One of the most celebrated and beloved Oscar-winning cinematographers working today, Roger Deakins has revealed in a lengthy new 90-minute video interview with Collider that he’s a little bored with Hollywood’s visuals at the moment.
Deakins is famed for his lush visuals which can be seen in such films as “Fargo,” “Skyfall,” “Sicario,” “No Country for Old Men,” “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “True Grit,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Prisoners,” “1917” and “The Shawshank Redemption”.
However he indicates that a lack of a cohesive voice in major Hollywood tentpoles is a problem. Studios often rely on second, third or more units to pick up filming of various scenes (such as action sequences) without the movie’s main director or cinematographer.
Deakins says he and his wife and longtime filmmaking collaborator James Ellis Deakins refuse to work that way, deeming it ‘sloppy’: “Movies have become more about the aesthetic than the story and the content and what the film is trying to say. I find that pretty disappointing and pretty depressing.”
Ellis says during pre-production on “Blade Runner 2049,” the line producer expected the duo to need up to nine camera units to film Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction sequel. The pair say:
Ellis: “We kept saying no, no, we don’t need that. And the line producer didn’t believe us. The same thing with ‘Skyfall’. They said, ‘Don’t you need five or six cameras?’ I know they didn’t believe we could do it with one camera.”
Deakins: “It’s always like that. They say, we need a list of the four or five camera crews you want because we have to get all these shots. I said, what four or five? No! I thought that was strange to ask that on ‘Blade Runner’ as we worked with Denis before, quite successfully I felt. But it’s always like that with production. The bigger movies, if someone says, ‘Oh, we’ll put six cameras on it and get the scene.’ No thanks.”
Deakins did make an exception to his second unit rule for “Skyfall” with one team travelling to Turkey without Deakins to shoot footage, but Deakins only allowed it because he was able to heavily storyboard the shots he wanted along with director Sam Mendes.
Deakins is currently not attached to any future projects at this time.
