Crafting the Sensational Sound of ‘Sinners’ – with Benjamin A. Burtt, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker, David Butler, and Felipe Pacheco

Director Ryan Coogler’s hit blockbuster film Sinners — now set to stream on Max this July 4th — is a “sneaky musical” period-drama horror film. It’s a unique mashup of genres that received critical acclaim and drew audiences to theaters in droves.

Coogler went big on the production of Sinners, shooting on large format IMAX 70mm film and Ultra Panavision 70, and recording all the musical performances (even the buskers at the train station) live on set. Achieving ambitious goals takes a true team effort, so Coogler had the post sound team start early. At pre-production meetings, they discussed plans for the music scenes to ensure that those recordings would work best for post sound, and even had music editor Felipe Pacheco on set working closely with the production sound crew. The collaboration between the production and post sound teams also resulted in invaluable recordings of other effects, like location ambiences, crowd movement tracks, and crowd responses inside the Juke Joint.

Here, sound supervisor Benjamin A. Burtt, re-recording mixer Brandon Proctor, re-recording mixer/sound designer Steve Boeddeker, supervising dialogue & ADR editor David Butler, and music editor Felipe Pacheco at Skywalker Sound talk about setting the scene of 1930s Mississippi through sound, recording insects and birds to match the natural day/night cycle of the film’s story, working with production sound mixer Chris Welcker to get location ambiences and to record music live on-set, editing the live music to fit the scenes and keeping that live music feel while polishing up the tracks, cutting sound design to composer Ludwig Göransson’s score, adding animalistic elements to the vampires in a natural-sounding way, collaborating with director Ryan Coogler to perfect the Sinners immersive film mixes on Dub Stage 10 at Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services in Burbank, and much, much more!

Sinners | Official Trailer

What were director Ryan Coogler’s ideas for sound on Sinners? How did he want sound to add to the storytelling?

Benjamin A. Burtt (BB): The first task was to bring the world of 1930s Mississippi to life. We’re in the South; it’s hot. There is a lot of animal and insect life. The film was shot during the summer, so while there were plenty of bugs in the production recordings themselves, we did fill them out further, especially once David and Brandon cleaned the tracks up.

The film takes us to the town of Clarksdale, and we’re telling stories beyond what’s just on screen. Smoke and Sammie go into Bo Chow’s grocery store on one side of the street. It’s quiet and not very active, but when you cross to the white side of the street, there are tons of people. Things are nicer. We recorded loop group for crowds to give a hint that it’s maybe more racist on that side of the street.

Brandon Proctor (BP): The dialogue was separated, so there were only white people talking on one side and black people talking on the other side of the street to try to clarify that they are segregated and separated.

There was not one uniform dialect; each character had a unique one, even Smoke and Stack.

David Butler (DB): Ryan brought in Beth McGuire, who was the dialect coach on the Black Panther movies, to help the cast with their dialect. Each actor had an audio file just for them (based on where their character grew up and lived) that contained key phrases. They were these old audio interviews that she unearthed that the actor would listen to and repeat so much that they had them memorized. There was not one uniform dialect; each character had a unique one, even Smoke and Stack.

Beth was an incredible coach. To help with tricky words, she would go, “Say (random word). Now say (different random word). Now (third random word). Okay, now say (the word we are trying to fix in ADR).” And boom! They would get it. All of this was to make sure that everything felt real and not people pretending to be people from the South.

BB: We were world-building using the sound of older vehicles and older technology to establish the sound of the ’30s.

At the Juke, it was important for Ryan that it felt like one giant party. He wanted to feel the party progress from when things are just getting started to slowly building up, and going full tilt — everyone is there, letting loose, having the time of their life.

Ryan and composer Ludwig Göransson wanted it to feel like when you go to a party or club, and there is just this wall of sound

From an effect standpoint, we started with smaller crowds. We could maybe hear more specific actions and foley, maybe things feel a little bit more intimate, but as the night goes on, the crowd grows, and with it the walla, the crowd movement, the stomps, and all the activity in the Juke just continue to build.

Ryan and composer Ludwig Göransson wanted it to feel like when you go to a party or club, and there is just this wall of sound, and you’re having to shout to communicate with the person next to you. So we just did what we could to help sell that the people were having a great time.

The crowd sounds and stomps needed to feel like they were part of the music, that it was all connected, so the audience could feel as if they were there.

Steve Boeddeker (SB): The crowd sounds and stomps needed to feel like they were part of the music, that it was all connected, so the audience could feel as if they were there. It was a crazy collaboration between music, sound effects, foley, and dialogue.

BP: Production sound mixer Chris Welcker recorded a lot of walla and feet, which he then provided to the effects department.

The music was recorded live, so he delivered that to the music department.

Felipe Pacheco (FP): On the music side, Ryan wanted everything to sound as authentic as possible. So Ludwig and executive music producer Serena McKinney (credited as Serena Göransson) spent months doing research, traveling around the South and learning everything they could about the region, its people, and the blues. All the musicians you see on screen are real blues players; we even had legends like Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush come in to perform.

Burt’s guitar is also an original Martin from the 1910s. The guitar shop actually wouldn’t sell it to us unless we promised we weren’t going to break it on camera.

