this story about “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
“When I talk about how I got here, I didn’t see a lot of female cinematographers,” Autumn Durald Arkapaw said during an interview about “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ryan Coogler’s sequel to his groundbreaking 2018 blockbuster. “I went to AFI, and the year I was accepted (we’re talking about 2007 I think) was the year most DP women were accepted into the program. So it’s like, 28 of us and 11 of us were women. So I look around and see myself, and 10 other women internationally want to learn how to do this. So it was great.”
Durald Arkapaw, who took over cinematography duties from Rachel Morrison (who was nominated for an Oscar for the 2018 film), was working on camera for young filmmakers like Gia Coppola and Ry Russo-Young when Marvel hired her to work on “Loki “, the “Avengers” spin-off series starring Tom Hiddleston, which earned him an Emmy nomination last summer. And then Coogler called with an even bigger offer.
“Ryan was the thrill for me, because I heard great things about him,” Durald Arkapaw said, noting that the second film’s themes of motherhood and family (she’s the mother of a seven-year-old boy), not mentioning her distinctly female narrative, it was a huge selling point.
“It was a new story that we were telling, unfortunately, with the passing of Chadwick[Boseman, who played T’Challa in the first movie]so it was about what that meant emotionally for the characters moving forward with that loss. Ryan chose to shoot anamorphic this time, which I’m a huge fan of. He hadn’t used that format before and it was a great choice that emotionally served what he was trying to say. It’s a wider field of view, the lenses have more character, they’re a little softer. He accentuated this fog of pain idea that he had from the beginning and there’s more of a nostalgic quality to this kind of texture, which I appreciate.”
There were additional challenges to this expanded universe, as it not only had to feature the world of Wakandan, including a funeral for the late T’Challa and rituals involving African history and heritage, but also expand the setting with a literal underworld. . The underwater kingdom is the realm of new adversary Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), a superhuman who leads a group of aquatic people bent on preventing the Wakandan empire and the American government from disturbing his territory through the valuable mineral known in the MCU as vibranium. .
“It was important to us on this larger scale that you make it look real, but we don’t have a context for that, because it doesn’t exist in our world,” said Durald Arkapaw, whose team built a 20-foot tank and made the actors learn to swim or improve their skills. “We needed the right information to see how things react underwater, how we wanted to light them, how the fabric moved, how the colors reflected, how the particles act in the water, and also for our actors to have context for when we filmed it dry for wet because we filmed it both ways: wet for wet and dry for wet. Ryan wanted to make this kind of deep space, underwater movie, and I think it turned out really cool.”
Such imagination has elevated Durald Arkapaw’s status in the industry, in which her husband Adam has the exact same job as her, a rarity in show business. But one that doesn’t hold back for either of them, even with the long and demanding hours of a cinematographer. “He was a bit more established early on, having shot some bigger stuff, while I was still shooting smaller movies. But, you know, you love your son, you have a family that supports you, and you do the best you can. But, yeah, I think we’re more interested in similar things now. But everyone’s vision is so unique to them. You end up getting the job that is for you.”
Read more of the issue below the line here.
