The audiovisual material of Roger Deakins

In these past oscars, Roger Deakins after his 14 nomination to the oscars got his statue, today we want to review the audiovisual material that is always on his list.

Bounce Muselin (Palio structure and white cloth)

His primary weapon of choice is the muslin bounce. This is something he developed over many years, right from his documentary filming days. You can see the progression of his technique over many films, and now he’s almost perfected it.

The main disadvantage of the bounce system is it takes time to setup, and you need to control a lot of spill. Even now, he still doesn’t have the time, space or money to control the lighting as precisely as he wants it.

Tungsten vs HMIs

When indoors, he predominantly uses tungsten. He loves his tweenie (650 Watt tungsten fresnel by Mole Richardson) and 1K fresnel.

But he also does some breath-taking work with HMIs. He’s a great cinematographer, it’s not like he has a weakness!

To mix and match, he often uses an 85 filter and/or CTOs (1/4, 1/2 mostly) – sometimes on the camera, sometimes on the lights, and sometimes on the windows.



Contrast Ratio

He loves a lot of contrast on the face, and it typically falls between 2-3 stops. This does not mean he restricts himself to this – that would be impossible. He also over exposes the key side of the face by one to two stops.

Lenses and camera

He has said he loves the 32mm the most, though he uses all sorts of focal lengths depending on the project. Currently, his favorite camera is the Arri Alexa.

The DIY ring light system

He has given a detailed description of it. There are many variations to this, and it comes in a small ring-light size to a large football field like he used in Jarhead.



Remember that all the audio-visual material that we have commented on can be found in Zeferino!

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