All the instruments are period-accurate, too. Sammie’s resonator has gotten a lot of attention, but Burt’s guitar is also an original Martin from the 1910s. The guitar shop actually wouldn’t sell it to us unless we promised we weren’t going to break it on camera. We even looked into what kind of metal alloy the strings would’ve been made of back then.

Did Chris also give you some ambiences?

BB: He did! Chris was great. He had an ambisonic mic on hand that captured surround tracks of the Juke. He was able to get a couple of takes of all the characters and background actors dancing and moving around without music playing. At face value, it’s not a super exciting sound, but we had this great layer of body movement that added this texture of a large crowd of people moving around in the actual Juke. It just sat underneath everything and helped glue it all together.

Chris […] was able to get a couple of takes of all the characters and background actors dancing and moving around without music playing.

Of course, we added foley to that. By the way, our foley team (Willard Overstreet, Alyson Dee Moore, Katie Rose, and Darrin Mann) did an amazing job on this film. I can’t say enough about them; they were awesome. They gave me a few wild takes of one or two people dancing on a wooden floor at different cadences. I threw these on my keyboard and was able to layer them up and make really nice crowds of people dancing. Again, as with the body movement, it’s not your typical exciting sound yet all these various flavors together helped make the Juke feel much bigger, busier, and more alive than it may have been on set.

SB: It was much more complicated than it might sound because it needed to feel as exciting and as loud as we could get away with, but blend with the music to feel fun while also staying out of the way of the amazing dialogue performances.

Chris and his team […] recorded at all hours of the day, inside and out of the Juke.

In addition to the crowd movement recordings, Chris and his team were putting the mic out wherever they were to collect ambiences between takes or during downtime. They recorded at all hours of the day, inside and out of the Juke. They recorded some very active birds in the woods where the twins stashed the truck. And, of course, the captured crowds of people hanging out at the train station between takes. I’d often find little nuggets in the recordings of doors, cars, cash register bells, and even some cool military jet flybys from a nearby Naval Air Station. Those weren’t handy in this movie, of course, but I was excited to discover them amongst the tracks.

Benny loves that stuff.

We got a lot of useful material that found its way into the film. So before we even started in post, we had a great collection of ambiences and sounds to build up from.

BP: Since it was so music-heavy, we had asked to have Felipe (music editor) be there from the get-go. He recorded impulse responses of the Juke Joint for us. We used those in the dialogue, the music, and the effects to have a unifying space that is actually the location where they filmed. So we started with what Felipe and Chris recorded on set and then added everything from there.
 

There are tons of crowds in the film: on the street, at the train station, and at the Juke Joint. Having those crowd movement recordings must have been invaluable…

BP: Absolutely. It was mostly movement sounds, but we also got some crowd voices as wild takes. Chris did a great job of controlling movement and feet when there was important dialogue we needed to follow, and then recording assembled people with movement to add the realism back in.

For the song “Pale Moon,” he had people chant “Pale Moon” in this space on set, and we were able to add that to our mix.

Supervising Dialogue & ADR editor David Butler

David Butler (DB): Everyone on set was wearing era-appropriate shoes — leather soles on wood floors, constantly moving. The loud clunks of heels were not desirable during emotional exchanges (between Mary and Sammie or Mary and Stack, for example). Dialogue & ADR editor Jason W. Freeman, and I went through the tracks and removed the hard clunks but retained the sliding sound of the soles. The was almost a rhythm to the shhhshhhshhhshhh of all these feet sliding on the wood floor that made Club Juke feel alive.

BB: In addition to the live music, Chris and Felipe also got some great recordings of people in the crowd reacting and calling out to the musicians. Lots of great stuff that we were able to pepper in when Slim was on the keys, or Sammie was strumming his guitar, or while they’re bringing the house down with “Pale Moon.” The crowd was very much alive throughout all of it, and a lot of that came from recordings we got from production.

SB: I have to say Benny and David were masters at digging out the nuggets that kept it all alive. I’m kind of bad about pushing Brandon to make the dialogue super clean (which he would do anyway), but then we slap all these dirty effects nuggets in to keep it funky.

BP: Then we layered with loop group afterwards to have another layer of separation for all of those scenes.

DB: We recorded the group very early in the process because it was important for Ryan to have that added layer of crowd. He stressed how important it was for the Juke to feel alive. I am working on a project where the picture editor said during a spotting session that she wanted the night club to feel like it is its own character, and then asked the room, “Have any of you seen Sinners? The Juke was its own character.”

We recorded the group very early in the process because it was important for Ryan to have that added layer of crowd. He stressed how important it was for the Juke to feel alive.

She was talking about the feet, the movement, the crowd, and the voices. What’s great about Chris’s recordings is that he had mics close enough to the crowd that we are getting all these real responses in the moment, like Sammie telling his story before he sings, and Slim telling everyone to go home.

Then in loop group, we set up two Neumann U 87 microphones on opposite sides of the stage, and had actors from Barbara Harris’s The Looping Group put on headphones and feel the movie. Isa Hall, the leader that day, picked up immediately on what I wanted. They took what the people on set were doing and then amplified it, which gave Brandon the option of pushing it whenever it was needed.
 

In addition to capturing crowds with loop group, did you also record singing with them? What about sounds for the vampire group?

