Today I'm writing about Roger Antony Deakins, ASC, BSC. Roger is a Cinematographer, which is sometimes also referred to as a Director of Photography. I'm no film major, so it's possible the two terms are not exactly interchangeable, but they're basically the same thing as far as I know.
Anyway. Roger is mostly known (or unknown) for his collaboration with the Coen brothers, and has been the cinematographer on almost every one of their feature films. But he doesn't only work with them. Deakins was born in England, and studied film at both the Bath School of Art and Design and the National Film and Television School.
He got started as a camera operator not long after school, and his early career consisted mostly of documentaries about Africa. Who doesn't love a good documentary? After that he moved into films about music, working on "rockumentaries" and music features like Van Morrison in Ireland and Sid and Nancy.
Deakins' first American feature was Mountains of the Moon, in 1990, but he worked with the Coen brothers soon after, on the 1991 film, Barton Fink. Deakins received his first major award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding achievement in cinematography for the internationally praised major motion picture, The Shawshank Redemption. In 2008, Deakins became the first cinematographer in history to receive dual ASC nominations for his works, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men.
He received the 2011 American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Lifetime Achievement Award.
Roger has been nominated for no less than 9 Academy Awards, but for some reason unknown to god or man, has never won.
Here is a list of some of his most famous films:
- Barton Fink
- The Hudsucker Proxy
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Fargo
- Kundun
- The Big Lebowski
- O Brother, Where Art Thou?
- The Man Who Wasn't There
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
- A Beautiful Mind
- Intolerable Cruelty
- The Ladykillers
- Jarhead
- No Country for Old Men
- The Reader
- Revolutionary Road
- A Serious Man
- True Grit
Here are some clips of his work.
Here is a video of him discussing a scene in The Shawshank Redemption with NPR's Melissa Block. The audio is great, but somehow they ruined the video:
Here's another video from the same interview, where the video isn't ruined:
And here's a great featurette about True Grit:
Another unsung hero of behind the scene storytellers. I have to take a break from this series tomorrow, but please still come back!
