American Cinematographer - January 2010 - 81

“We had a little girl, her father [ Jeff Daniels], some geese and the Ultralight airplanes. It was like having a boy and a horse — Carroll could drastically alter a lot of the scenes at will and still have everything work out.” After shooting Forest Whitaker’s Hope Floats (1998), Luis Mandoki’s Message in a Bottle (1999) and Andy Tennant’s Anna and the King (1999), Deschanel signed onto Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot (AC June ’01), a Revolutionary War drama starring Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger. “Roland was great to work with,” says Deschanel. “He was used to working in a grand scale and made it seem easy.” The project provided the rare opportunity to shoot 65mm, which the filmmakers used for the battle scenes. Deschanel notes, “We never struck a 70mm print, but even when it’s reduced to anamorphic 35mm, 65mm gives you so much more detail. It’s like scanning film: even if you’re releasing in 2K, scanning at 4K or higher looks better.” He regards The Patriot as an example of a particularly successful collaboration with a production designer, in this case Kirk Petrucelli. “It’s always great to work with a production designer who understands what you need to be able to do with lighting. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of fine ones, and the house interiors Kirk did on The Patriot were just so well designed. We were able to get light into all those spaces and still have them look very natural while shooting from any angle.” Deschanel then shot the 2003 features The Hunted (for William Friedkin) and Timeline (for Richard Donner). After wrapping Timeline, Donner recommended Deschanel to his friend Mel Gibson for The Passion of the Christ (AC March ’04). Deschanel acknowledges that he didn’t anticipate the controversy Gibson’s film would generate. “I read the script and saw a story about someone who shoulders the burden of others’ pain and absolves them of responsibility, and that seemed like an exciting premise to me,” he says. “I was brought up as a Quaker, so the story was new to me. Quakers just sit around in excruciating silence and hope peace will happen.” The filmmakers’ approach emphasized a heightened realism. “Mel wanted viewers to feel as though they were there, and using the Aramaic language certainly contributed to that,” says the cinematographer. “I was inspired by the work of some of the painters I’d studied in college. At Hopkins, a wonderful teacher named Phoebe Stanton got me excited about many Renaissance painters. Mel is a big fan of Caravaggio, and we thought The Passion was a great chance to use that kind of imagery as inspiration for the visuals.” Deschanel’s most recent cinematography credits are the family drama My Sister’s Keeper (2009) and the fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles

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American Cinematographer - January 2010

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