The startling beauty of Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar-nominated True Grit -- and in most Coen brothers films, for that matter -- owes to frequent collaborator and award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, who's lensed all but one of their films since 1991's Barton Fink. But as much as the nostalgic Western serves as a throwback to simpler times, simpler heroes (and heroines), and a yearning to stick to one's principles in the face of obsolescence, True Grit could also mark a wistful point in Deakins career -- his last film shot on film.
Following his ninth career Academy Award nomination, Movieline revisited the True Grit shoot with Deakins, learned which scene was almost shot with CG, and heard the legendary DP (and recent digital convert) predict the imminent death of film.
Congratulations! Where were you when you heard the news?
I think I was in bed because I'd been on a night shoot, something like that. My wife told me. I think I was getting up because I had a late call that day.
Is it still as exciting as your first Oscar nomination?
It's great. I'm so pleased the film is getting the kind of recognition I think it deserves. I mean, that's what's so good about people getting nominated; the recognition for the film. Nothing changes, you know. The film is the film but it's rewarded when it gets more publicity and more people see it.
You've worked for a very long time with Joel and Ethan Coen. When they came to you with True Grit, was it a no-brainer that you'd be on board?
Oh, yeah. They said that they were writing the script and I hadn't read the original novel, so I went and read the book. I'd seen the original movie, but that didn't really relate to what we were doing. So I went back to the novel, read it for the first time. What an opportunity, but it's always an opportunity working with them because they're always going to do something different and imaginative. It's such a pleasure working with people who have such a love of the medium.
What sort of descriptors came into play when you first began discussing the stylistic approach with Joel and Ethan?
[Laughs] It's funny -- I don't know, we don't really have conversations. It's never like that. It starts very slowly. I read the script, we usually meet up to scout locations -- that's usually the first time I'm with them talking about the film -- and it sort of evolves. You look at locations and ask, how can these scenes be staged in this particular look, you discuss the feel of the locations they are after and the mood. It just gradually evolves. And for me, it's not really until you see Barry Pepper as Ned Pepper, the characters in the costumes and makeup and everything, it's not finalized, what it's going to look like.
True Grit takes a much more straightforward visual approach from your recent Westerns, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men. How would you describe the difference in approach?
So much comes from the script. The script for Jesse James reflected the book of the same title; it's very much a tone poem and meditation on the West and this particular character, and that the world is basically passing him by. It's much more a poem in a way than a linear narrative. No Country is a meditation, too, but probably on the nature of evil. It's much more of a brutal, stark, nihilistic view, you could say. So that fuels the imagery. And True Grit is probably more traditional, it's much more of a straight linear narrative. Joel likened it to, on the one hand, a teenage girl's adventure story, but also like the trials of Job, really. The poor girl -- how could it get any worse? So the three films have very different starting points, and the way the visuals evolve very much come from those starting points.
There's a wonderfully nostalgic visual quality to True Grit that we don't really see attempted anymore. Was that particularly difficult to capture in 2010, when filmmaking techniques had advanced and filmmaking sensibilities have progressed so much?
I think what's really cool is that the film has been so successful and it does have that kind of mood. Someone said it's more like a classic Western but it does have a melancholy feel to it. It's more complex, probably more than a lot of the traditional Westerns and it's not a straightforward action movie, for sure. So it's quite reassuring that it's been so successful, and maybe that will open up more opportunities for films that are more complex, in a way.
A scene that stands out for its simplicity and retro feel is the sequence in which Rooster rides through the night with the snake-bitten Mattie. Was that borne more of necessity or was it a stylistic choice?.
It was borne out of necessity but it was also fueled by Joel and Ethan's desire to make it a very simple, kind of picture-book sequence. It was this girl's memory, and it's also like a fever dream. So they deliberately wanted it to be stylized, it was an aesthetic choice on their part, as much as anything. But on the other hand, it's true; no way could we have shot all of it at night, exteriors, with a 13-year-old girl riding a horse at night. So we had to do it in a much smaller, straightforward approach.
What was the most rewarding shot that you managed to get?
