Roger Deakins up against himself for Oscar

AP: Can you pick a favorite movie you’ve done with them?

Deakins: I like them for different reasons because most of them are very, very different. I would probably have to say “The Man Who Wasn’t There.” I love that movie — there’s something about it that is, I think, it kind of works as a piece more than any of the other films we’ve done.

AP: That’s one of my favorites of theirs and I think it’s underappreciated. But again, that’s a tough sell because it’s in black and white.

Deakins: Yeah, tough sell, absolutely. But that’s the thing with them — I’ve had such opportunities to work on films like that with different kind of looks, different kind of feels.

AP: You’ve been a still photographer for a long time, but how challenging was it to shoot a whole film in black and white?

Deakins: Technically, there were a few challenges just to get the sort of purity of the black and white, but in terms of lighting and feel, I think I kind of light in black and white anyway, really — I light for light and shade, I don’t light for color so much. I find a lot of the time that color is sort of a distraction and it’s easy on the eye. It’s easy to make something attractive by putting in pretty colors but it’s not necessarily right for the content of the piece.

AP: Do you still shoot photographs?

Deakins: When I get some time off. I love it — it’s my favorite thing to do. That and fishing.

AP: Do you ever do both at the same time?

Deakins: Well, I take my camera out. I’ve got a little boat in south Devon. I go out fishing and I take the camera with me sometimes. ... I’m trying to do a series about the English seaside in the southwest and I spend most of my time wandering around with my camera in the odd seaside resort, trying to find photographs. I like observing people, I suppose.

AP: Would you want to direct a feature of your own someday?

Deakins: I kind of looked into it a few years ago and it’s like, everybody in Hollywood has got a script. I’ve got a script. It’s set in Africa in World War I — that’s not going to go down very well, is it? It’s a comedy, but it’s also about colonialism. I enjoyed writing it — it was a few years ago, now, and I sort of took it ’round to a few people. But I love what I do so why would I change that? I love being on the set, I love the contact.

AP: Do you ever get so drawn into what’s happening that you forget ...

Deakins: To turn on the camera?

AP: No, just get lost in what you’re doing and forget that you’re at work.

Deakins: Well you do. You get totally drawn into the characters and the piece and that’s what’s amazing. That’s why I love it. ... There are scenes in “No Country” when we were shooting them — like in Ellis’ cabin in the end — just watching that through the lens, you get a tingle up the spine.

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