“I put my place on the market and moved back to Devon” | Roger Deakins

Two Academy Awards, 5 Baftas, and a judge on D&CFilm‘s lock-down film comp Filmathon, Devon’s Roger Deakins has a more than glittering career as DOP (we’d say epic, iconic, historic!). His talent and vision found like-minded dreamers in the shape of the Coen brothers.

Just a glance down the list of Roger’s film and they are all pretty heavy hitters. He has made 12 films with the Coen brothers. With Lauren Laverne on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, he explained how that creative relationship began.

“The previous film I’d done to Barton Fink, I didn’t have a good time,” said Roger.

“I put my place in London on the market and moved back to Devon. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Maybe I’ll work on the odd independent film, but I didn’t think I was going to be that much involved anymore. 

“Then the phone rang and my agent said, you might not be interested – it’s a very weird script – it’s like two different scripts cobbled together in the middle – and I said, who’s directing it and the agent said the Cohen brothers. 

“So I met with Joel and Ethan in a little cafe in Notting Hill and was struck that they didn’t really talk much and nor did I, and we got on really well saying not a lot. And then they rang around directors to ask about me. The previous director I’ve worked with and not had such a good time with, said things like: he doesn’t like working with multiple units, he likes to work single camera; he doesn’t like shooting on zoom lenses, he always operates the camera himself. 

“These were being said as though they were derogatory of me, but actually Joel said… this was years later… Joel said, ‘We listened it was everything we wanted out of the cinematographer.’ So that that’s how I ended up in the cafe in Notting Hill.”

Working with the Coens on Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? there were artistic and technical challenges.

“They wanted this feeling of a burnt out landscape, as if it was a hand-tinted postcard, and I said well when are you going to shoot? They said well August. And we talked about where are you going to shoot? Maybe Arizona or something that’ll be burnt out… they said ‘no Mississippi.’ I remember saying to Joel, Mississippi in July / August that’s going to be a little bit green and they don’t want green. I said well that is the problem, 

“So my wife and I, we looked into the idea of digitizing the whole negative… And we did some tests and they were pretty awful, but it showed what could be done. And Joel and Ethan said, yeah, but we’ll have a year between when we start shooting and the time the film is released so maybe the technology will have advanced enough by then that we can make it work. 

“The worst thing was watching dailies in Jackson, Mississippi in a theater every evening. The image comes up and it’s all full colour like it’s in a bright 50s technicolour 50s looking. And Joel kept saying to John Turturro and the actors it’s not going to look like this. And we were going maybe it won’t look like this. who knows.”

Creative vision and braver and generous with it, Roger has produced memorable images that have told iconic stories.

top image: a still from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

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