Reflections On Cinematography

A cinematographer describes his craft. When Roger Deakins was growing up in Torquay, England, in the 1950s and early 1960s, he loved painters and photographers, from Edvard Munch to Dorothea Lange, but except for taking pictures with an ancient Kodak Box Brownie camera, "the notion of a career with a camera did not ever enter my mind." He also loved film but assumed it "was simply something thatother people did." Yet after Deakins graduated from the Bath Academy of Art, a friend mentioned the newly formed National Film School and suggested he apply. It took a couple of tries, but he finally got in. Since then, after several years of shooting documentaries on such subjects as yachting, war-torn Eritrea, and schizophrenia, he has had one of the most illustrious careers of any mainstream cinematographer. This informative hybrid describes the many films he has shot for such directors as the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve and the techniques he has used to achieve his lighting and camera effects. Much of the book, lavishly illustrated with film stills and storyboards, can get quite technical, from the Agfa stock at 320 ASA he used to create the naturalistic look ofMountains of the Moon to the multiple lenses he used onThe Shawshank Redemption. He writes about his work on animated films, includingWALL•E,Rango, andHow To Train Your Dragon. The longest chapters are devoted to the two films for which he received his Academy Awards,Blade Runner 2049 and1917. Apprentice cinematographers will learn a lot from this book, as will anyone with a passing interest in the technical side of cinema. Deakins includes many behind-the-scenes details, such as when he reveals that the snowy scene in which a body is shoved into a wood chipper inFargo required "a large amount of strawberry jam." Film school in book form from a great cinematographer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.