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Deschanel joined the ASC in September 1984 after being proposed for membership by Burum, Haskell Wexler and Conrad L. Hall. Shortly thereafter, he decided to spend more time closer to home and took nearly a decade off from shooting. He started a commercial-production company, Dark Light Pictures, and took up directing. During those years, he tackled commercials, the 1988 feature Crusoe and some episodic television (including three episodes of Twin Peaks).
He returned to cinematography with Andy Bergman’s It Could Happen to You (AC July ’94) and then reteamed with Ballard on Fly Away Home (AC June ’97), which tells the story of a girl (Anna Paquin) who leads a family of orphaned geese back to their home. Ballard’s work methods remained similar to those on their first collaboration, but this time, the two men were completely sure of their approach. “Fortunately, the kind of film we were making allowed Carroll to work the way he likes to work,” Deschanel says. “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 (AC March ’08). He has recently returned to directing television on occasion, including episodes of Law & Order and an episode of Bones, which stars his daughter Emily. His younger daughter, Zooey, is also a successful actress; she recently co-starred in (500) Days of Summer. Deschanel says he and his wife neither encouraged nor discouraged their children to work in the business. “We impressed upon them the idea that to do anything well, you have to love it and work hard at it. I think they understood that because they’d grown up seeing the hard work that goes into making movies. They’re both very talented, but they also know talent is only part of the picture; there’s also luck and a lot of hard work and dedication.”
Kaufman observes that Deschanel’s daughters have a good role model on all fronts. “Talk about the right stuff,” he marvels. “Caleb showed that when we worked together. He was totally committed and did whatever was necessary to get the movie done.”
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