Roger Deakins to shoot Bond 23?

Starting to look more and more that way.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cinematographer-roger-deakins-switching-film-178661

Quote :

But with the rapid advancements in digital cinematography, Deakins is becoming a convert. He shot his most recent film, Andrew Niccol's Now, using the new Arri Alexa digital camera. And as he prepares to shoot the next James Bond movie, which Sam Mendes will direct this year, he tells The Hollywood Reporter, "I'm probably going to use Alexa on my next shoot — it seems very likely."

Probably won't win over a lot of the purists, but if Deakins is employing it, I trust it will look just fine.

http://www.deakinsonline.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1761

"All sources pointed to the fact that the acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins had signed on to James Bond 23.

The 62 year-old Englishman had been linked to the 21st Bond film's production since an interview in February where he suggested he would 'probably' be doing his next film with Sam Mendes.

Deakins is famous for his work with the Cohen brothers on films such as "No Country for Old Men", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Fargo". More recently he has worked with Sam Mendes himself on "Revolutionary Road".

On his Q&A forum, Deakins cleared up the rumour in the affirmative, writing:

"Yes, I can say that I am doing the next 'Bond' film. It is early days and the film won't shoot until November."

This ties into the expected start date as mentioned by Dame Judi Dench who will be reprising her role as "M"."

He also mentioned on his site that the notion at this point is to shoot on Alexa ... I just dunno. The guy I talked with about Alexa (TRON/BENBUTTON dp) is that it has so much resolution and ability to see into shadow area that you have to work in a different fashion to make it cinematic, and another guy I spoke with recently who shot a feature with it said the same thing (though for his film, they wanted it to look different, so that wasn't an issue.)

Film stocks have been moving in this direction a lot already (something I doNOT love - I think some of the glory of film is the blur you get at 24fps and a lot of the rest comes from not being able to see so well in the shadow area), and I think it is downright unBondian to have a 007 flick that looks more like ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT or a football game than what has gone before.

But Deakins is a master, so who knows what he can do with it. His first pic with it, an Andrew Niccol SF pic, is coming out later this year, and I highly anticipate it.

I came across an old post from Deakins on his site (in a thread about MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, my favorite CoenBros flick) that mentions Deakins' fave B&W flicks, which include STRANGELOVE and SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD ... can't imagine that this would apply to next Bond, but can always hope, maybe tinges of each, for fantastic element plus real rough tough stuff ...

trevanian wrote:

His first pic with it, an Andrew Niccol SF pic, is coming out later this year, and I highly anticipate it.

Going by the trailer, Deakins seems to make decent use of digital.

That said, I'm not wholly in love with Deakins' style, and I'm not sure he's a good fit for Bond.

I think Deakins is the closest thing to Conrad Hall still alive (but maybe with crispier edges, which I always welcome in the Bond films), so on that basis alone it makes him a good fit for Mendes.

As to whether Mendes is a good fit for Bond ... well, I'm more worried about Logan than I am Mendes. I don't know how Mendes would adapt on the fly to having to fix a less-than-adequate script while shooting.

trevanian wrote:

I think Deakins is the closest thing to Conrad Hall still alive (but maybe with crispier edges, which I always welcome in the Bond films)

Not an Alan Hume fan?

I certainly am not a fan of the cinematography of the 80s. The soft look just doesn't fit Bond. I know it was a method used to hide Moore's aging, thankfully it was limited to those flicks. Hume had some decent lighting but the soft look was there. Alec Mills had a nice crisp look for the Dalton films (particularly TLD) but really went overboard with lighting which made the beautiful casino set in LTK look very cheap. I think you could actually see a glimpse of the lights he was using when Bond is escorted to the private table.

His work doesn't give me a Humer, if you know what I mean.

Well, I take that back, that was a cheap shot. LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is my absolute favorite horror movie and almost always has been, and it looks exactly the way it should.

People who can mix and change up from hard to soft light as appropriate are terrific (Owen Roizman comes to mind, he was my favorite DP from mid70s to mid 80s), and Unsworth was outtasight though always softening, but he was an exception in a lot of ways IMO.

Hume in his Bond/SW era was mostly about softening, but that was mostly due to dealing with Moore aging and sticking with something in the vein of the Gil Taylor 'stockiing behind the lens' effect from SW ... I just don't think he had the color opportunities that EMPIRE'S dp had (EMPIRE might have a bit too much color at times.)