you get the interaction, but you also get the actor’s responses to it as well. You know, things change when they’re actually in an environment that gives them something tangible to work with.” 

Another daunting challenge the crew faced was creating the effect of the Smokestack twins, both of whom were played by Michael B. Jordan. 

Image Courtesy of Befores and Afters

“We want to make sure that with all the work that Michael is putting into playing two different characters… that we honor that performance,” said VFX artist Espen Nordahl. “The whole goal here was when you do an effect like this that needs to hold up for the whole movie… you kind of want to make the first shot the hardest one. We were literally trying to come up with the hardest way to do this, to design the shot and make it so that… if you can make that work, then you’ll sell it for the rest of the film.” 

The crew incorporated several different tactics when it came to creating the “twinning effect” for the movie. Some included stitching separate takes in which Jordan played each brother, merging them to create more seamless sequences. Other scenes required more complex VFX work, with the crew having to utilize a custom-built “Halo” array that contained 10-12 different cameras. 

“You know Ryan comes from a sports background, he likes to make momentum as he shoots,” said VFX artist Michael Ralla. “So it simply wasn’t an option that we’d have like a clunky, cumbersome big rig that’s somewhere in the corner and we’d send Michael there… whatever what we wanted to do had to happen in that moment right after he says, ‘Cut.’” 

Several techniques were employed to create the simplest of illusions, with extensive work done to bring the vampires to life. The VFX artists created digital doubles for each one, adding little flourishes of blood and fire on top of the practical makeup and prosthetics. The toughest one was for Remmick, since the stunt team had constructed a fire rig to create a whirlwind of fire for the climactic battle sequence towards the end. The VFX artists had to not only create a digital double for Remmick, but also had to replicate the intensity of the fire on top of him! 

The event ran for a little over an hour, with an encore webinar offered two hours afterwards. The Q&A agency offers more webinars like this on their website, with free registration and times selected for people to choose which webinar they would like to attend. Sinners is currently nominated for the Academy Award for Best VFX and considering all the hard work the artists had to put in, it’s easy to see why this film received such a prestigious nomination. 

Sinners is now streaming on HBO Max and is available to purchase on all digital retailers.