DB: We did not record them singing or chanting. We did get them to say the Lord’s Prayer, so we had a clean recording of it.

Barbara [Harris] made sure that we had actors who could have the energy to do all the juke scenes and then, at the end of the day, kill and be killed as vampires.

Barbara made sure that we had actors who could have the energy to do all the juke scenes and then, at the end of the day, kill and be killed as vampires. The group leader, Isa Hall, would stand next to each actor and pretend to stake them. We covered a lot in one day.

We had a couple of smaller sessions to supplement what was happening on screen that Ryan thought of towards the end, specifically, the voices underneath Slim talking about his buddy Rice getting lynched, and adding in “racist shit” as Ryan called it just before the shootout and on the white side of the street in Clarksdale. Ryan would be on stage when we had to do something he felt was critical to the storytelling.
 

Going back to the bugs, were you able to get clean recordings of insects from the shooting location? Or, did you find similar insects in sound libraries?

BB: We got a lot of recordings from Chris and the production team. I also have a friend who lives in the South — not in Mississippi specifically, but in that general area — who did some recordings for me. What’s cool about Sinners is that it takes place over 24 hours, and so my friend went out to a few locations and captured recordings at all times of day: morning, late morning, midday, evening, and through the night. So as the movie goes along, we could match the insect recordings to the correct time of day in the film. So, during the morning, the insects are more gentle and peaceful, with lots of singing birds. As the day rolls on, the ambiences become more insect-heavy; the cicadas are louder and more shrill as it gets hotter, and this sound adds to the feeling of humidity. As night approaches, the cicada-like insects start to shift toward crickets, and even the crickets change throughout the night. So the sound of the insects progressed with the natural daily cycle.

my friend went out to a few locations and captured recordings at all times of day: morning, late morning, midday, evening, and through the night. So as the movie goes along, we could match the insect recordings to the correct time of day in the film.

SB: It was important that the audience knew that day and night were a big deal, without giving that away right from the start.

BP: And so, because of that, we had to remove a lot of the insects from the production recordings because they weren’t always correct for the time of day it was supposed to be.

And two types of cicadas came out last year, after 17 years. So, there were plenty of insect sounds. Plus, cicadas turn on and off in a scene and are present when you don’t want to hear them, like during an intimate conversation.

We were also dealing with the IMAX camera sound on the dialogue lines […] Sometimes those IMAX cameras were so loud

We were also dealing with the IMAX camera sound on the dialogue lines. David and Jason [Freeman] did incredible denoising work for the film to make it as consistent as possible. Sometimes those IMAX cameras were so loud. They have three levels of sound and volume.

I remember when we were working on the first temp, there was this growling sound happening during the river scene between Remmick and Sammie. I was like, “Oh, that’s some cool sound design.” I thought it was sound design! But when I soloed my dialogue, it was on the dialogue recordings. It had this sweeping, growling sound.

BB: Like, “What is that? Can we lose those animal growls?”

BP: I was looking at them like, “Are you going to lose those growls? They’re really loud. They’re cool, but they’re loud.” Then, I realized that I had those. Those were on the dialogue tracks.

So, sometimes it was pretty insane. There were layers and layers of things to get rid of so we could rebuild the sound the way we wanted, with the insects more consistent throughout the speakers and not just in the center.
 

Can you talk further about your approach to cleaning up the production tracks?

BP: David and Jason could talk more about their process. But I know they did work to give me the most consistent dialogue to mix. Then, if I needed to, I would do additional denoising from there. I normally layer my denosing between dip filters, iZotope RX, WNS, Clarity, and Hush. And we also used Hush as a plugin inside iZotope.

DB: I would venture to say that roughly 90% of the movie had some degree of denoising. Different applications have different methods of reducing noise, so we’d use a little bit of everything.

Hush and Accentize DX Revive used with iZotope RX did most of the heavy lifting.

Hush and Accentize DX Revive used with iZotope RX did most of the heavy lifting. Jason and I might go fairly strong with Hush (my default starting point was a reduction of 16dB, but then I would adjust things from there). Using those two with RX is helpful because I would see how much was coming out. It’s like going to the eye doctor: number one or number two? I’d hit the noise reduction and then look at the backgrounds. How much did they reduce? I’d look at the voices. Did anything go away? If yes, then ease up on it.

Noise reduction is pointless if the voices are gutted. Sometimes we might use RX Dialogue Isolate, RX Dialogue DeNoise, and Waves Clarity — all of these in very small amounts. I would use all these plugins to shave off a thin layer of noise. Then, I renamed the rendered file with what was used and how much it was reduced. It’s time-consuming and borderline OCD, but it’s helpful to know how far we’ve pushed something in case we have to un-do it. Then I’d go to the mix stage, and Brandon would push the slider in Hush so far that smoke would be coming out of his tablet. He could get away with a lot with the music and sound design providing ample cover.

We had some wild recordings where the actors would just do the scene without the camera rolling. I know Chris [Welcker] was really pushing for that. We ended up using an incredible amount of his recordings.

We had some wild recordings where the actors would just do the scene without the camera rolling. I know Chris was really pushing for that. We ended up using an incredible amount of his recordings. I recorded so much ADR just in case. The majority of the ADR in the movie was for added lines, fixing words with incorrect dialect, or efforts.