The most difficult shot, that kind of freaked me when I read the script, was the work just tracking with Blackie in the night. You think well, it's a simple shot -- a shot of a horse's head galloping -- but when you think it's at night, and the horse is black, on this rough terrain... at one point we were actually considering, and got the effects company to figure out how they could do it as a completely CG shot. Create the horse's head and the foam coming out of his mouth and everything else. We shot some tests and got something halfway decent in pre-production, but then we dedicated a Saturday night to doing some of this work. We built a road, a 1,500-foot road, in the cottonwood forest so we could track alongside the horse in this electric golf cart thing. So it was a matter of knowing how to do it. But the fact that we did it live had a much greater impact than if we would have done it with computer generated images. It just seemed right for the film, to do everything in camera.
There were moments in True Grit, just simple dialogue-free scenes, really, that inspired such emotional responses. Do you ever get that feeling when you're filming a scene when you know that you've nailed it?
The trip of actually doing the job -- I operate the camera myself, I always have -- and sometimes you'll be shooting a shot and you get that tingle down the spine when you realize you're watching something that's really unique. That it really works and has something to say that's more than the sum of its parts. They're not my images; they work because of their context, because of the script, because of the performances and everything else. That's what the power of film really is; something can be more than the sum of its parts. It's something you can't really describe in words.
How much do you owe your cinematic leanings to your experiences with physical media, painting and photography?
I was sort of into painting when I was a kid, gradually discovered still photography, and moved from that into documentary work. I'm sure that affected the way I shoot fiction.
You acted as a consultant on How to Train Your Dragon, which recently did very well at the Annie Awards...
Thank you! I'm really pleased about that film. Animation now has gotten to the point now that you can approach it as if it were live-action. They program the actors, the characters, within a set, so you can take a virtual camera and walk around the set with the characters doing the action. You figure out where you want to put the camera, and to some extent, figure out how you want to light this virtual 3-D world. It's quite amazing. So the two disciplines of live-action and animation are really crossing over right now.
How much has your work in animation begun to influence your live-action work?
There comes a point, like we were discussing how to do this horse's head as a CG rather than live element. The thing is, I'm a purist in many ways. When I do my own stills, I'm very much a purist. I take pictures and I don't manipulate them, I'm not really interested in making collage images. I take real life as I see it. But in terms of storytelling in a feature film, I think all options are on the table. It's whatever technique you can utilize to tell the story in the way you want to tell it. It's interesting for me how a cinematographer's role is changing so much. It's so many different aspects to the way you visualize a story now, it's not just cinematography in a traditional sense.
You have more tools at your disposal, for starters.
More tools, but I think you also need to be aware of them. I still think there needs to be somebody who coordinates the visual look of the film, so if you have a number of effects houses doing different elements of a film there needs to be one person with visual overview. I love getting involved in animation -- not only because I think they make great films, and the films I'm working on are great stories -- but also it's a great learning experience for things that I might use in live-action.
Your field is in a very transitory stage right now.
Very much so, especially with digital imagery and cameras. The whole way of making movies is changing. Pre-visualization of shots. The amount that you do live and the amount you do as a CG element afterwards is changing enormously.
Are you particularly interested in integrating 3-D or motion-capture technology into your work?
Again, in animation we did 3-D on How to Train Your Dragon, and I was in a motion-capture studio the other day at DreamWorks Animation. I've not done so much in the live-action world, but I'm experiencing quite a lot in animation. I'm not sure about 3-D in the kind of dramatic live-action films that I work on. I can't imagine True Grit in 3-D. I think it would be appalling. You're actually trying to create a different experience for an audience.
Will you continue to shoot features on film, or are you being drawn more to shooting digitally?
You know, I'm not sure. I just finished this film Now, which I shot digitally for the first time, and I was very impressed. Part of it's going to depend on the director's choice, but I'm not sure if I go back to shoot on emulsion again. It depends on the project. If I had a digital option when we started True Grit I'm not sure I would have shot it digitally, just because of the nature of the film. But I don't know, it's a real transition now. I don't personally think film emulsion is going to be used for very much longer at all. I know people have been saying that since -- well, since I started in the business -- but I really think this year and next year will be it, really.