The team of helmer François Girard and director of photography Alain Dostie doesn’t shy away from features that are imposing and arduous in nature, as is evident in the period drama Silk, their long-awaited follow-up to the Genie Award-winning The Red Violin (1998).

Boasting a $26-million budget, various exotic locations and a marquee name in Keira Knightley of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Silk has all the makings of a potential hit for Toronto producer Niv Fichman of Rhombus Media.

Dostie says he had read Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same name long before there was talk of a movie.

‘Only François is crazy enough to actually think about doing a movie like that,’ says the Quebec-based Dostie, who adds that Girard was developing a number of other projects after The Red Violin, but none panned out.

A Canada/Italy/Japan copro, Silk is a dark love story of an extramarital affair that develops between a 19th century French silkworm smuggler, Herve Joncour, played by Michael Pitt (The Dreamers, Last Days) and a Japanese mistress (Sei Ashina), despite the fact they don’t speak the same language. Knightley plays Joncour’s suspicious young wife, Helene.

Silk marks the fourth collaboration between Dostie and Girard. ‘We know each other so well, it’s like family,’ says the DOP.

The film’s disparate shooting locations – Sermoneta, a village just outside of Rome, which doubled for the south of France, and Matsumoto, Japan, near the site of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics – made the three and a half months of preproduction especially tough.

‘There were two production offices, so François was traveling back and forth,’ says Dostie, who initially made two trips to Italy and Japan to conduct shooting tests before returning to Montreal to prep.

Dostie says he watched at least 15 Japanese films – none he’d ever heard of – to see how they light small Japanese houses.

Filming commenced in wintry Japan on Feb. 25, on a set built entirely in the snow. ‘I’ve never seen so much snow in my life,’ remarks Dostie. ‘We don’t know what snow is in Quebec.’

The veteran cinematographer, 63, who never studied film but can’t remember ever doing anything else, says he ‘thought a lot’ about how to achieve a different look for Silk. Dostie’s credits include the features Perfectly Normal (1990) and Girard’s Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993), as well as the mini Nuremberg (2000).

‘When we started shooting in Japan, I realized that I didn’t have to do anything special – just shoot what was in front of the camera,’ says the lenser. ‘I didn’t have to think about it as different because it was different.’

Japan’s grey and brownish winter landscape provided a sharp contrast to Italy.

‘[Joncour] and his wife were building a garden in Italy, so it was very green and we did a lot of exteriors,’ says Dostie.

The cameraman notes it felt more like ‘a vacation’ when the 15-member Canuck crew, including Violin production designer François Séguin, proceeded to springtime Italy in April for the remainder of Silk’s 55-day shoot. ‘It was a lot easier,’ he adds. A second unit covered scenery and travel shots in Africa and Siberia.

In addition to battling treacherous weather conditions in a remote area of Japan, the shoot was further complicated by the cultural and language barriers that existed between the Canadian filmmakers and Japanese crew.

‘We used signs and interpreters to communicate,’ recalls Dostie, who says he was captivated by the Japanese culture. ‘To me, it’s one of the last exotic places on earth.’

The DOP, who tried to light ‘as simple and as Zen as possible,’ says there were no crowds or big setups for the shoot, which featured only a few actors at a time, with the exception of a market scene.

‘It’s a lot more difficult to shoot a scene with two actors doing the Japanese tea ceremony because there’s not much there, and yet it has to be magic,’ Dostie explains. ‘There are no words, but everything is happening… [the main character] is falling in love.’

Dostie used exterior fixtures only slightly – ‘just to improve the shadows’ – because he wanted to imbue a documentary quality in the scenes. ‘I fought to avoid the period-film traps of using oil lamps and candles,’ he says. ‘I wanted it to look more real.’

Silk was shot in the Super 35 format with a Panaflex camera, which mostly sat on a dolly. ‘François cannot do a shot without moving the camera, but not in an obtrusive way,’ Dostie notes.

The camera was manned by Sylvaine Dufaux, who worked as an assistant operator on Red Violin. ‘If you operate yourself, you’re doing two jobs, which leaves you no time to talk with the director,’ says Dostie.

The DOP was very happy with his decision to use only one film stock – Kodak’s Vision2 500T 5218 – for the entire film.

‘I’ve been thinking about [doing] it for years, and I was always chicken at the last moment,’ he says. ‘But it’s a lot simpler because you set your eyes at 500 ASA and you never change.’

Though Silk has a significantly larger budget than Violin’s $14 million, Dostie says it’s never enough.

‘The budget is big for a Canadian film, but the more money you have, the more you’re missing,’ he says. ‘The ambition goes faster than the budget.’

Of Silk leading lady Knightley, Dostie has nothing but praise. ‘She’s charming, and despite being very young [21], she’s like an old pro,’ he says.

CG work on Silk wrapped at Ex-Centris in Montreal, with post-production otherwise done at Vision Globale/CitéLab. Dostie is currently doing digital intermediate work on the film for the first time in his career, but says he feels ‘very confident’ with the process.

Silk is scheduled for release in September 2007. The film will be distributed by Odeon Films in Canada and New Line Cinema’s Picturehouse in the U.S. *