There were only a few spots when we used ADR for technical reasons: Remmick in the nursery at Bert and Joan’s house, and a few parts of Remmick in the river with Sammie. Jack’s performance is so incredible that we didn’t want to lose it, but a close-up with the camera right there, while standing in water, at night in the South with 87,000 insects making noise? We’d have to sneak in some ADR.

And then add the fact that we would have scenes with two booms and six lavs going, and everything needed to be run through Sound Radix’s Auto-Align Post. It was relentless.
 

What went into the sound of the vampires?

BB: One of the great things about Ryan is that he is always open to exploring ideas. Ryan kept bringing up snakes and reptiles and vultures — anything that is associated with vampire lore. So, we started by playing with vocals from those types of creatures, adding them under dialogue or when they would attack.

in the earlier scenes we were more understated and used soft hisses from various reptiles along with some snake rattles

But it took a little experimenting to strike the right balance of how much vocalizing they should do. Would they be more human or should they be more animalistic? Inevitably, this led us to ask whether we were tipping our hand too much at times.

Ultimately, Ryan wanted the people to get the sense that something was off, but not be able to put their finger on it, so we leaned into them being more human and were much more subtle with anything we added. I think in the earlier scenes we were more understated and used soft hisses from various reptiles along with some snake rattles.

Later in the film, when everyone was aware that they were dealing with vampires, we had a bit more freedom to lean into the animalistic sounds. So when Cornbread lunged at Smoke, and especially during the vampire attack near the end, we certainly added more aggressive attacks, growls, and hisses. Vultures have some pretty terrifying screeches that proved useful.

Another idea we toyed with was how the natural world might react when around our characters. Evil supposedly followed the twins wherever they went. Ryan pointed out one moment in Clarksdale, when Smoke is walking towards Bo Chow’s store, he walks by this horse, and it spooks. It was just a happenstance of that particular take, but it was analogous to this idea that things around them had a sixth sense for this evil that went around with them. Similarly, we tried losing some of the insect life, or carving out some holes when Remmick, Bert, and Joan show up again to show that the natural world was aware of the evil surrounding them. So we tried to play up moments or opportunities like that where we could.

as Remmick, Bert and Joan are singing, we made the night sounds really reverby and almost a dissonant musical tone

SB: Yeah, as Remmick, Bert and Joan are singing, we made the night sounds really reverby and almost a dissonant musical tone. And in mixing the effects and foley for some of these scenes, silence became our best friend, especially when Cornbread is in the woods.

I saw the screening in Oakland, and an older woman kept hitting me every time the silence was broken by a loud scare. “Stop it!”

BP: We didn’t do any vocal processing for the vampires. We were trying to be careful about being corny or aggressive with that type of stuff. The only time we did do something was at the end, when Remmick’s nails had grown out and he spoke in a low voice. We enhanced that and affected that part of his voice.
 

Any other vocal processing in the film?

BB: The other place we toyed with vocal processing was for Annie in her store, to give a sense that maybe there is a bit of magic to her that we didn’t suspect. Maybe she has this connection with nature, or natural elements, that we aren’t aware of, but you can hear her voice get bigger and pull Smoke into focus to listen to the words she’s saying.

BP: Annie opens the movie with, “There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and future.” She is our spiritual guide through the whole film. In the surreal montage when Sammie sings “I Lied to You,” she summons this opening VO to connect us to the past and future music and its relationship to the blues music of the Mississippi. During the montage VO, she is all around us in the theatre and in the upper Atmos speakers. We wanted her to feel larger than life, motherly, and magical. In her store with Smoke, we wanted to sonically connect more to her Hoodoo practice as her dialogue gets a little more angry and low, but it also drifts into delayed whispers. We didn’t want to overbake this treatment and tried to have it be as natural as possible and connect it to the ambience and rumble.

In her store with Smoke, we wanted to sonically connect more to her Hoodoo practice as her dialogue gets a little more angry and low, but it also drifts into delayed whispers.

We tried more treatments for her voice in other places, too, like whenever she got upset, the world around her was always affected by her faith, but it just became too much. We didn’t want her to sound demonic, and it was so easy to go too far.

BB: We definitely pushed Annie’s “powerful voice” too far and then pulled back to where we landed. As I was saying earlier, Ryan loves trying ideas out, and he’ll often ask us to see how far we can take something before it breaks. You don’t want to pull people out of a scene by going too wild, but Ryan often gets excited when we explore these ideas.

SB: I love how that came out. It really changed her character.

DB: I kinda love how far Brandon took Annie’s voice originally. It was a big swing, which Ryan loves. Yeah, it was too much and Brandon scaled it back, but as Benny said, Ryan likes trying things out.

BP: It actually became more powerful when it was just on that one moment and not too over the top. It actually made it stronger.

We wanted the audience to stay connected to the story as much as possible. That theme came up a few times, like when Delta Slim is talking about the lynching during the car ride.

We wanted the audience to stay connected to the story as much as possible. That theme came up a few times, like when Delta Slim is talking about the lynching during the car ride. There’s a whole track of effects and music, and dialogue. It’s his memory of what happened. Originally, we tried putting it in all the speakers and making the story music, effects, and dialogue dreamy, to try and connect to the past and somehow distinguish it from the dialogue in the car. But it ultimately distracts you from his story, which is so important. It was a difficult task of finding just that right level. We were considering not having any radio show sounds behind Delta.

