As the fate of movie theaters reaches a tipping point and the chattering class openly roots for the industry’s failure, it was a great time for me to chat with the cinematic legends behind Team Deakins: Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins and his creative collaborator, James Ellis Deakins. Together, they host the Team Deakins podcast, their ongoing conversation about filmmaking, and worked on Roger’s book, Reflections on Cinematography.
When I asked them about preserving the cinematic experience during this week’s episode of Rushfield Lunch, their answers were both optimistic and somewhat withering — at least for those who think filmmaking is a throwaway endeavor.
“I think you come from your own time,” Roger told me. “I loved the cinema experience, but you are only conditioned by the moment that you grow up in.”
“It’s two different experiences,” James added. “Going out and making it kind of an event and seeing it in a theater, seeing it with other people sitting around you, is one kind of experience; doing it at home is a different experience. And if the movie’s good enough, you’re going to get caught up and everything. But if it’s not good enough, it’s really easy to walk out of the room and just keep it playing and come back and miss that whole part in between. So maybe make movies better to hold people’s attention.”
Roger knows how to make better movies. The Oscar-winning cinematographer has shot some of the great films of our time, including multiple projects with Joel and Ethan Coen (including the brothers’ best picture winner, No Country for Old Men), Sam Mendes (including the Bond blockbuster Skyfall and 1917) and Denis Villeneuve (including Blade Runner 2049). Roger is a 16-time Oscar nominee, having won twice (Blade Runner 2049 and 1917), and is generally regarded as the greatest cinematographer of modern times.
“I think a big role of a cinematographer is actually to create a comfortable and welcoming environment for the actors to do their job,” Roger told me, noting how something like The Shawshank Redemption lived on the back of the performances from stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. “It was essential to have a kind of welcoming set. When I first started shooting films, the assistant director would often act like a sergeant major, shouting orders as we were about to shoot. How can an actor focus in that kind of environment? I never understood.”
Hear more tales of filmmaking, including what Roger thought of Fargo and The Hudsucker Proxy and other classics, in our great discussion above.
