The relationship between director and director of photography is ‘somewhat of a marriage,’ says Toronto-based cinematographer David Greene.

The Victorious Films feature Century Hotel marks the first time Greene has worked with Canadian director David Weaver, and the getting-to-know-each-other process consisted of watching many films together prior to preproduction.

‘That was an important starting point for me, because you really have to click with one another in order to do good work,’ the DOP says.

All the action in Century Hotel takes place in a single hotel room. The film transports us back and forth in time – between the years of 1921 and 1999 – to track seven stories involving guests in Room 720. The film features an all-star Canadian cast including Colm Feore, Tom McCamus, Mia Kirshner, Lindy Booth and singing/songwriting couple Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace) and Chantal Kreviazuk.

Greene met Weaver through mutual friend Dawn Kuisma, for whom Greene shot portions of a documentary. Greene says he always looks forward to a new collaboration.

‘[Weaver] is a very visual director, and that’s a great asset to a cinematographer,’ he adds.

Greene says his biggest challenge was helping to devise an appropriate overall style for the film.

‘We had to come up with seven different-looking films in one, and shoot each sequence in three days,’ he explains. The stories were tied together by carrying over certain ideas and common elements throughout the entire film, such as placement or types of pictures.

Weaver had designed a specific look for all the stories, yet wanted to keep it simple.

‘We started finessing and massaging each fundamental idea to see how far we could go with it,’ says Greene.

Each story was assigned a specific color and style to convey the time changes.

‘The base palette for the 1920s was mostly reds and gold,’ he explains. ‘The Last Emperor was used as a reference for that sequence in terms of color and the tone of the light. The ’30s had cooler elements, such as green; the ’40s [referred to] an Edward Hopper painting with earth tones and browns; the ’60s sequence showed a dark room with colorful lamps; the ’80s had a blue look, contrasted by the warm glow of candlelight for the 1999 sequence.’

For the 1950s segment, Greene and Weaver used some conventions of the film noir aesthetic but made it their own.

‘Instead of using hard light, we’d use soft light, but we still created shadows and depth in the image,’ the DOP recalls. The scene also required removing a lot of color from the costumes and set design.

Greene worked with Kodak Vision 500T 5279 film stock, which he processed normally. ‘I’ve always used Kodak,’ he says. ‘I like the stocks because they have great latitude.’

Greene shot with Primo prime lenses, favoring the wider side of the spectrum, especially the 18mm and 27mm. His camera, a Panavision Millennium, rested mostly on a dolly. He says that staying in one room, the filmmakers had to keep the action dynamic.

‘Whenever we could move the camera, and it made sense to do so, we’d [do it],’ Greene says. Weaver is a big fan of Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, especially the fluidity of his camera, and Greene says they tried to incorporate that style into parts of Century Hotel.

A crew of ballet dancers

One of the film’s most complicated shots was in the 1921 sequence, for which the crew used a Steadicam.

‘We did a 360-degree camera movement, but had all this light coming in from the windows and crisscrossing,’ Greene recalls. ‘We had eight people, including the Steadicam operator, grips and the boom operator, all moving around like a well-choreographed ballet, so as to prevent them from blocking the light. Everybody was doing this crazy dance.’

Century Hotel was shot at New Toronto Studios, using three different sets. ‘You have a lot of freedom in a studio to put lights wherever you want, and in places you normally wouldn’t on location,’ Greene points out. The crew tried to keep the motivation of lighting realistic, avoiding too artificial a look.

‘One of our rules was to avoid using the lighting grid,’ the cinematographer reveals. ‘We wanted to pretend we were on location.’

A sequence toward the end of the film featuring a female ghost was shot in front of a green screen. ‘We just had to make sure to match the green screen shot to the lens height and angle of the plate shot,’ Greene says.

The footage was later sent to new Toronto CG studio Mr. X for compositing. ‘It was routine green-screen shots for me, but what wasn’t routine was the content and magic [Mr. X] was doing,’ Greene says.

Greene graduated from the film and video program at Toronto’s York University in 1993. ‘After graduation I basically moved up in the industry by doing music videos and commercials,’ he recounts. Meanwhile, he was trying to shoot as many shorts and independent films as possible, building a foundation of dramatic work to sell himself as a feature DOP.

He says he did not set out to be a cinematographer: ‘I was exploring, and [cinematography] was what made sense to me.’

He now prefers shooting features to commercials and music videos. ‘I’ve always wanted to tell a story, because in the narrative you have the opportunity to move people,’ he says.

His next project involves shooting with the Sony 24P high-definition camera. ‘When you must shoot digital, it’s an exciting alternative,’ he comments.

The movie, Rhinoceros Eyes, produced by Eva Kolodner (Boys Don’t Cry), begins shooting in August. Greene says he’s looking forward to collaborating with director-friend Aaron Woodley.

Producer Victoria Hirst has submitted Century Hotel to the Toronto International Film Festival for consideration. Meanwhile, Greene recently signed on with Tom Marquardt of Los Angeles’ International Creative Management for representation in the U.S. Locally he is repped by Tina Horwitz at WCA Film & Television. *