ROGER DEAKINS

Born: 24 May 1949, Torquay, Devon, UK, as Roger A. Deakins, son of actress Josephine Messum & William Albert Deakins.

Education: Bath Academy of Art [Still photography]; National Film and Television School [NFTS], UK [1972-75].

Career: During the late 1970s, Deakins and a friend filmed 'Zimbabwe', a doc sponsored by the African National Congress. They did it under the guise of making a tourist film, but in reality they were recording what was going on during the civil war. His next doc was about an around-the-world yacht race. He spent a full year directing and shooting a film onboard the yacht ['Around the World with Ridgeway']. There were also films about other guerrilla wars and anthropological doc's. In-between these non-fiction films, Deakins was filming tv dramas, mainly for Channel 4.

Ph music videos, e.g. 'A Mess of Blues' [1983; a: Status Quo; d: Nigel Dick] and 'It's Only You, Mein Schmerz' [1983; a: Lene Lovich; d: Nigel Dick].

Married to script supervisor Isabella James Purefoy Ellis [professionally known as James Ellis or James Ellis Deakins]. Member of the ASC since 1995.

Appeared in the doc's 'In Search of Kundun with Martin Scorsese/À la recherche de Kundun avec Martin Scorsese' [1998, Michael Henry Wilson; ph: Jean-Jacques Flori & Frédéric Vassort], 'Behind the Camera' [2000, Richard Blanshard; for BBC-tv (10m)], 'The Coen Brothers' [2000, Andrea Miller; tv-doc (49m)], 'Who Needs Sleep? [2005, Haskell Wexler & Lisa Leeman] & 'Cinematographer Style' [2005, Jon Fauer; ph: J. Fauer, Jeff Laszlo, Brian Heller & David Morgan].

Awards: LAFCA Award [1991] & Independent Spirit Award nom [1992] for 'Homicide'; LAFCA Award [1991], NYFCC Award [1991] & NSFC Award [1992] for 'Barton Fink'; ASC Award [1995], Camerimage 'Bronze Frog' [1995] & 'Oscar' AA nom [1995] for 'The Shawshank Redemption'; BSC Cinematography Award nom [1994] for 'The Hudsucker Proxy'; Independent Spirit Award [1997], 'Oscar' AA nom [1997], ASC Award nom [1997] & BAFTA Film Award nom [1997] for 'Fargo'; BSFC Award [1997], NYFCC Award [1997], NSFC Award [1998], 'Oscar' AA nom [1998] & ASC Award nom [1998] for 'Kundun'; Camerimage 'Special Award' [2001; shared]; BSC Cinematography Award [2001], CFCA Award nom [2001], BAFTA Film Award nom [2001], ASC Award nom [2001] & 'Oscar' AA nom [2001] for 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'; BSFC Award [2001], LAFCA Award [2001], AFI [USA] 'Cinematographer of the Year' [2002], 'Oscar' AA nom [2002], ASC Award [2002], BAFTA Film Award [2002], CFCA Award nom [2002] & Golden Satellite Award [2002] for 'The Man Who Wasn't There'; Evening Standard British Film Award [2005] for 'The Ladykillers' & 'The Village'; 'Oscar' AA nom [2007] & BSC Cinematography Award [2007] for 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'; 'Oscar' AA nom [2007], BAFTA Film Award [2007] & BSC Cinematography Award [2008] for 'No Country for Old Men'; ASC Film Award nom [2008; shared], BAFTA Film Award nom [2008; shared] & 'Oscar' AA nom [2008; shared] for 'The Reader'; ASC Film Award nom [2008] for 'Revolutionary Road'.

'A Beautiful Mind' [2001]: Deakins' favorite portion of the film is the section that takes place during Nash's salad days at Princeton. The visual concept, he says, was to create something a little nostalgic, without going too far. "We didn't want to go sepia," he explains. "We just wanted a softer, warmer, mellower and more textured image. It was meant to show the good times before the illness manifests itself." In order to achieve this effect Deakins shot Fuji's Super F Series 400T (8582) which he found to have "a really nice texture" and to be "a little bit more forgiving on the faces." Furthermore, all the film stock for this portion of the film was pre-flashed using a very warm light in order to flatten the contrast somewhat and provide overall warmth to the images. "Steve Blakely at DuArt personally flashed all the stock we shot. It was like flashing the stock with a light that had gone through a coral filter," he explains. "If you actually put a coral filter on the camera, you basically are biasing the whole negative to the warm side without affecting the contrast much at all. But this way, we were exposing the film to an overall fog level and filling in the shadows with these warm, yellow-brown tones and flattening the image a bit. It's a very specific look. Originally, I was only going to flash a few of the early sequences, but Ron [Howard] and I liked the look so much in dailies that we decided to use it for the whole first section." The contrast-reducing effect, Deakins adds, also helped him out in a practical way for some of the Princeton day exteriors involving extensive camera movement. "On some of those scenes it was hard to fill in," he points out. "There really wasn't any place to put a light or a reflector. The effect of the flashing brought down the contrast a bit so that wasn't a problem." Where required by circumstances, Deakins was also able to subtly reverse the effect by giving the negative slightly more exposure and timing down the denser negative, thus intensifying the blacks. "There were some interiors that might have been just too flat otherwise," he explains.

