Danny Cohen: By Royal Appointment

Danny Cohen was nominated for Best Cinematography for The King’s Speech at both the BAFTA and Academy Awards, but he is no stranger to working on award-winning productions. His credits include films This is England (2006) and Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) by Shane Meadows, as well as working on the HBO series John Adams, with The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper. Talking to Danny you get the impression that he has a genuine passion for film and cinema. He is not a photographer who found himself working in the medium, but someone who has an affection for the silver screen. His approach is from a story perspective rather than a purely technical one, which is a rarity for those in his profession.

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Congratulations on your Oscar nomination. Does a nomination like this feel like recognition of you work to date?

Yes definitely, I can safely say I haven’t been nominated for one before. I’ve been shooting for close to fifteen years now, so this feels like an acknowledgment of my body of work on top of The King’s Speech itself, which is very exciting.

The King’s Speech was tipped for awards long before its release. Working on it, did you think it would generate the kind of buzz it has?

No, not in the way it has; there’s no way of knowing. I think the first sniff of awards it got was at the Telluride Film Festival and it went down well there, and then won the Audience Award in Toronto and managed to build up a good reputation. It’s hard to describe how it comes about but there is a certain formula that if anyone knew what it was they would be knocking these things out every week. It’s random in how it came together, it was a great script but if you have a great script you can still screw up the film for any number of reasons. You can’t predict the outcome of a film because there are so many variables. I suppose that’s what the director’s main job is, to have a vision of what he wants to make and to know that it’s a good story and how he wants to tell it. If it is well told then a film has half a chance, but there are always very random things that can occur and affect that. For example, when we were shooting The King’s Speech we had a scene in the lift, and it broke. Something like that can potentially mean not getting that scene or running out of time. Then there is the process of post where the director wants to get his version and the producers have theirs. At the end of the day it is a commercial venture and there are a lot of things in play. It’s not every day that all these things are in sync but if they are, you’ve got a great chance of producing something that the people are happy with. 

Read all of Alex Moss's interview with Danny Cohen in Issue 27 of Film & Festivals Magazine