DB: Slim’s story about the lynching was a full-on radio play between what I cut together and Benny’s design work playing off of it. Isolated, it’s great. Played with music and Delroy talking, it was too much. So we started muting things on stage until it felt right.

SB: Ultimately, it was feeling like we were jacking it up simply because we could and not because it needed it. But as Ryan likes to say, “Let’s break it.”

BP: And we tried one more time, making everything mono, just right behind his voice, without any reverb on it — just clean and simple. And then it didn’t distract from him. He became the leader of the story, not the sound effects and music.

We tried to keep sounds period-specific, even though it’s a sneaky musical that happens to have vampires.

Just having that question of “how far do we go with things?” was a constant give and take on this film because it’s so grounded in the 1930s. We tried to keep sounds period-specific, even though it’s a sneaky musical that happens to have vampires. The key was not to do anything that was too high-tech. And if we do something high-tech, how do we do it without anyone noticing?

How did you handle the in situ musical moments, like Delta Slim playing the harmonica at the train station and Sammie playing the guitar and singing during the car ride, or performing “This Little Light of Mine” in the church?

BP: I had dialogue de-noisers in my music session. It was important to connect these performances with the actors in those moments. That’s why it was so important for Felipe to be out there for all these live recordings.

It was important to connect these performances with the actors in those moments. That’s why it was so important for Felipe to be out there for all these live recordings.

It was important to make it feel like it’s live and it’s being recorded there, and at the same time, how do we take it to the next level and make it feel massive?

“Pale Moon Rising” is a good example because a lot of that wasn’t live. But then, how do we make that track feel like you’re in this fever pitch of a dream of this song? I’m doing things like up-mixing the kick stem into 6.0 in the Atmos speakers, so the walls feel like they’re just pulling apart from themselves — lots of little fun things like that to give it as much impact as possible.

For the traveling music scene, where Sammie and Stack are in the car, we live with a lot of the noise. And at times, that noise is not present, so we would recreate the noise to make it consistent.

At the end of the movie, for “This Little Light of Mine,” we didn’t do anything to it. We wanted to keep it authentic to Miles Canton’s performance since he learned how to play guitar for the film, and it’s so amazing to see him perform it.

Music Editor Felipe Pacheco; photo by Jessica Millete

DB: Very early on, Felipe sent me “Travelin'” to see if it could be salvaged. In reality, there wasn’t a choice. We had to use it. That song does not work if it’s a pre-record or we re-do it in post. Fortunately, we could get rid of just enough of the road and engine noise to make it work.

FP: We actually shot the section of Sammie playing “Travelin'” over three days. The car was moving at different speeds depending on the day, so the engine noise varied noticeably between takes. When Ludwig and I started piecing it together, we realized that to make the takes match, we’d either have to add noise or remove it to even things out.

Sammie’s vocal register also overlapped with the car’s engine noise, so we couldn’t just take out the rumble without thinning out his voice. Any frequency cleanup had to be super surgical, or we’d end up damaging the performance.

For Delta Slim’s scene at the train station, we had a really fun setup. Harmonica legend Bobby Rush was playing live on set, surrounded by extras so the camera couldn’t see him. Delroy would mime along to what he was hearing in real time, and then in post, it was just a matter of fine-tuning the sync to make it look like it was Delta playing.

Miles came in and played it like he’d been singing that song for 50 years […] everyone just stopped what they were doing, went totally silent, and just listened

“This Little Light of Mine” was easy. Miles came in and played it like he’d been singing that song for 50 years. It was early in the shoot, and a lot of the crew hadn’t heard him sing yet. I remember during the first rehearsal, everyone just stopped what they were doing, went totally silent, and just listened.

SB: We had one of the most fun nights of my career. It was late one Saturday night with the director, all producers, the composer and his team, as well as the rest of the sound crew. We were trying all kinds of fun and crazy stuff until Tina, the Post Sup., finally shut us down. But a bunch of it stayed in the movie.

DB: Ryan was dancing a jig at one point. The photo is timestamped 11:02 pm. That was when things started getting loopy. I think it was more than “some of it.” I think the only thing that didn’t stay was how loud it was.

BB: On the effects side, we would find ways to play into some of the dirt by adding some wind or some wheels on gravel. We tried to match the noise from production to help make it feel natural if we couldn’t clear it out.

We didn’t want to polish that too much. We wanted to keep it a little grittier so you can hear the gravel and the car.

BP: There were times when we didn’t want to clean out the noise. We wanted to keep as much grit as we could, and that traveling scene was the perfect place because there are so many other ‘polished’ music moments in the film. We didn’t want to polish that too much. We wanted to keep it a little grittier so you can hear the gravel and the car.

BB: That was something they were concerned with right out of the gate. Before they shot, we had a few meetings with Chris, Felipe, Ryan, Zinzi, Ludwig, Serena, and a few other folks from production to discuss the best ways to record all this. They really wanted to be able to capture the music and performances on set and be able to use those in the final film. They didn’t want it to feel anything like a music video — that the music was recorded later and then laid on top. For them, that would take people out of the movie and away from the amazing performances the actors gave. So they put a lot of time and effort into being able to capture the music on set as best as they could, so that it felt authentic, which is exactly what it was, and they did a great job.