DuArt provided Deakins with timed dailies, which he found particularly valuable on this production. No fan of video or one-light dailies, Deakins felt fully timed film dailies were particularly important. "We were flashing the film and shooting on location in different weather at different times of the day," he says. "I was lighting interiors night for day quite a lot in situations where I would create daylight so you could see a lot of what was out the window even though it was pitch black outside. It's hard to keep it consistent in the negative when you're working in conditions like that so I like to get an idea of how it will work in the dailies. Obviously, you're not going to get it perfect, but timed dailies can give you an excellent indication of where you're going." [From the Fujifilm website.]

1974	Farmer's Hunt [Roger Deakins] c; doc/53m; prod NFTS
1974	Horseboy [Jonathan Lewis] c; doc/20m; prod NFTS
1975	Mother's Own [Ernest Abbeyquaye] c; doc/20m; prod NFTS
1975	In the Penal Colony [Neil Leveson] b&w; short/15m; prod NFTS
1975	Paolo - Some Paintings by Paolo Uccello [Alf Bower] ?; short/?m; prod NFTS
1976	Take Three - A Film for the Schools Council Drama Project [John Michael Slater] 16mm/c; comm doc/64m; cph: Dick Pope
1976	Empty Hand [David Litchfield] 16mm/b&w-c; doc/32m; cph: Howard Sharp
1976	Welcome to Britain [Ben Lewin] 16mm/c; doc/70m; cph: Brian Huberman
1977	The Invaders [Nick May (NM)] b&w; mus doc/87m; cph: NM & Anders Gullberg; prod NFTS
1977	Before Hindsight [Jonathan Lewis] 16mm/b&w-c; doc/78m
1977	Cruel Passion/[De Sade's] Justine [Chris Boger] c
1979	Blue Suede Shoes [Curtis Clark] c; mus doc/97m
1979	Van Morrison in Ireland [Michael Radford] 16mm/c; mus doc/55m; cph: Jeff Baynes, Chris Morphet & Bill Marshall
1979	Beneath the Surface [Robert Carter] c; comm doc/16m; for Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD)
1979	Champions [Mike Wallington] c; doc/20m; cph: Terry Jenkins
1979	Box On [Lindsey Clennell] c; doc/38m; cph: Christopher Morphet, Jeff Baynes & John Davey
1979	Steppin' Out [Lyndall Hobbs] c; doc/26m; cph: John Metcalfe, Peter Sinclair, Christopher Morphet & Jeff Baynes
1980	Getting to the Point [Andrew Holmes] c; comm doc/17m; for MSD
1980	Elbow Joint Replacement [Andrew Holmes] c; comm doc/16m; cph: Pascoe MacFarlane & Steve Harrison; for MSD
1980	Capital City - A Portrait of London [Malcolm Mowbray] c; doc/39m
1980	Memoirs of a Survivor [David Gladwell] c; 2uc; ph: Walter Lassally
1981	Chances [Shaun Gordon] c; comm doc/15m; for MSD
1981	The Utmost Hazard [Jim Mitchell] c; comm doc/26m; cph: Peter Warrilow; for MSD
1981	The Animals Film [Victor Schonfeld & Myriam Alaux] 16mm/b&w-c; doc/130m; co-loc ph UK; ph: Kevin Keating
1981	Towers of Babel [Jonathan Lewis] c; short/27m
1982	There But for the Grace of God [David Woollcombe] c; doc/22m
1982	Another Time, Another Place [Michael Radford] c
1983	The Royal Academy of Arts [James Archibald] c; doc/56m
1983	Alan Bush - A Life [Anna Ambrose] 16mm/c; mus doc/64m; cph: Dick Pope
1984	Nineteen Eighty-Four/1984 [Michael Radford] c; 2uc: Andrew Speller & Dick Pope
1984	The Innocent [John Mackenzie] c; 2uc: John Simmons; ph Kingfisher seq: Andrew Anderson
1985	Defence of the Realm [David Drury] c
1985	Sid and Nancy [: Love Kills] [Alex Cox] c; addph: Steven Fierberg
1986	Personal Services [Terry Jones] c
1986	The Kitchen Toto [Harry Hook] c; 2uc: Charles Patey
1987	White Mischief [Michael Radford] c
1987	La donna della luna/Woman in the Moon [Vito Zagarrio] c; cph: Luigi Verga
1987	Stormy Monday [Mike Figgis] c
1987	Pascali's Island [James Dearden] c
1988	Mountains of the Moon [Bob Rafelson] c; addph: Dick Pope
1989	The Long Walk Home [Richard Pearce] c
1989	Air America [Roger Spottiswoode] s35/c; 2uc: Robin Browne; aph: Adam Dale & David Nowell
1990	Barton Fink [Joel Coen] c
1990	Homicide [David Mamet] c
1991	Thunderheart [Michael Apted] c
1992	Passion Fish [John Sayles] c
1992	The Secret Garden [Agnieszka Holland] c; addph: Jerzy Zielinski & Dick Pope; wildlife ph: Andrew Anderson & Mike Richards; vfx cons: Robin Browne
1992	The Hudsucker Proxy [Joel Coen] c; 2uc: Paul Elliott; spph: Jim Bridges; vfx ph: Patrick Turner & Kim F. Marks
1993	The Shawshank Redemption [Frank Darabont] c
1994	Rob Roy [Michael Caton-Jones] J-D-C Scope/c; uncred cph; ph: Karl-Walter Lindenlaub; 2uc: James Devis
1995	Fargo [Joel Coen] c
1995	Dead Man Walking [Tim Robbins] c
1995	Courage Under Fire [Edward Zwick] c; 2uc: Nick Taylor
1996	Kundun [Martin Scorsese] s35/c; 2uc: Jan Kiesser & Phil Pfeiffer
1997	The Big Lebowski [Joel Coen] c
1998	The Siege [Edward Zwick] s35/c; 2uc: Craig Haagensen; aph: Dylan M. Gross; Wescam ph New York: David Norris
1998	Anywhere But Here [Wayne Wang] s35/c; addph: Paul Elliott
1998	The Hurricane [Norman Jewison] c

