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Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC was born and raised in a small seaside town called Torquay in Devon, England. His mother had been an actress before the war and was an amateur artist. Deakins spent his school days painting and enrolled in art school as a graphics arts major. At art school he discovered still photography. He subsequently completed his education at the National Film School. After graduation, Deakins focused on documentaries for some seven years, on subjects ranging from the wars in Rhodesia and Eritrea to a trip of nine-months duration in one of the entrants on a round the world yacht race.

 

He earned his first feature credit shooting the low budget Another Time, Another Place for Channel 4 television. His later credits in the UK would include 1984, Sid and Nancy, Stormy Monday, White Mischief and Mountains of the Moon. Deakins began his collaboration with Joel and Ethan Coen in 1991 with Barton Fink. In 1995, Deakins earned an Oscar nomination and the American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award for his work on The Shawshank Redemption. There have been subsequent Oscar and ASC Award nominations for Fargo, Kundun and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Deakins has compiled some 38 narrative credits including such other memorable films as the recent HBO film Dinner With Friends, Imagine entertainment's A Beautiful Mind, and his sixth feature film with the Coen brothers, The Man Who Wasn't There, which is being released in black and white.

 

ICG: Tell us about where you were raised in England?

DEAKINS: I was brought up in a sort of fishing, sailing, boating community called Torquay in Devon, England. It was a great place for a kid to grow up and I love it there. I still keep a flat nearby.

 

ICG: Were you interested in photography or movies as a youth?

DEAKINS: I was mad about movies. My brother and I would walk three to four miles, sometimes in the rain, to see films. I joined a local film society, but I never thought movies could become my career. I still remember watching The War Game, a film by Peter Watkins about what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off in London. It sort of felt like a documentary, but it was a fictional film. It was made for the BBC, but it was banned until the '90s. For some reason our film society had a copy of the film. It was a terrifying film. Some of the ladies in the screening fainted and a couple ran out of the theatre. I remember being impressed by the power of filmmaking.

 

ICG: Is that when you started thinking about becoming a filmmaker?

DEAKINS: I didn't know what I was going to do. The headmaster told me I should plan to work in a bank or do something like that. I rebelled against that idea. Although I loved the sea I was desperate to get away from the restrictive small town environment I was in, so I applied to an art school. My mother was an actress, and she was really good at painting, so she had some influence on my thinking. She died when I was nine or 10 years old. I started painting when I was very young. I really wanted to be a painter. Everything I painted was very, very naturalistic.

 

ICG: Where did you go to school?

DEAKINS: I applied for entry in an art course at a university. I don't remember why that didn't work out. I think I applied too late. Basically I was a bit of a mess as a kid. I didn't know what to do. I knew I didn't want to work in a bank. My father was a builder, and, sadly for him at the time, that was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I spent most of my time by myself, painting very dark morbid pictures. I was accepted as a graphic arts student at Bath Academy of Art in a little village called Corsham, Wiltshire. They also had a fine arts department where they taught painting and sculpturing.

 

ICG: How did you get from art to cinematography?

DEAKINS: I discovered photography at art college. There was a darkroom, and I kind of pinched the key one day and made a copy of it. I would work at night in the darkroom when everyone else was asleep. I would go off for weeks at a time just taking pictures. Then, I would spend all my time in the darkroom. I also did silkscreen printing, etching and other graphic arts, but photography really took over my life. At the end of the course, they said, well, 'you've got all these photographs, but you haven't really done anything else. How do you expect to make a living?' I didn't know the answer.

 

ICG: Who were your early influencers?

DEAKINS: We had cinematographers like Dick Bush and Ozzie Morris teaching classes. Film school was great. It was very unfocused at the time, because it had just started. They didn't really have an infrastructure, and (head of the school) Colin Young didn't want to impose anything. It was anarchy in a way, and I think he was right. Everybody had a set amount of money every year, and they could either chose to pool it with other people, or make their own films the way they wanted to make them. I made documentaries, and also put money towards other people's projects, so I could shoot their movies. Mainly, they were dramatic films and occasional documentaries. I think I shot 15 films in three years. They ran from 30 to 90 minutes each. I was shooting constantly.

 

ICG: How about The Shawshank Redemption? How did you prepare for that?

DEAKINS: I don't know how you prepare to do a movie. You are really prepared by your life's experience if that's not a too pretentious a way of putting it. Other than that, you read the script and talk with the director. I got the script while we were in the middle of shooting The Hudsucker Proxy, and we started shooting six weeks later.

 

ICG: Do you think the fact that you started out doing documentaries helps in a movie like The Shawshank Redemption?

DEAKINS: I don't know whether that helps or not. Would the film have been better if someone else had photographed it, someone who came from a different background, I don't know. My personal style, the way I like to light and move the camera, really does come from documentaries.

 

ICG: When you're reading a script for the first time, are you seeing the images in your mind at that point?

DEAKINS: No. The first time I read the script I'm seeing if I can relate to the characters, and if has something to say. Does that sound pretentious? I don't read it thinking this is going to be visually interesting. I think if I can relate to the people or the situation, or if it moves me-and that's a personal thing—then I'll read the script again and think about it visually. It's the story first and foremost that draws me to a film, though obviously I love working with Joel and Ethan. I'd shoot the phone directory for them.

 

Source : Bob FISHER "Camera Guild"