#robert elswit

Academy Award for Best Cinematography:

Film: There Will Be Blood

Year: 2007

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Director - Judd Apatow, Cinematography - Robert Elswit

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“Yeah, I can't remember what we shot with. I have to call Erik Brown. He's my lifeline,” jokes legendary #DOP Robert Elswit ASC, as we sat down to discuss Ripley.

“I've worked with [director] Steven [Zaillian] before, and like all cinematographers, he believes that the way something's lit is actually a way to affect people's emotions. There are a lot of directors who actually don't believe that, but Steven is one of those who feels very strongly that there's an emotional message that the lighting in a movie delivers.

I had a copy of the Patricia Highsmith series of the latest series of Ripley books with these beautiful covers and black and white images, and Steven said that as he was writing, he just saw the whole thing in monochrome. As we got more into it, and as I read the script, I realized that a big part of the agenda of the backstory is Caravaggio. Steven and I would talk about how Caravaggio invented the whole idea of how the light is playing an emotional, dramatic purpose in his paintings. What was lighting the people and the objects in the room was very selectively realized— faces, arms, gestures—all almost theatrical looking. The lighting dominates the color palette. It dominates even the design in places. There are strong graphic images, but even if you look at them in black and white, which we were in the series, it's all about the light, which is actually a line that one of the characters says.

I didn’t want [lenses] that were too sharp and I think that's something that Dan [Sasaki] reacted to. He made something that was wide open but with no greasy, sharp, surveillance photography look. I don't know how [Dan Sasaki] does it, but we shot the whole series with just five lenses. Then there are the zooms that he made when we did the water scenes.