Robert Elswit, a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, won the Academy Award this year as cinematographer for There Will Be Blood. My favorite movie of 2007, the film will be released on DVD on April 8 by Paramount Home Entertainment. The movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two. In addition to Elswit's well deserved win, Daniel Day-Lewis took home the Oscar for Best Actor.

The general public can rarely rattle off the name of the cinematographer of their favorite film, yet without their magic to light a romantic scene properly, create tension in a thriller or embellish the dark surroundings in a scary movie, there would be no enjoyment of any film.

Elswit came by his love of movies naturally; his parents were theatrical agents so he grew up around the business. "I loved the old movies from the '30s and '40s that played on TV every week. So early on it was a dream of mine to be part of that business," said Elswit.

He started filming TV programs in the 1980s and soon was working on feature films. His vast repertoire includes such films as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Boogie Nights, Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, and Michael Clayton. Elswit and director Paul Thomas Anderson work well together. "I've worked on all of Paul's films," he said. "I always know there will be some kind of critical acclaim for Paul's movie, like a Berlin film festival award or something but there's little chance it'll get the kind of response that this film got. I was surprised and pleased."

Almost all of There Will Be Blood was shot in the small Texas town of Marfa. This made Elswit's job much easier than to have to move to different locations. "Production designer Jack Fisk found this incredible little town that was once an oil town, and we built all of our sets there and used many of the extras whose families had worked in the oil fields. If that hadn't been done so well, I don't think the film would have worked out nearly as well."