BP: Yeah, totally. Even the buskers at the train station are all recorded on set. We talked a lot about that scene in pre-production meetings, about how we could make sure it’s recorded properly.

At times, like during ‘Pale Moon,’ we’re actually burying the dialogue on purpose. The music should be the experience rather than hearing every syllable.

Originally, there was even more music in the film, if you could believe it. There are so many times that somebody’s performing in the Juke Joint, and there’s talking, and then there’s score on top of that. We had to find ways to get in and out of the music, to make these little pockets, sonic spaces, so we could hear all of the dialogue. At times, like during “Pale Moon,” we’re actually burying the dialogue on purpose. The music should be the experience rather than hearing every syllable.

We would alter our approach depending on what’s happening in the film. Is it all about the dialogue in the scene, or is it all about the experience of the scene? “Pale Moon” is all about the experience, and “I Lied to You” is all about the experience. Of course, that starts with production sound, and it goes into the music that was recorded in the studio.

SB: “Pale Moon” is such a great example of emotional mixing. At first, as we cut from location to location, the sound changes and the panning changes, but as things start to get crazy, it’s all on.
 

There are times, however, when the music feels more like a music video, such as when the past, present, and future of music come together as Sammie plays in the Juke Joint. What were some challenges for sound and music in this scene?

BP: One of the challenges was the dialogue. During the ‘voice of god’ sections of “I Lied To You,” I panned the dialogue of Annie and Delta speaking about the past and future into the Atmos object speakers. We were dealing with a Southern dialect, IMAX camera noise, and the cicadas. We wanted to make it feel big but still be clear.

Some of the stomps are from the effects or foley, and some are from the music. We had to sync that with the crowd as they start moving in the scene

The scene goes from Sammie humming, like he did in the opening field scene, to him playing guitar, and it builds with the stomping. Some of the stomps are from the effects or foley, and some are from the music. We had to sync that with the crowd as they start moving in the scene, and then find a place to get out so the music can completely take over, and from there it’s mostly music video.

Ryan would block me through the whole section and show me where he was shooting Sammie. At times, Sammie was dancing and playing guitar with Pearline. You could see Pearline, and that informed where I should pan Sammie around the room. I remember Ryan saying, “Okay, now I’m behind you because Pearline is in front, and now we’re going to the left.” I was able to follow that camera movement with panning to match what they did on the set.

Benny Burtt editing sounds for ‘Sinners’

BB: The long shots allowed us to take those liberties, to pull Sammie off the screen and pan around the room with him. If you don’t stay in this long, single shot, then you either have to keep things up the middle or the pans start to jump around, which would feel weird. Honestly, it is fun to be on the stage with a director like Ryan who is up for experimenting with the mix and wants to move Sammie’s vocals all around the room.

BP: And we wanted to see how far we could take all of this panning. We tried to make it as immersive as possible using objects above us. We were using every speaker in the Atmos surround field, and then downmixing that to the IMAX 5.0 and the IMAX 12.0 so it felt the same.

at the last minute, Benny was cutting the feet for one of those Zaouli dancers.

You always have an anchor in the front, like the piano. The choreography of that shot informs what we can get away with, and it’s so rich. I remember at the last minute, Benny was cutting the feet for one of those Zaouli dancers. I don’t know how you cut that amount of footsteps so fast.

BB: I thank Felipe.

SB: It was amazing to sit in the mix and move the characters and music around the room, and then come in the next morning and think, “Holy shit, This is great.”

BP: The footsteps added those bits of life to the music, to make it feel less like a music video. Sammie, though, was playing guitar live in that section. It adds this cohesiveness to that scene. It doesn’t make it feel like a traditional musical that would go to a ‘music video.’

DB: Benny’s tracks of feet might be one of the most impressive things I have seen in a Pro Tools session. I would not be surprised if he has dreams where he has to cut more feet for songs in the movie.

L to R: Front Row: Steve Boeddeker, Brandon Proctor, Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Goransson;
Back Row: Benny Burtt, Ammar Mohamed, Serena Goransson, Zinzi Coogler, Tina Anderson, Sev Ohanian

BB: That was one of my favorite parts of this mix. During the surreal montage, it was very important to Ryan that we knew we were in Sammie’s head, that these musicians from past and future weren’t really in the room. So, we couldn’t necessarily tie any sounds to them. Of course, we had some material prepped in case something was wanted, but not everything. With a musical moment like this, we on the effects side do not want to step on any of the music’s toes. But probably while Brandon was panning Sammie all around, Ryan casually rolled over in his chair and said, “I kind of wish we had some footsteps for that Zaouli dancer.”

His feet were moving so fast, I think I set a world record for the number of footsteps cut in a span of five or six seconds.

Of course, it’s the tribal dancer who has his feet going a thousand miles an hour. I went back to my edit room and found some footsteps and cut them in rhythm with the music. His feet were moving so fast, I think I set a world record for the number of footsteps cut in a span of five or six seconds. It was a very dense stretch of edits, but I got them cut in, Ryan approved, but then said, “Oh, and they also have these shakers. Can you get me some shakers?”

