Some of what I consider my best work, and some of the best films that I've ever worked on, kind of disappear without a trace. There's no accounting for it. Something connects, or something doesn't.
Roger DeakinsRead
Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph.
Interpretation
Photographing the human face is the most challenging and fascinating form of photography.
This quote by Roger Deakins emphasizes the complexity and richness of capturing human expressions and emotions through photography. By stating that if one can photograph the human face, they can photograph anything, Deakins highlights the idea that mastering this skill opens doors to all other forms of visual storytelling, as the human face is often the most intricate subject due to its nuanced expressions and the connection it evokes with the viewer.
In practice
When discussing the intricacies of portrait photography at a workshop.
Some of what I consider my best work, and some of the best films that I've ever worked on, kind of disappear without a trace. There's no accounting for it. Something connects, or something doesn't.
You can’t learn your craft by copying me or anyone else. I hope what I do can do is in some way inspire others but I would be appalled if I thought my work was being studied as ‘the right way to do the job’. My way is just one of an infinite number of ways to do the job.
Am I nostalgic for film? … I mean, it’s had a good run, hasn’t it? You know, I’m not nostalgic for a technology. I’m nostalgic for the kind of films that used to be made that aren’t being made now.
If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.
There's nothing worse than an ostentatious shot or some lighting that draws attention to itself, and you might go, 'Oh, wow, that's spectacular.' Or that spectacular shot, a big crane move, or something. But it's not necessarily right for the film — you jump out, you think about the surface, and you don't stay in there with the characters and the story.
Some of the smallest things on a smaller film, to me, are greater achievements than on a big film when you have the resources and the time and everything else.
Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics.
I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.
Acting came from growing up in dysfunction. I mean, a lot of great times, but a lot of dysfunction.
Believing that art is either worth a fortune or worth nothing at all.
From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.
When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.
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