the bridge
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alumni in the rts by Natalie Mardirossian ’12
caleb deschanel ’62 Caleb Deschanel was born on September 21, 1944 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a French father and an American mother who raised him in the Quaker religion. Caleb remembers his English teacher, Richard Flanagan, as one of his favorite and most exciting Severn teachers. Mr. Flanagan introduced all of his classes to a number of great writers, and through class discussions and the occasional scholar from St. Johns, would discuss different literary texts in a way that not many teachers did. Caleb notes, “It was the first time I had any idea that you could be a writer or do anything creative as a profession”. Another one of his more unconventional teachers taught him calculus and, as Caleb recalls, used to smoke his pipe during class. Caleb says that the smell of Latakia still reminds him of calculus equations. After graduating from Severn, Caleb attended Johns Hopkins University planning on studying medicine. While at Hopkins, he started having an interest in photography and writing and became the editor of the Hopkins Newsletter, the weekly newspaper at the school. He then took on a summer job as an assistant to a still photographer in New York. Caleb says of the photographer, “He shot everything from catalogue photos to album covers and magazine photos and when he got a job that he was not particularly interested in doing, he would sometimes send me out to take the photo.” In Caleb’s last year at Hopkins he decided to go to The University of Southern California Film School encouraged by two friends, Walter Murch, an Academy Award winning editor, and Matthew Robbins, a successful writer. When at USC, Caleb started filming student movies since he knew how to use the equipment and at the end of the school year he was offered a job filming documentaries and educational films for Encyclopedia Britannica. One of Caleb’s classmates, Francis Coppola (of The Godfather fame) asked Caleb to film for one of Coppola’s movies, The Black Stallion, for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best cinematography. Caleb has worked with directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Hal Ashby and others. He has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards for Best Cinematography
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Caleb with daughters Emily and Zooey Deschanel at his Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony from the American Society of Cinematographers
for the films The Right Stuff in 1984, The Natural in 1985, Fly Away Home in 1997, The Patriot in 2001, and The Passion of the Christ in 2005. In February 2010, Caleb received the Lifetime Achievement Award from The American Society of Cinematographers. In 2005, Caleb received the Rolland M. Teel Distinguished Alumni Award from Severn for his significant and meaningful contributions to society. This award is the highest honor that the school can give. Caleb is married and has two children, Emily (you may recognize her as Dr. Temperance Brennan in the crime drama Bones) and Zooey, recognized for her roles in Elf and 500 Days of Summer.
Trey Garcia ’05, Caleb and Bridgette Rafferty ’05 at Caleb’s Distinguished Alumnus induction 2005