Anyways, because it was such a big music moment, it was fun as the effects guy to cut a couple of things that ended up living and playing in the final mix of that scene. Ryan and Ludwig were happy, and Felipe gave me a thumbs up from across the room. What else could I ask for? It was fun to have effects be a part of that.

SB: The whole crew was like that — all collaboration and no ego.

BP: The effects were like glue; it connected those pieces in a way.

because there’s so much music, we’d move and sync the foley and dialogue to the music even if it wasn’t perfectly in sync with the picture

To that effect, because there’s so much music, we’d move and sync the foley and dialogue to the music even if it wasn’t perfectly in sync with the picture.

BB: Yeah, occasionally we’d find a discrepancy between the picture sync versus the music sync, and we’d have to find a balance between the two that worked both ways. And if not, then we’d pick one.

BP: Exactly. The music typically would win out. Unless it was wildly out of picture sync, we’d sync the effects to the music.

SB: Yep, music and music sync always won out.

Brandon Proctor and Steve Boeddeker mixing ‘Sinners’

BB: During “Pale Moon,” when the gambler was getting beat up, we’d cut back and forth between the two rooms, so you’d hear the stomping and then you’d hear the gambler getting kicked in rhythm with the music. We’d find little ways for the effects to help keep the energy of the music going without distracting from the music.

BP: During “Pale Moon,” we used to change the music more drastically for every little cut. But it just became too cutty and the music would lose energy. We wanted to make it feel big, bold, and experiential. We get that there’s a fight, that someone was cheating at dice. You can almost mute the dialogue and know what’s happening in the scene. We didn’t have to hear all the words. Smoke even has a hard time hearing what Sammie is saying in the scene. So it’s built in.

808s are present all over the score, including ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’ with the vampire gospel singers.

The important thing was to keep the momentum going. The song keeps growing and growing. The 808s from Ludwig’s music kick in all of a sudden. It’s this Juke Joint in the ‘30s, and there are 808s kicking in.

808s are present all over the score, including “Rocky Road to Dublin” with the vampire gospel singers. There is so much amazing crossover that Ludwig does in his score for this movie.

SB: As a sound designer, I must say I have huge respect for Ludwig in how he composes not just with instruments but with sound. I’ve said before that the “secret weapon” to doing sound on a Ryan Coogler film is Ludwig. If you really listen to his music, you will know what’s in Ryan’s heart.
 

When the vampires are singing “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” was that mostly production? Was there ADR or loop group recorded for this?”

BP: There are two choirs for the scene, one of which is a gospel choir. It’s probably the first time a gospel choir sang “The Rocky Road to Dublin.”

BB: I’d say it was mostly pre-records for that, and they performed to that on set.

BP: A lot of the movie is live, or is a combination of both. There are crowds as well in that scene from production.

DB: I know we had music recordings of the actors singing “Pick Poor Robin Clean” when they converge on the Juke. It’s a great touch to be able to hear Bo Chow above the other voices when you see him.

What was the most challenging scene for sound editorial?

BB: On the effects side, I’m not sure if there was any particular scene that proved more challenging than the others. They all had aspects about them that took some time to figure out, but big music moments, like “Pale Moon,” were hard as there was a lot of cutting to different parts of the Juke, inside and outside, trying to keep the effects world consistent while also trying to feel the shifts in perspective where we wanted to feel them.

I’d say it was Remmick baptizing Sammie. There was so much noise. And Miles is acting in those moments, too. He is breathing hard and moaning and whimpering. Jason and I had to strip all that out

Cutting the stomps in time with the music while they followed the same perspective jumps was also challenging. Then, when the picture or music changed, we’d have to go and re-work all the shifts or make sure all the stomps and kicks were still in rhythm with the music.

DB: I’d say it was Remmick baptizing Sammie. There was so much noise. And Miles is acting in those moments, too. He is breathing hard and moaning and whimpering. Jason and I had to strip all that out, and then we added Miles doing it all in ADR just so Brandon could have control over the levels.

SB: I have always found big bombastic explosiony movies to be a bit easier than the quiet, emotional (and in this case, racially sensitive) movies. So every sound Benny and David, and the others cut in had to find their place and serve the story.
 

L to R: Ludwig Goransson, Felipe Pacheco, Ryan Coogler, and Steve Boeddeker

What was the most challenging scene for music editorial?

FP: Each of the on-screen music scenes had their own set of challenges, but, just like Benny mentioned, “Pale Moon” definitely stands out for me. It was a balancing act of keeping the energy of Pearline’s performance alive, staying true to the realism of the space, weaving in and out of dialogue, and knowing when to take creative liberties. On top of that, the picture edit was constantly shifting, so making it all work took a lot of technical and musical problem-solving.

I left my laptop overnight playing a session with every stem of the song laid out one after the other, about six hours of audio. I came back the next morning before call time to find full sets of ‘worldized’ stems

Late one night back in New Orleans, I snuck into the Juke, dragged a speaker onto the stage, and set up some mics around the space. I recorded a few impulse responses, then I left my laptop overnight playing a session with every stem of the song laid out one after the other, about six hours of audio. I came back the next morning before call time to find full sets of “worldized” stems, recorded from different spots in the room, that I could edit with.

