Ms. Arkapaw, as a cinematographer, how did you develop your taste in the visual?
It started probably with my grandparents on my mother's side. They traveled a lot, and they took a lot of photographs, my grandmother had tons of photo books that I remember we would always look through. I had a relationship with photographs when I was growing up, it was a way that I could connect with family members or see the world, see where they traveled. Then I started doing my own photography in high school, I wanted to do my undergrad in art history so that I could become a curator or get an internship at Sotheby's. That was the path that I was on. But then I went to LMU and took a film genre course and I started to understand films. We watched Broadway Danny Rose, Raging Bull, stuff like that… So the visual medium has always been on my mind.
What other films sparked inspiration for you visually? I read that in college you and your roommate would re-watch Trainspotting and Heat — two pretty different ends of the visual spectrum.
Yes, we would literally watch Trainspotting or Heat every day because there's just so much energy and excitement in those films. They made us feel, they kind of woke you up. To watch something multiple times, I mean, obviously you enjoy it, but also every time you find something new. It's a very visceral experience.
“To read something like that... That feels like a once in a lifetime script.”
Are you hoping these days to make films that do that for an audience as well?
I think it's cool that you bring it up, because I think audiences have found that in films, for example, like my recent project with Ryan Coogler, Sinners. I think they are watching it multiple times in various formats, and it excites them to find something new they haven't seen yet. So I love to think that I’ve had that experience with those films, and now Sinners is able to do that for other people. It’s very cool.
Apparently when you read the script for Sinners, you connected with it immediately, and the visuals really jumped off the page.
Absolutely, I read it and I was just blown away. Sometimes when you read scripts, they're based in a reality that you can grasp and it's easier to relate to. But something like this, Ryan infused it with so much imagination… It got me immediately excited. I had a really strong connection with the subject matter because my father was born in New Orleans, he's Creole, and I visited my grandparents there when I was younger. I already had that visual in my head of what I remember the south being like as a kid, and then to imagine the old south how Ryan envisioned it. And it just grew from there.
Does it happen very often that you connect so viscerally and immediately with a script right off the bat?
It’s definitely rare. To read something like that, that feels like a once in a lifetime script. But for me, I do tend to work with my friends a lot because I want to take projects where I know it's a good fit for me, where we share the same interests and same sensibilities
What if you didn’t share those interests and sensibilities? Does that mean you would pass on the project?
I guess it depends. I'll of course take a meeting and if I feel like the story is a good fit for me, then I might still do it. But I won’t do it if it doesn't inspire me. If I’ve had a meeting and it feels like you're not on the same page, I’ll pass. I’ve reached a point where I can be selective, yeah. But it also means that the projects I do say yes to are ones I really connect with, where we come into the meeting with the same ideas and references, for example, like what happened with Kate Herron on Loki. I’d been offered some other series before but never had the time to commit, so in that case, it really worked out serendipitously. I was really ready to make some bigger, bolder choices, stylistically, and we came in with the same references and images in our look books, films like Se7en, Blade Runner, and Zodiac… So it ended up working out, and even though it was Marvel, it was kind of a different avenue for the studio at the time. Kate was great at making this new world very interesting.
How did those references manifest in the final series?
The biggest thing would be mood and tone. Those reference films have a through-line in creating mystery with darkness, which was important for the Loki series. It’s alluring, and we were both interested in how to use light and shadow to tell the story. In Sinners, our references included a book of photographs by a woman named Eudora Welty from the 1930s in Mississippi. We wanted to encapsulate that same sense of environment and beauty, and that impacted our camera choices. I operated the camera with Ryan right next to me, and that was something new for us. There’s a more emotional connection there. I always gravitate towards film because it’s texturally and visually a bit more nostalgic, it’s more cinematic. It was similar with TheLast Showgirl, we shot that handheld, on a really beautiful small set, so we were ablet o follow Pamela Anderson really closely, and the result was something more intimate. Whereas with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which I also worked on with Ryan, we shot on multiple cameras, in digital.
“Once a film is finished and out there in the world, it’s an out of body experience.”
When you’re shooting digitally on a big Marvel project, are you still able to achieve that same sense of nostalgia and grittiness that you get with film?
Digital is a tool. You can work a lot of elements in order to give it that filmic curve, you can add texture with lenses, and light things a certain way, and make all these choices to look more like film. Each medium asks you to operate in different way, and the set has to operate in a different way.
You’ve always thrived on mixing things up, not only in the kinds of films you shoot, but also the type of projects to take on — you have a long history in commercial work and music videos. Do all of those projects inform one another?
100 percent, yeah. My film students are always asking me what the differences are between the big projects and the small projects, but for me, it's always the same problem: there's never enough time to tell a story. And even if you have a lot of money, you don't have enough! You just always feel like constrained, that's just how filmmaking is. There are always constraints and you have to figure out how to work through them. I think for me, starting out in indie film and doing a lot of music videos and short films and fashion films early on… You didn't have much, so you had to figure out how to make something look good with nothing. You had to figure out how to make it work with a smaller crew and fewer lights, you had to structure your day so you could use the sun or do something to achieve a certain look. So you become more resourceful and more efficient. It’s really exciting to be part of that energy on a set.
Is that when you feel the most alive as a cinematographer? Problem solving on set and making things work in dedication to the image?
I mean, when you're in it and you're shooting, it's so difficult! You're going to war, essentially. You’re right that I thrive in that, because that's the whole point, I love making those quick decisions, that's really what it's about. But when I feel most alive? I would say that's when I’m sitting in a theater watching the final project. Sometimes you just look at your collaborators afterwards like, “Did we do that?” (Laughs) It’s so much work and now it’s finished and out there in the world… The excitement, the happiness… It’s an out of body experience.