On the work of cinematographer Roger Deakins and the specific quality he brings to every film he shoots.

Deakins' career as one of the most consistently excellent cinematographers in American and British cinema spans forty years and includes work with the Coen Brothers, Sam Mendes, Denis Villeneuve, and many others. What connects his work across very different directors and genres is a quality of light that is never showy but always exact.

Deakins approaches a scene by asking what quality of light tells the truth about where the scene is taking place and what the scene is about. The torture sequence in Sicario — lit by a single battery-powered work light in a basement — is not dramatic in the way that cinematic violence is usually lit. It's functional, clinical, factual. The light is doing what real light would do in that situation, and the realism of the light gives the scene a weight that expressionistic lighting would remove.

The opposite end of his range: the golden-hour cinematography of No Country for Old Men's Texas landscapes, where the light is so warm and beautiful that it creates an ironic tension with the violence that is taking place inside it.

Deakins has described his job as not being visible. The measure of his success is that you feel his shots without being able to describe what he did.