Reflections: On Cinematography
Two Academy Awards. Fifty years behind the camera. A childhood in Torquay that gave little hint of what was coming. Sir Roger Deakins is, by most accounts, the finest cinematographer who has ever pointed a lens at the world, and this visual memoir makes a compelling case for exactly that. Cinematography is a strange discipline, sitting somewhere between technical precision and pure intuition. How light falls on a face, where the camera chooses to linger, the geometry of a single frame: these decisions, made in seconds, are what transform a script into something you carry with you long after leaving the cinema. Deakins has spent his career making those decisions brilliantly. The book traces his unlikely journey from a difficult early life to art school, then into documentary work (including, wonderfully, a round-the-world yacht race), and on to shooting music videos for the likes of Herbie Hancock before his extraordinary run of feature films with the Coen Brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve. It's a stranger, richer path than you might expect. What makes this more than a straightforward autobiography is the visual material. Never-before-published storyboards, sketches, and working diagrams sit alongside Deakins' own prose reflections on specific films and scenes. You see how ideas began, how they changed, and what survived onto the screen. The writing itself is candid and unhurried, with a quality of honest self-examination that feels rare from someone of his stature. Whether you're a devoted cinephile or simply someone who appreciates beautiful imagery and an absorbing life story, this is a quietly remarkable book.
- Author: Sir Roger Deakins
- Publisher: Grand Central Pub
- Genre: Film & Cinema
- ISBN: 978-1538771501
- Pages: 416 pages