2005	The Assassination of Jesse James [by the Coward Robert Ford] [Andrew Dominik] s35/c
2005	Hail Caesar [Ethan & Joel Coen] put on hold for the moment
2006	No Country for Old Men [Ethan & Joel Coen] s35/c; 2uc: Philip C. Pfeiffer & Paul Elliott
2006	In the Valley of Elah [Paul Haggis] s35/c
2007	Revolutionary Road [Sam Mendes] s35/c
2007	The Reader [Stephen Daldry] s35-to-35mm 1.85:1/c; ph 1st shooting period [September-October]; ph 2nd shooting period [March-July 2008]: Chris Menges; 'I was on the film at the outset. I prepped the film and shot the initial 5 weeks or so [without the lead actress] at which time the production shut down to wait for Nicole Kidman [who replaced Kate Winslet] to become available. As there was no information as to when the production would restart or how long the schedule would go on for I took that moment to leave. I went on to shoot 'Doubt' and later start prep on 'A Serious Man' whilst Chris Menges took on 'The Reader' [with Kate Winslet, who replaced Nicole Kidman]. I would hope that Chris didn't feel 'creatively' restricted by the footage I had shot, which is cut in throughout the length of the film. To my eye the look of the film seems quite consistent. 'The Reader' was an exceptional situation and not one that I would hope to repeat.' [From the forum on his website.]
2007	Doubt [John Patrick Shanley] s35-to-35mm 1.85:1/c; 2uc: Patrick Capone; filmed December 2007-February 2008
2008	A Serious Man [Ethan & Joel Coen] s35-to-35mm 1.85:1/c
2009	The Company Men [John Wells] c

1977	The War in Zimbabwe - Chimurenga [Antonio Caccia] doc/51m/16mm
1979	Around the World with Ridgeway [Roger Deakins] doc/?m
1979	Behind the Lines: Eritrea/Eritrea - Behind Enemy Lines [Roger James] doc/50m
1979	[Jimmy Greaves -] Just for Today/The Jimmy Greaves Story [Berny Stringle] doc/60m; cph: Dick Pope
1980	Wolcott [Colin Bucksey] 3-part miniseries, 1981
1981	Of Muppets and Men: The Making of 'The Muppet Show' [Peter Berry & Harley Cokliss] doc/b&w-c/52m
1982	The South-East Nuba [Melissa Llewelyn-Davies & Chris Curling] doc/59m; ep BBC-tv series 'Worlds Apart'
1982	Deep Roots Music [Howard Johnson] 6-part mus doc series/360m; 2uc: Franklyn St. Juste; for Channel 4
1983	Raj Gonds - Reflections in a Peacock Crown [Peter Loizos & Chris Curling] doc/49m; ep BBC-tv series 'Worlds Apart'
1983	Return to Waterloo [Ray Davies] tvm/57m
1983	The Cinema of Stephen Dwoskin [Anna Ambrose] doc/60m
1984	Repercussions: Born Musicians [Geoffrey Haydon] doc/70m
1984	The House [Mike Figgis] tvm/16mm
1985	Shadey [Philip Saville] tvm; first released in theatres
2000	Dinner with Friends [Norman Jewison] tvm

2003	The Village [M. Night Shyamalan] c; 2uc: Patrick Capone
2004	Jarhead [Sam Mendes] s35/c; 2uc: Clinton Dougherty

1973	Performance Art Film [co-d] 16mm/c; doc/30m; ph: ?; prod NFTS
1974	Farmer's Hunt [doc; + ph] see Films
1979	Around the World with Ridgeway [doc; + ph] see Television
1984	Then When the World Changed [tv-doc/85m] ph: ?; ep Channel 4 series 'Link'