Roger Deakins

“The little town I was brought up in, I'd go to the film society to these very extreme sorts of films that you wouldn't normally see in the movie houses. But I never dreamed that I would get into the position to be shooting movies equivalent to the ones I loved as a kid.”

“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.”

“My dad was a builder, so I didn't have any connection to the arts at all. I never really considered film as a career, but I knew I didn't want to be a builder.”

“I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot.”

“If I bring anything to the Coen Brothers' films, it's my ability to change tack and create a different mood from film to film.”

“The biggest challenge of any cinematographer is making the imagery fit together of a piece: that the whole film has a unity to it, and actually, that a shot doesn't stand out.”

“Every scene is a challenge. There are technical challenges, but often it's the simplest challenge where you feel a sense of achievement when you pull it off.”

“What's seemingly a simple thing can actually be the hardest to achieve.”

“I did a few documentaries as co-director and cameraman. I started off shooting a film about the war in Rhodesia. Then I did a film about an 'around the world' yacht race with a friend, and we spent nine months on a yacht. The film was about how people get on in confined spaces under extreme stress.”

“I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense - I want the director to see what I'm trying to do.”

“I think that lens flares can work really well under certain circumstances. Personally, I am trying to get rid of them most of the time. I don't like artifacts that draw attention to the surface of the image.”

“On 'Sicario,' we storyboarded key sequences but not everything.”

“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.”

“I always had an interest in seeing people within their environments.”

“I shot film with the Coen brothers on 'Hail, Caesar!' That's fine. I'm sentimental about film; I've shot film for forty years or something.”

“I don't approach films purely in context of genre.”

“I love the writing of Walter Tevis and what he views as the possibilities of science rather than science fiction.”

“I love everything that Cormac McCarthy has written.”

“I don't study any films. I'll watch them, but I don't study anyone else.”

“My time in documentaries was very educating, in terms of life experience as well as the filmmaking side of it.”