Short: The Sandpit
I've been wanting to use tilt-shift interludes as part of a feature film for a while now. These guys put the effect to beautiful use.
Here are some deets on how they did it (hint: they didn't actually use tilt-shift lenses).
How 'Sinners' Shot That Crazy Juke Joint Dance Scene
Ryan Coogler and Autumn Durald gave the audience something to talk about.
Apr 21, 2025
After its big opening weekend, Sinners feels like the movie everyone is talking about. Ryan Coogler's vampire epic has a controversial ending, fun villain design, and this amazing juke joint scene that everyone in the lobby of my theater was talking about.
And Entertainment Weekly did a deep dive into that scene, which was very informative.
Today, I wanted to dig into this scene and talk about how they accomplished it. There will be slight spoilers for the movie to follow, so if you haven't seen it, rush to the theater and then come back here.
Let's dive in.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
That Juke Joint Dance Scene from 'Sinners'
During the scene in question, we have the character of Sammie playing the guitar for everyone in the juke. His song blues is able to transcend space and time, connecting the past and the present.
Suddenly, there are people from many different generations dancing and singing, reflecting rock and roll, rap, geisha, DJs, and tribal music.
It's a really fun and unique part of the story, and what made this movie stand out to me.
In order to shoot this sequence, they used IMAX cameras. You would never be able to shoot this in one take, even though it sort of looks like it in the movie.
Coogler says, "They can only film for about a minute and a half — maybe it's a minute and 45 — because they rip through film at such a speed that you can only shoot for so long. So we basically broke it up into sections that were as long as we could film per reel."
"We did a lot of rehearsals, and our crew size swelled up from that," Coogler explained. "We expanded for all of the extras and the dancers, and all of the different materials we needed."
The music in the scene is Raphael Saadiq's "I Lied To You," which gets a remix from the movie's composer, Ludwig Göransson, who served as the DJ on set to get everyone leaning in during the scene.
Göransson was involved in the previz with Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald to plan how the camera would move and how the music could complement that.
Göransson explained, "Then we met at the soundstage in New Orleans weeks before we were going to shoot the scene," he continued, "We mapped it out with the camera — the route it's going to take, what musicians we need and where they're going to be. The camera operator was there, too, and with dancers. We created a video and then I created another piece of music that tied everything in together."
Miles Caton, who plays Sammie, sang the whole time, creating a party atmosphere that got everyone having a good, ethereal time, just like the scene demanded.
They shot the scene in three parts, and each part took about half a day to film. The IMAX camera is moving around the whole time, so you had to choreograph when people would step in front of it, how it could point different directions, and which Michael B. Jordan twin was in front of the camera and when.
But even with all this rough stuff, the results are stunning and worth the effort.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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