American Cinematographer - January 2008 - 42

Blood for Oil point of the action. “We looked at a lot of locations with Jack, but Marfa was the place,” says Elswit. “There aren’t many spots in America where you can stand on top of a hill and see absolutely nothing in all directions. We all loved the quality of the landscape, and the ranch we used had the little railroad the story required. Jack picked a part of the ranch that worked perfectly — from the church you could see the railroad, the oil well and the Sunday family’s little ranch house. They were all visually connected, but Paul is an enemy of the obvious, so he didn’t want to [show] that. But Jack laid the place out wonderfully, and the sets were perfectly integrated into the harsh landscape. The structures’ simple stylization and the way they were sighted in relation to the land and each other made the world of the movie seem very believable and real. The interior designs were always based on ideas about story and character, and Jack’s sensitivity to lighting and how it changes throughout the day was the major factor in the planning and placement of the sets. That, in turn, made it easy for us to find interesting and expressive ways to stage and photograph the movie. In my opinion, Jack’s production design was the great contribution to the film.” Anderson prefers to use the slowest film stocks possible, and Elswit shot There Will Be Blood on Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, which was used for day scenes, and Vision2 200T 5217, used for all night material. “We shot with Vision2 stocks because they’re less contrasty and easier to work with outdoors [than Vision stocks],” says Elswit. “We did nothing fancy — no flashing, no special filters. Paul actually thinks using an 85 filter is bad! I’ve often explained to him that the stocks are designed to work with an 85, but he thinks that’s somehow interfering with the alchemy of Kodak. This time, though, he let me use an 85 when it was appropriate. “We also print our dailies — Above: Fed up with the meddling of local preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, kneeling), Plainview throws him to the ground and rubs his face in the mud. Right: Elswit angles in on the action. baby H.W. You can see color shifts in the corners, where the colors don’t line up precisely. We also did a few wide shots with that lens. It was very low-contrast and tended to vignette optically, especially on a full negative. It wasn’t razor sharp and didn’t have the same micro-contrast modern lenses do, but it was certainly sharp enough if I stopped down. It’s a neat lens, and I’m glad we used it. “When I shot Good Night, and Good Luck, we had a short schedule that required us to work fast, and we never took the 11:1 zoom off the camera,” he adds. “This show was different because Paul really likes the discipline of the 40mm, the 50mm, 42 January 2008 the 75mm and the 100mm. He wants to make the movie play out in those sizes, and he understands how that affects staging and design.” There Will Be Blood is mainly a day-exterior film, which allowed Elswit to take advantage of the anamorphic format while capturing landscapes on location in Marfa, Texas, which doubled for Bakersfield, California. (A few sequences were shot in California at locations that included Mystery Mesa.) In Marfa, production designer Jack Fisk constructed the main sets: a tiny town consisting of simple wooden structures, including a church and the oil derrick that serves as the focal

American Cinematographer - January 2008

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