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Reader SurveyOld-Fashioned Filmmaking
Nov 1, 2007 12:01 PM, By Michael Goldman
Paul Thomas Anderson's team keeps There Will be Blood ultratraditional.
Paul Thomas Anderson (right) directs Daniel Day-Lewis. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon.
Opening sequence
The movie begins, literally, in a hole — a long-abandoned silver mine near Marfa where Anderson's team filmed the opening 15-minute-plus segment, which is quite remarkable because it contains only a single character — Plainview — chipping away at rock, with no other people or dialogue involved. The sequence was meant to illustrate Plainview's literal career ascent, and it is later bookended by the disturbing closing scene, which illustrates his final fall from grace.
“Having [the character] all alone actually feels easier at times,” Anderson says. “You are not tied to that pesky business of what people are saying to express how they feel. You can just show it through the labor they are doing. Usually, it's hard when you are being forced to kind of fake it, or hit some kind of plot point, or to make sure someone says something to reveal their past, or whatever. All we had to do was [set up a situation] where we could show [the character] doing his work, and then film it.”
The hardest part of filming that scene was lighting Daniel Day-Lewis properly at the bottom of the mine, Elswit says.
“We had to build a rig over the top of [the hole], so we could hang units down and work above safely,” the DP says. “But it really was a hole in the ground. If you fell into it, you would fall 100ft., and you would be dead. So we just built, essentially, a sort of floor support that we could hang lights over the top of it and also suspend people down into the hole on it. In the shot where Daniel falls [and breaks his leg], I was suspended [on that platform] above him, looking straight down.”
Dylan Tichenor, ACE, received editing help from Tatiana S. Riegel at the start of the project while he finished up work on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Tichenor says the opening sequence was particularly challenging to cut together.
“In the beginning, there were arguments about where we could chop off part of [the sequence] in the silver mine — things we wouldn't need,” Tichenor says. “But it's definitely an epic part of the movie, and it shows the true drive, the inner monster in [Day-Lewis'] character as he starts going after what he is searching for. It's a beautiful way to start a movie — a guy by himself, alone in a hole. For me, the challenge there is about the motion of ideas [when cutting]. You don't want to be repetitive with behavior or action, especially without dialogue or characterization to distract the audience. Every shot should give you something new to add to your understanding of the character or the moment.”
