![]() “When people come up to you and gush over your career and stuff, there are moments like that where you go, ‘I suppose I have done a lot,’” Deakins says. On a recent fall day, the 73-year-old, reflected on his life in image-making, his concern for the future of filmmaking and why “Byways” and the podcast shouldn’t be taken as a new backward-looking impulse. ![]() In each episode of “Team Deakins,” they interview craftspeople, offering a window into the behind-the-scenes arts of filmmaking.ĭeakins, a widely revered master of the form, has built an empire of light of his own. We were so lucky,” Roger laughed.Deakins and his wife and collaborator, James Deakins, also maintain one of the most essential podcasts on moviemaking. “I think there is only one scene in the film where the sun’s out. Roger and James lived just outside the city, and he fondly remembers jogging on Atlanta trails and through Piedmont Park.ĭespite Atlanta’s notoriously mild weather and blue skies, the cinematographer found that an exceptionally wet winter provided the ideal grim, depressing backdrop for “Prisoners’” psychologically murky tone. ![]() The 2013 child-abduction crime thriller “Prisoners,” for which he served as cinematographer, was shot on location in Conyers, Stone Mountain, Porterdale, Monroe, Covington, Lithonia, Snellville, East Point and downtown Atlanta with director Denis Villeneuve. This will not be Roger’s first visit to Atlanta. You never have enough time with the director to discuss the whole concept or you never get a location that’s absolutely perfect,” he said. “You never have enough time to light a shot. The biggest challenge in filmmaking, Roger said, is “as soon as you pick up a camera, you’re compromising,” something he said he grapples with less often in his still photographs. Without naming the specific film, he noted, “A director can screw up a really good project. And you know, it can be a real high.”Īnd a real low, too, Roger added. “It’s fantastic feeling when you’re working with a whole group of people to one end - you know, everybody’s getting satisfaction from the individual contributions they make to the end product. One of Roger’s favorite aspects of his job as a cinematographer, he said, is the collaborative nature of filmmaking. In “Christmas, New Jersey” (2003) he focuses on the bleached white light of the seashore where a metal sign proclaiming “Happy Birthday Jesus” is set against a swarming flock of seagulls. The images also show a quirky, formalist side to his point of view, as when he focuses in “St Pancras station, London” (2017) on a woman’s legs shown from a low angle against the steel and glass roof of London’s St. Roger’s photographs often focus on a decaying, inhospitable human-built cityscape and solitary people dwarfed in its shadows. Roger describes “Byways” as a “sketchbook.” Released in 2021, the book shows a more personal, subjective side to his aesthetic choices. I mean, that’s where I discovered I liked photography,” said Roger of his time at Bath Academy. “A lot of my paintings are very sort of naturalistic, but kind of surreal,” Roger noted of his art student days. His first films were in the documentary realm before making his feature debut with the British wartime romance “Another Time, Another Place” (1983). He initially studied painting at Bath Academy of Art and then film at the National Film and Television School (NFTS). “When I really enjoy the job, it is that marriage between having some sort of creative input on a project and being, you know, technically proficient with what you do,” Roger added about the two-fold nature of cinematography. “Because the way we make films kind of changes every year,” he said. Keeping up with innovations in technology, Roger said, is often one of the most challenging parts of a cinematographer’s job. The cinematographer, 73, has become one of the most revered working today, noted for his collaborations with Joel and Ethan Coen on films beginning with “Barton Fink” and including “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men.” He’s worked with other top directors too, among them, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese and Sam Mendes.Īlong with his reputation for collaboration and professionalism, Deakins is known for combining an artful, atmospheric approach with technical finesse. Nominated 16 times for an Academy Award, Roger is a two-time Oscar winner, for “1917″ and “Blade Runner: 2049,” and his film repertoire includes “The Shawshank Redemption” and the James Bond thriller “Skyfall.”
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