‘People keep reinventing the same damn movie’: Roger Deakins on 50 years

“Argh!” Roger Deakins says when pressed to define cinematography. He began trying to be a still photographer and, he says, the essentials are the same: you are trying to tell a visual story. It is “very much a collaboration”, he adds, working with “hundreds of people”, and “the cliche is visual storytelling, but it’s much more than that.” Across a 50-year career his images range from the austere deserts of No Country for Old Men to the urban vistas of Blade Runner 2049, the dream-like Kundun, the shadowy Skyfall and the punk-era romance of Sid and Nancy.

At home in Santa Monica he is off-the-cuff and straight-talking; his wife, James Ellis Deakins, who first met him on Thunderheart, often supplies context on set, coordinates communication and asks the practical question: how can I tell the story visually in the frame?

The couple’s new book, Reflections: On Cinematography, is part memoir and part technical guide that shows how those answers are found.

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