Roger Deakins has never won an Academy Award despite being nominated 13 times

TStreet Media
FrontRow Magazine
Published in
3 min readJan 8, 2018

For nearly 4 decades now, Roger Deakins has been looking down cameras on the most famous movie sets of Hollywood. He is one of the most iconic cinematographers to have worked in movies and with renowned directors such as the Coen Brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve among others. However, despite the fact that he was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, he never had the chance put his hand on even one.

Deakins was a very talented photographer

From the moment Roger Deakins discovered photography, he never stopped immortalizing images. From his school years in Buckinghamshire at the National Film and Television School in England, he was recognized as having a knack for photography. After graduating college, he worked as a cameraman on documentary sets across the oceans and to some of the most dangerous countries in Africa like Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia.

He began shooting feature films in the 1990's

Making his debut with director Bob Rafelson on ‘Mountains of the Moon’ in 1990, he went on to work with the Coen Brothers in 1991 on the set of ‘Barton Fink’. Since then, Deakins has been the principal cinematographer of the Coens’, working on movies like ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou’.

Roger is one of the greatest directors of photography alive

For more than 27 years now, Roger Deakins has been raising the bar for each film, setting the standards with his displays of lighting and rigging technique. Although not a winner, he’s been among the best 13 times, on 13 different movies. Instead of failure, it shows the determination of someone who doesn’t care about awards, because he keeps giving top performances on every movie that he has filmed.

‘Blade Runner 2049’ could be Deakins’ first Oscar win

Those who’ve had a chance to catch the trailer of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ did get to see the genius of Roger Deakins. From the inventive and unique ways he uses light as space and water as a visual theme to his unique future noir atmosphere and urban colors in some important scenes, many believe that this could be his year. Professionals in the industry think ‘Blade Runner 2049’ will be the movie that breaks the curse of Deakins’ failures during the 13 years he had been nominated.

Deakins is considered to be the master of naturalism

‘Blade Runner 2049’ ‘’was more of a film noir detective story, but we just went by our script,” said Deakins. According to him, most of his effort consisted in getting ‘concepts of the world and spaces’ straight and in complete accordance with the storyboard. With stages in Budapest, aerial footage of Mexico City, Las Vegas, Iceland, the Mojave desert and Spain, these shooting locations were essential to get the right environment for the shooting, even if sometimes the scenes veered to surrealism. In fact, the movie is like a visual summary of everything that Deakins has worked on during his career as a cinematographer.

h/t: Film School Reject
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TStreet Media
FrontRow Magazine

TStreet Media is the publishing arm of Toast Studio (@gotoast), a content agency located in lovely Montreal, Canada.