Robert Christopher Elswit, ASC (born April 22, 1950) is an American cinematographer. He has had multiple Oscar, BAFTA and Independent Spirit nominations for several films, including winning for There Will Be Blood (2007). Elswit frequently works with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit was born in California. An early short film he worked on was a 1982 TV adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer in a Day. He began his career as a visual effects camera operator at John Dykstra's Apogee Productions Inc., working on films like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Empire Strikes Back, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, before shooting made-for-television films and shows. Elswit is a fierce defender of shooting with film, and whenever possible refuses to use digital cameras. Images shot digitally, he says, have "no texture, no grain." He’d eventually start shooting in digital, starting with Nightcrawler. Elswit has also worked with director George Clooney several times. He shot Clooney's black and white, multiple-Oscar nominated film Good Night, and Good Luck. Notably, Elswit shot the film in color, then converted the film into black and white in post production. According to Elswit, this technique preserved the subtlety of the colors (as complex shades of blacks and greys) and made the overall look much richer in the final film.Elswit received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography in 2006 for his work on the movie Good Night, and Good Luck. He lost that Oscar to Dion Beebe for Memoirs of a Geisha. Two years later, Elswit would again be nominated and this time win the Oscar for Best Cinematography, for his work on There Will Be Blood. Elswit has cited early independent filmmaker John Cassavetes as a major influence. Elswit is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and worked there as a teaching assistant in the 1970s.


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