Lens Choice
Team Deakins
James Ellis Deakins
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 7 - LENS CHOICE - In this episode, we talk about what goes into choosing lenses for your project and the aesthetic differences between lenses. We also discuss prime lenses vs zooms and how we go about testing lenses. And more!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:16.5 | Hi and welcome to the Team Deacons podcast. This podcast is a dialogue between Roger and James Deacons starting with a submitted question or topic and ending |
| 0:21.4 | who knows where. We will also be joined by guests for some topics. |
| 0:26.7 | If you'd like to submit a question, email it to webmaster at Roger Deacons.com. |
| 0:35.0 | Today's topic is lens choices. |
| 0:37.4 | We're going to talk about how you make that choice |
| 0:39.8 | and why you make that choice. |
| 0:48.0 | Raj, what goes through your mind when you think about what lenses you want to use? I mean, well, there's a general discussion you have with a director about the mood of the film, the kind of look of the film, |
| 0:59.4 | as everybody calls it. But generally it's a scene to scene thing. There's not that |
| 1:06.8 | many films were locked into a certain palette lenses as it were. I mean I remember discussing with Joel and Ethan Fargo |
| 1:16.8 | for instance after shooting a had a proxy and a had sugar proxy was quite a stylized film. It was quite exuberant in the camera moves and yes it was |
| 1:27.4 | pushed a bit. It was quite a lot of wide lens work for deliberately for the reason to make the camera feel active and make a lot of the spaces seem bigger than they were. |
| 1:40.4 | Everything wanted to be slightly larger than life in a way. |
| 1:44.5 | And then when that film didn't do so well at the box office, the guys decided to do Fargo, which |
| 1:50.9 | is something they had in mind for a long time back in the home, really, in Minnesota. |
| 1:58.9 | And it was a very low budget. |
| 2:00.3 | The thing about the lenses was they wanted the feeling of it being almost like a documentary |
| 2:07.7 | reconstruction of something, you know, a real true event. So we talked about shooting that slightly longer lenses. We also talked about not moving |
| 2:16.8 | the camera at all, but in the end the first shot we did was a 120 foot track, but there's still the kind of the overall feeling of the film held. |
| 2:28.8 | We didn't always shoot on a 40 or 50 mil, but it was slightly longer lenses than it had been on |
| 2:36.2 | a hudsucker for sure. I mean it was 35 or 40 mil was was was more standard |
| 2:42.0 | for us you know so aesthetically what would you say the |
| 2:46.2 | different focal lengths give you well it's a matter of the the perspective you're given the audience really. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from James Ellis Deakins, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of James Ellis Deakins and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

