Articulo_10_EN_Doxa_31_Study_on_the_cinematographic

intend to suggest which categories to exclude during the Oscar gala, but photography and editing are at the heart of our profession. “- Cuarón defended the essence of photography in cinema on his Twitter account.

1.1.1. The director of photography’s functions

The director of photography’s importance in films is paramount, as seen in Cortés-Selva (2014). The cameraman is in charge of the image’s design. He/she makes it visible and constructs it accordingly, and plays a part in all the creative process phases of the film:

Pre-production: visits the locations, writes reports (description of the location: dimensions, electrical outlets, aspects of the set, etc.), and interprets the screenwriter’s or director’s intentions in terms of light to make them a reality through the camera. The most complicated aspect is recreating another’s ideas (Llinás, 1989). The script does not reveal the photographic style of a film: the director of photography will create the atmosphere through the film’s image (Aronovich, 1997).

Production: he/she composes the frame, chooses the characters’ position in the scene (always in consensus with the director of the film), creates the ideal lighting (classification, the position of the camera and spotlights, intensity, contrasts, and effects, etc.) according to what is described or conveyed, chooses the optics (light setting according to the script, he/she is responsible for the camera team, and both technical and human resources).

Post-production: supervises the editing, evaluates the color grading (color correction, contrast, luminosity), checks effects.

The director of photography is also an author (Cortés-Selva, 2020). He/she combines the essential parameters for an image to be visible: light, colour, and composition and has technical and artistic skills and a complete mastery of audiovisual language articulation. The technical and aesthetic quality of the film lies in the direction of photography. The decisions taken about it affect the expressive and communicative result and, consequently, the spectator’s emotions. Ultimately, the cinematographer’s actions influence the film’s success (Crespo, 2013).

1.2. Notes on Roger Deakins

We have chosen to examine Roger Deakin’s work because he has gained recognition in his career. He is one of the most representative people in the world of photography in cinema, capable of obtaining complex results and compositions, such as the faded and old images that fit the grey, hopeless and suffocating universe that Orwell described (Santos-Aparicio, 2019). We must also acknowledge the breadth of his work: 80 films so far (5 television series and 75 films) and how he creates them. This is why we have chosen to analyse this director of photography’s work through the selected feature films.

1.3. Visions and perspectives on composition in cinema

There are very few studies that exclusively focus on Roger Deakin’s work in the academic field: these include Viñolo and Suarez’s (2018) paper, although centred on animation (2D technique); different texts in the magazine American