Caleb
Deschanel, ASC
The Patriot
 This
is Caleb Deschanel's fourth Oscar nomination. He was also nominated
for The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984) and Fly Away
Home (1996). He received a BAFTA (the equivalent of a British Academy
Award) in 1991 for The Black Stallion, his first narrative film
credit. Dechanel won the coveted Amercian Society of Cinematographers
(ASC) Outstanding Achievement Award for The Patriot. He was previously
nominated for an ASC Award for Fly Away Home.
Deschanel was born in Philadelphia and raised there and in Annapolis,
Maryland. His parents gave him a Brownie Hawkeye camera as a birthday
present when he was 11. When Deschanel enrolled at Johns Hopkins University,
he intended to study medicine but his interest shifted first to art
history and then to film. After graduating, he enrolled in the University
of Southern California film school where Haskell Wexler, ASC became
an early mentor. Deschanel capped his formal studies at the American
Film Institute with a six-week apprenticeship with Gordon Willis, ASC.
Carroll Ballard, a neighbor in Venice, California, launched Deschanel's
career when he hired him to shoot a documentary. Deschanel subsequently
directed several award-winning documentaries. His other notable credits
include Being There, The Slugger's Wife, It Could Happen to You,
Hope Floats, Message in a Bottle and Anna and the King.
"So much of what we do is instinctual, but there are also ideas
that are universal," says Deschanel. "Making this type of
film is like putting together a mosaic one tile at a time until it tells
a story. What you see in the frame is always motivated by what is important
to telling the story. Every minute of each scene has a purpose which
dictates how it is shot."
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