Project Development: Further Research on Roger Deakins

source: Variety

    In this research post, I will be researching about Roger Deakins, a famous cinematographer. As he is widely known in the film industry, I will be including him into my major project and discuss about how he has impacted the cinematography industry.

    Roger Deakins is an English cinematographer and photographer from Devon, United Kingdom. He is a member of both the American and British Society of Cinematographers. His passion for film started in the late '60s, where he attended the Bath Academy of Arts to study graphic design and photography but during his breaks he would return home and eventually fall in love with cinema. He ultimately attended a newly opened National Film School in England.

    His first feature film as a cinematographer in America was Mountains of the Moon (1990). He received his first award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his remarkable accomplishment in cinematography for The Shawshank Redemption (1994) which received international praise. His famous works include Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), Skyfall (2012), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and 1917 (2019), in which he received two Oscars from the latest two. 

    He is highly recognised as one of the greatest masterful cinematographers in the history of cinema. He is a astounding cinematographer as not only the scenes he shot are astonishing, the style in which he approaches a film is unique and unconventional. A trademark he has is a simple lighting design, where he often only uses one or two lights for the scene, only shoots films using spherical lenses and occasionally uses the one-take shots for the scenes. He utilises light in an extremely distinctive way, yet the look of a Roger Deakins-shot movie never takes away from the narrative at hand. However, if the plot of the movie is, say, inferior, the works by Roger Deakins automatically raises the subject matter at hand. 

    As I have finished, this research was extremely helpful and useful for my project. Researching about Roger Deakins resulted in myself gaining more knowledge about how he handles the concept of cinematography and producing high-quality film scenes for movie along with how he became to be one of the greatest cinematographers in cinema history.

Reference:

• Tangcay, J. (2021) Roger Deakins on his love for black and White Photography and his new book 'byways', Variety. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2021/artisans/news/roger-deakins-photography-book-byways-1235086661/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
• Roger Deakins (no date) IMDb. IMDb.com. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005683/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm (Accessed: March 3, 2023). 
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (no date) Roger Deakins: 5 films that made me the cinematographer I am, A.frame. Available at: https://aframe.oscars.org/what-to-watch/post/roger-deakins-5-films-that-made-me-the-cinematographer-i-am#:~:text=He%20is%20widely%20regarded%20as,put%20into%20words%20exactly%20why. (Accessed: March 3, 2023). 
• Chitwood, A. (2022) Best Roger Deakins films: The DP's 10 best-shot movies, Collider. Available at: https://collider.com/best-roger-deakins-films/#:~:text=Deakins%20is%20a%20master%20cinematographer,from%20the%20story%20at%20hand. (Accessed: March 3, 2023).