Once we were back in LA, it ended up being one of the first scenes I worked on with picture editor Michael P. Shawver. The first assembly was almost 13 minutes long. Ludwig’s song and Pearline’s performance were so good that we didn’t want to cut anything out.

Brandon and I ended up building a pretty complex network of routing auxes to help manage all the different locations and perspectives inside the Juke

Throughout post, the scene was constantly getting reshuffled, so I had to keep adjusting the song’s arrangement and the perspective shifts to fit every new version. Brandon and I ended up building a pretty complex network of routing auxes to help manage all the different locations and perspectives inside the Juke. It gave us way more control over the sound and made wrangling all the layers of automation a lot more manageable, especially with the cut changing so often. There’s probably a hundred different edits of that song on the cutting room floor.

Also, a big shout-out to Benny and Steve for always keeping the sounds of the gambler getting stomped in time with the music.

Any helpful sound tools or indie sound libraries for Sinners?

DB: I will speak for Benny, Felipe, Willard, and sound assistant Andrew Bock and say, without The Cargo Cult Matchbox, we would probably still be working on the movie.
 

L to R: Andrew Bock, David Butler, Tina Anderson, Sev Ohanian, Brandon Proctor, Serena Goransson, Ludwig Goransson,
Felipe Pacheco, Zinzi Coogler, Ryan Coogler, Steve Boeddeker, and Benny Burtt

What has working on the sound of Sinners taught you? What will you carry with you from your experience on the film?

BP: Just the amazing crew we had. Everyone was putting so much into the film. It was a small crew, and everyone was working together with no egos.

Ryan likes to see how far we can push things […] He doesn’t want you to be precious; he wants to completely go for it, always.

Ryan likes to see how far we can push things. I remember on Wakanda Forever, there was the Mayan dialogue that was underwater, and I did this whole elaborate mix for it with an assortment of plugins, and I was concerned about the audience understanding the Mayan dialogue. Ryan wanted to take it further, to see how far we could go with it, and didn’t care if we could understand it since it was going to be subtitled. He cared more about the experience of it.

Ryan is a leader in that sense. He doesn’t want you to be precious; he wants to completely go for it, always. You see that in his filmmaking. Sinners is a film that shows his love of different genres successfully mashed together. Ryan wants to push boundaries visually, and he allows us to do that sonically. We find that edge where we’ve gone too far, and we pull it back. Ryan wants you to play and have fun in this medium. That’s a lesson I’ll continue to carry forward.

BB: I’ll second that. Ryan loves to be surprised. There’s nothing too weird. He loves to experiment.

I love that Ryan thinks about sound throughout the whole process. The sound team isn’t an afterthought. We’re brought on during pre-production; we are there for conversations throughout the process

I love that Ryan thinks about sound throughout the whole process. The sound team isn’t an afterthought. We’re brought on during pre-production; we are there for conversations throughout the process that allow us to work toward the end goal of what Ryan is looking for. Much of that is exploration for him. He might start one week by having us look for animal vocals to add to something, and then the next week, he’ll want to go a different direction and make it sound more humanistic but still scary. Coming on early allows for conversations to happen and allows us to collaborate with not only the director, but also the other departments. By the time we reach the final mix, we’re all on the same page, and the elements from dialogue, music, and effects are working together rather than competing with each other. It leads to a much smoother mix, which means we might be afforded the opportunity to further explore ideas that come up on the stage.

SB: I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with Ryan from his start. And he has always been the same. Solid story. Solid message. Solid guy.

FP: Sinners was full of firsts for me: first time working on set, first time working closely with the production sound crew, first time working on a musical, and first time in a swamp. I also learned pretty quickly that I am not built for life in the bayou.

We were all listening to what each other was doing, making tweaks to our own work to lift the whole mix.

But more than anything, it taught me how much of a difference it makes to be surrounded by a tight-knit, dedicated crew of friends. We were all listening to what each other was doing, making tweaks to our own work to lift the whole mix. Ryan always made sure everyone felt included and heard. Everyone had each other’s backs, no egos involved. Even months later, the Sinners sound crew group chat is still very active.

DB: It starts with Ryan. It was an opportunity that I could not pass up (I had to back out of another movie). I tell everyone how he is, hands down, my favorite director that I have ever worked with. Not just because he is amazingly talented, but because he’s grounded. He’s real.

The actual nuts and bolts work was arduous and time-consuming, but the environment could not have been better. I was the outsider on the sound team, and everyone embraced me.

And please note that I said work with and not work for. You never feel like you are working in service of him. He makes it feel like you are essential to what he is trying to achieve. He fosters an environment of friendship and loyalty. The actual nuts and bolts work was arduous and time-consuming, but the environment could not have been better. I was the outsider on the sound team, and everyone embraced me. No one carried themselves like they were more important. We were all in this together. And then you add producer Tina Anderson and sound assistant Andrew Bock, who are both doing their jobs at an elite level while being extraordinary humans. When you combine a great crew and a great director with a film that becomes a critical and box office hit – a cultural force – it’s hard to top that experience.

And, yeah, that group text chain is special.

A big thanks to Benjamin A. Burtt, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker, David Butler, and Felipe Pacheco for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Sinners and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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