THE VILLAGE, Roger Deakins, 2004, (c) Buena Vista
Here is a lovely piece – not an interview, but a profile – on the terrific cinematographer, Roger Deakins, by way of reading Deakins’ blog. By Noah Gallagher Shannon in The Paris Review.
Read the piece by clicking on the link at the bottom. Meanwhile, a few quotes from the article:
…The highest achievement a cinematographer can garner, Deakins says, is to have his or her work go unnoticed. If the viewer is made aware of a frame’s composition, the thinking goes, they’re taken out of the narrative, maybe not unlike a reader noticing a novel’s font as they stumble over a cluster of adjectives. A cinematographer should have style, in other words, but only in service of story. Deakins puts it this way: “people confuse pretty with good cinematography.”
…Asked by “rileywoods,” a film student, how he came to master lighting, Deakins replies, “I have been lucky over the years and have been pretty constantly working.” He continues, “I do think observing is important in learning”—meaning, observing the world, not others at work. In a recent thread about how to create the look of a thunderstorm, film students go back and forth on the right diffusion gels and light screens before Deakins chimes in with a one-sentence solution: “You could always shoot at night.”
…Which is partly why I understand him to mean it humbly when he says he’d rather have his art go unnoticed; as a cinematographer, it’s professionally unwise to develop a recognizable style. But now that I’ve read Deakins blog for a few years, I also understand how he might mean it artistically, and honestly so. How having one’s work go unnoticed might in fact be an achievement.
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