![]() ![]() To make it seem like an old faded movie, the footage was distressed.ĭeakins has already started work on the next Coen Brothers project, True Grit, based on the original novel by Charles Portis. “The Coens wanted it to stand apart from the rest of the film,” he notes. The dialogue is all in Yiddish, with subtitles. The first few minutes take place in a shtetl in Poland. “But they bring authenticity to something that is very hard to get on the set.” “We were shooting on a low budget and a tight schedule, and it was challenging to make some of these small locations work,” says Deakins. Most of the scenes were shot on location, adding to the film’s verisimilitude, but creating some problems for the DP. A kind of chandelier composed of six hexagonals was constructed lit with 287, 75-watt bulbs. “I needed quite a big rig to light that space,” he says. “I used as much natural light as I could, sometimes boosting it a bit.” The lighting for the overhead shots in the synagogue during the son’s bar mitzvah was more tricky. He used Arri’s super-fast Master Prime lenses. “Some say it’s old fashioned, but it serves my purposes and is lighter than the 535,” he notes. He shot with an Arriflex 535-B, which he’s used for years. “It’s simply shot-a lot is about the framing and the naturalistic lighting,” says the DP.ĭeakins is his own camera operator. Deakins contributes his usual elegant and crisp “effort of no effort” cinematography, letting the character-driven narrative flow. And his penniless brother is crashed out on the living room sofa. The film is about a modern-day Job, Larry Gopnick, a physics professor at a Midwest college who is beset by family travails ranging from the banal to the existential. In all he has been nominated for the Best Achievement in Cinematography Oscar eight times, and a record nine times for the ASC best cinematography on a feature award, winning twice. Deakins did the lensing, and was also nominated. The film is the latest in a series of quirky dark comedies from the brothers, including No Country For Old Men, which won them the 2008 Oscar for Best Picture and Academy Awards for direction and screenwriting. “We’ve worked together so long that we’re on the same wavelength, and I pretty much understand what they want just from reading the script.” A Serious Man is the tenth collaboration between Joel and Ethan Coen and director of photography Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |