The food wasn’t particularly edible, but the location more than made up for the strange lunch. The crew had just broken from the long morning shot filled with over 250 extras, horses, carriages, and period costumes, when cinematographer Daryn Okada’s walkie-talkie began to crackle. “What’s the status of the film?” came over the air waves.

Okada had a lot on his mind. He was thinking of the wonderful shot he had planned for the afternoon, at magic hour. It would be so great, the sun glinting off the pure gold spirals of the church. “It’s packed and ready to go to the lab,” he answered, the afternoon shot still had his attention.

“I think we had better send it off,” the voice continued.

“Why? What’s wrong?” The tone had captured his attention.

“Not now. Come on down, and we’ll talk about it here.”

“That’s when I realized our AD Mark Cotone didn’t want to talk over the open walkie-talkie,” says Okada. “That’s when it really began to hit home. We weren’t on a Hollywood lot, or even on an American location. We were deep inside Russian territory, in the never-before-available environs of the Kremlin!”

It seemed that, earlier in the day, when Okada and the international crew gathered for a few “minor” establishing shots in the Russian snow inside the Kremlin complex, they had been interrupted when a motorcade cut through the shot. Russian leader Boris Yeltsin had canceled an out of the country visit and returned, unexpectedly, to his offices. When he looked down from his high window and saw an American movie crew shooting with horses and 300 extras dressed as peasants inside the sacred walls, the call went out. “What’s going on down there?” Obviously, he hadn’t been informed about the intruders.

“Suddenly, the most important thing on our minds was getting the film out, before someone decided to inspect it,” Okada says. “We had permission to be there, in Russia, for six months of pre-production and shooting. However, where we could go and what we could do often changed overnight.

“We were a long, long way from American soil and the American system of movie making.”

And, Okada was a long way from his last feature, the quirky Animal House-style comedy Black Sheep. An unbelievable jump from a wacky physical comedy to the adaptation of an internationally recognized classical novel known as Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “It just proves that a cinematographer should not be cast with photographing just one type of picture,” he says. “It’s all about perception and application.” And, it is also all about who you work with and what kind of work you do for them.

Some years ago Okada shot a small youth-oriented picture for Icon Productions called Airborne. When he finished shooting in Cincinnati, he got a call from Mel Gibson, who needed help with additional photography for the last scene in Man Without a Face. Gibson, producer Bruce Davey and executive producer Steve McEveety were impressed with the way Okada got into cinematographer Don McAlpine, ASC’s thinking. Okada went off to do other projects, and Davey and McEveety went on to work with Peter Suschitzky on Immortal Beloved, directed by Bernard Rose.

“Now, Bernard needed some additional work for this picture, and they called me,” Okada recalls. Again, he was required to get into the head of the film’s cinematographer. “In early photography classes we had an assignment to attempt to copy a picture we admired, to get into an artist’s head when he was creating the work,” he says. “Although we could never repaint the masterpieces, the process enabled us to use that as a point to create new work.” That is what Okada needed for both of these past projects.

Okada’s ability to interpret what director Bernard Rose was thinking and what Suschitzky was shooting impressed Rose. When Suschitzky wasn’t available to shoot Anna, Rose, Davey, and McEveety’s memory of Okada’s work, and Icon’s memory of Airborne, made him a natural choice for the new picture.

“The first thing I thought about was how to interpret a period picture in a Russian way,” Okada explains. “I did a lot of visual research looking at the architecture and painters like Kandinsky and realized that period was filled with rich and strong colors—gold, red, blue, orange. I knew we had to capture the story in the same bold manner, discarding the obvious notion of pastels. That meant no diffusion and saturated colors.”

That dictated the stock. “On My Father the Hero, we were dealing with strong colors in the Bahamas. Going back to the tests I had done on that film to maximize color saturation was the logical thing to do.” Okada found Kodak’s 5293 pushed one stop held a wider richer color palette with less grain than 5298 when it got to the release print. “But then I look at the work of John Seale, ASC, who shoots a lot on 5298 and it looks gorgeous. If you have a good feel for a stock you can do incredible things with it. For me it happens to be 5248 and 5293 at the moment.

“Film development also influenced my stock choices,” he continues. “We were going to ship twice a week to Technicolor in London. I feel that high speed film is more susceptible to temperture changes, not to mention radiation,” he adds. “We were going from many degrees below zero to who-knew-what above. And, we were going to be in Russia. We had no idea what kind of security we’d encounter.

“So, lighting would be a challenge. That was the kind of trade-off I hoped we could live with.”

But Okada was far from done with his education involving filming in Russia. “I also looked at Russian cinema for research. This was very enlightening in building a visual understanding of their culture. Many of their classic films experimented with wide screen formats and many Russian features were shot in some anamorphic process like Sovscope for War and Peace. I wondered if it was the film process or something cultural that attracted them so strongly to the wide screen format. Looking at pictures of Russian landscapes and architecture, I saw just how wide and vast their country is. Buildings seem to be designed for visual impact on the horizontal plane. This influenced me in visualizing Anna Karenina to be photographed in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio.”

Okada and the producers and director discussed Super 35 but in keeping with the concept of color saturation and detail. “We had decided on the anamorphic format because the entire negative area is used all the way to the prints,” he explains. “Associate producer Jim Lemley had the foresight to book a whole set of Panavison Primo anamorphic lenses seven months ahead of the presumed start date,” Okada explains. “If we had waited, there would have been nothing available.”

Although the picture was budgeted so Okada could bring his key crew, first assistant John Boccaccio, second assistant Brett Gates, key grip Mike Hodges, dolly grip Tommy Walker, gaffer Mick McNeely, best boy Jack McCollum, and rigging gaffer Jordan Valenti from America, everything else had to be acquired in Europe or Russia. “When I got to Europe, everyone was surprised the key crew members were going to be American. It had been the natural assumption that I would pick my crew from London. They thought American-based crews didn’t ‘travel well,’” he laughs. “They thought Europeans would adapt to the Russian customs and methods much better. I think even though we get to use the best equipment at home, when it comes down to filmmaking cut off from the western world, we prove very adaptable and inspired to work as a team with our Russian counterparts.”

Okada had most of his lighting shipped in from France. The equipment was basic by American standards, but serviceable. “We had three 18Ks, four 2500 HMI Pars, four 1200 HMI Pars, some HMI Fresnels, a baby dino, a tungsten package and a lot of cable,” he explains. “They were weak in lighting control, grip equipment, and flagging. However, I knew we could make what we needed. We built some frames for diffusion, white boxes to bounce into, and if you can believe this, sandbags. Unfortunately the sandbags were not completed until the fourth week of production!”

With the film’s start date scheduled for April, Okada and Rose were afraid they would not be able to capture the coldest season in Russia. “That’s what landed us in the Kremlin during my first week in Russia with one English camera assistant, a Russian crew, 300 extras, on a pre-production shoot and scout,” he laughs. “The idea was to do some simple establishing shots in Moscow, a few in St. Petersburg, and then five or six weeks of prep.”

Okada and a skeleton crew bit the bullet and took the midnight train to Moscow. “No wisecracks please,” he inserts. “Would you want to fly across on a puddle jumper?”

“When we got there, the concerns had changed,” he says. “Since we had one of the main actresses available, and we wanted to establish the characters in the wintry scene, we decided to shoot the second scene in the film. This is where Levin watches Kitty, skating outside a monastery.”

The scene is scripted at the end of Levin’s nightmare with the camera moving away from him trapped in a well, transitions through a series of smoky train images at night dissolving to the frozen lake, 100 ice skaters, 200 extras, horse drawn carriages, the monastery beyond and out of the crowd as the actress skates to camera. “Right,” Okada comments, drily. “Remember, we hadn’t shot a thing yet. And I was working with a Russian crew.”

Okada took a deep breath and thought the transitions through. “The monastery was incredible. If we could get the camera moving through a surrounding thicket to reveal Levin in the foreground, continuing past him to the skating characters in the distance and this wonderful structure, we would have a breathtaking opening. All I had to do was be able to communicate with the Russian crew, get shots with natural light, working off of snow, ice, and the glaring sun.”

Fortunately, Okada had done a lot of shooting on ice when he did Airborne. “I knew we couldn’t dolly forward smoothly on the ice, we needed a crane with a long enough arm so the shot would have less of an arc as the camera moved forward,” he says. “Weight of the crane was important so it would not fall through the ice. So, I was faced with a giant shot and the Pegasus crane would not arrive for another two months. We were still in pre-shoot mode, remember.”

As soon as he arrived in Russia, Daryn Okada plugged himself into their world of shooting. He had heard that a Russian television show was using a remote crane arm. He immediately arranged to visit the studio. What he saw was a crude version of the Akela, which actually had it’s roots in Russia. “I told the television people what I wanted to try. They were more than willing to help us get the shot.”

“I knew I couldn’t depend on adapting their servos to the Primo lenses,” he says. “Luckily I got Rawdon Haynes, the English camera assistant for the pre-shoot to stop at Panavision UK on the way to the airport and bring a remote focus FITSAC unit. That way, I could integrate the crane from Russia with the small Panavision package being flown in from England,” he explains.

All that remained was for Okada to calculate the proper shooting time. “The Russians were impressed with the equipment we take for granted,” he adds. “I had my GPS to calculate the sun angles, my pocket pal on the Newton, and a lot of other things they hadn’t seen.

“Since I wasn’t sure if One Hour Photo existed in Russia, I also had a digital camera for location scouts. Combine all those elements, and I was able to come up with angle, time of day, and hopefully, a crane that worked.”

With that done, Okada wanted to check the next day’s location. He would be photographing some of the oldest, most sacred structures in Moscow, Cathedral Square inside the Kremlin. “We needed the snow we’d shot at the monastery,” Okada says. “Of course, when we got there, the groundskeepers had removed any fallen snow in the square. Desperate, we got on the phones, and asked if the Russian liaisons could get us snow. Soon, a little Tonka Toy-type truck arrived, and dropped a tiny bit of snow on the location. We went back to the hotel that night, shaking our heads. No way was there going to be enough snow there by the next morning.”

At 5:30 a.m., Okada and crew arrived at the Kremlin. They couldn’t believe their eyes. The Tonka truck had filled the area and was still going. “That gave us the energy to shoot our hearts out,” Okada recalls. “That is, until I got the call, and we had to race the film out before something mysterious happened.”

Still in pre-shoot mode, the crew moved to St. Petersburg. “We needed another shot with ice and snow,” Okada recalls. “This was a shot of Levin running, a dot on the horizon, being chased by wolves on the frozen sea running toward camera. It’s also the first shot of the picture and would be spectacular if we could crane down from above the trees as the pack approached. Except the trees were 40 feet high.”

The only hope was to try the same Russian remote crane built to around 60 feet in length to clear the trees for a clean shot of the frozen sea. With the possible wind and added length to the crane, it was apparent that stability would be an issue.

“Fortunately, we had a day bumper between the Moscow shoot, and the St. Petersburg shots,” he explains. “That allowed me to bring in the Libra mount, so that we would have a better chance of getting the shot if the crane arm bounced and swayed with the added weight of the Panaflex camera and anamorphic lens. The head, a simple stabilized mount would level the shot somewhat like a gyro.

“When it arrived, along with Nick Phillips who created it, we literally C-clamped it onto the end of the crane arm and flew it up, holding our breaths. It was amazing that we got the shot, and in only seven takes! That rig started about 50 feet in the air, then boomed and arced down to snow level.”

Not as easy as it sounded, considering a few added challenges. Using real wolves would have been too dangerous, so the crew brought in trained police dogs. Since they would be far enough away from the camera, the look would be close enough. “Then came the challenge of getting them from point A to point B,” Okada adds. “We came up with the idea of sending the trainers out with the dogs. Only, we dressed them in crude Halloween type white suits and gave them white sheets. Once they released the dogs, they dropped to the ground and covered themselves with white. You couldn’t tell the trainers from the snow.

“Of course, they were safe. The camera crew, well, that was a little different. We had to cage ourselves in near the camera, so that the dogs wouldn’t attack us!

“Sure, we could have taken the trainers out in CGI,” he says, switching back to the technical challenges of the location. “But why should we spend the time and money, when the simple solution was there, in front of the camera?”

He takes a deep breath. “Oh, did I mention that, throughout these ‘little shots,’ I wasn’t able to see a foot of developed film? We would not hear anything from John Ensby at Technicolor London until the end of the week!”

Still in the dark about his choices, Okada continued pre-production in St. Petersburg. “Our time was cut short because of the pre-pro shoot so that meant cramming as much as we could into the days we had.

“I was still sending e-mail back to the States via my powerbook, and digital pictures to show my assistant and others what we needed. We made the plans a little faster than we wanted, but we were now ready for the ‘real’ shoot.”

Fully equipped with cameras, lenses, lights, and crew, the full compliment behind Anna arrived in Russia, for what turned out to be about a four month stay. The feeling of being cut off and in an alien world finally set in. “I guess the adrenaline had been pumping, when we were working with the Russian crew,” he says. “Now that I had familiar faces around me, I began to feel the weight of the project. Little challenges became amplified. Simple take-it-for-granted things became large problems.”

“Newspapers, for instance, were almost non-existent. They came out only weekly. The weather report would say things like 20 percent chance of rain this week. That wasn’t much help, when we were outside so many days! Fortunately, I had my powerbook and access to an internet line. I could download satellite pictures of weather every day, so I could know what we would be encountering.”

At times, even that wasn’t a lot of help. There is a major exterior scene, again involving many extras and sweeping vistas. Choreographed carefully, the idea was to show a rhythmic scything sequence, out in the Russian fields. “We had to have a particular kind of grass,” Okada explains. “You should have seen people’s faces, as we scouted the locations in the depths of winter!

“We asked the Department of Agriculture where this grass might grow. They were of only a little help,” he adds. “Now, if we were in the States, we could visit neighborhoods and ask the residents if they had pictures of their fields in the summer. Not a good idea, in Russia. So, we had to commit to an area we thought would work, and plan, plan, plan.

“Our Russian counterparts arranged for the location we chose to be seeded as soon as the land thawed. That gave us a few weeks of added growth, before we began shooting.”

Fortunately, Okada now had the Pegasus crane. He thought about using the 11 to 1 zoom, then fell back on his choice of Prime lenses. “The temperature was still erratic,” he says. “That could make the zoom a little off on the flange focus.”

“Since we were going to use these shots as a series of dissolves, I shot them on 5248, with the knowledge that the negative would go down a generation.”

That settled, Okada and Rose began to choreograph the shot. They knew they had to start in a certain place, and move into a valley so as not to see the grass that had been cut before. “We couldn’t even rehearse the actors in the actual location,” he adds. “Tramping through the grass would break it down. That would be seen in the shot.”

The crew was on the location for three days. Each day became more and more complex, as pieces of the field were cut, and had to be kept out of the shot. “We had the shots timed carefully,” Okada explains. “However, what we hadn’t been able to calculate was the time it would take to stop the scything. Getting a hundred actors to move in rhythm was difficult enough. Getting them to stop all at once was impossible!”

On the last day in the field, many of the shots were cut a little earlier than expected. Another fraction of an inch, and the lens would catch cut grass. “As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge,” Okada adds. “We also had a major invasion of women, who are supposed to come over the hill to greet their husbands at the end of the day.

“There was a stream at the bottom of the hill and I had seen a mist rising from it in the early morning that looked fantastic. I asked Andy Williams, our special effects coordinator if he could lay some smoke down there and hoped it would drift up in a line for this wide shot.

“He did better, laying a 100 foot tube of plastic sheeting with holes poked in it. By pumping smoke and air through it we had a continuous layer of mist rising from where the stream was. Now we had to coordinate the scything, the actors, the women coming over the hill, the mist rising, and the camera movement!” Okada finishes with a deep breath.

“I kept thinking, ‘give me another exterior, please!’

“Of course, I got my wish. And this one had a set of its own complications!” This was another shot establishing the relationship between the various characters. Located on one of the most famous streets in St. Petersburg, Rozzi Street, the shot featured a totally symmetrical location with two buildings, mirror images of each other.

“This time, we wanted a depressing time in the story,” Okada explains. “We wanted overcast. We expected sun, so we thought through alternatives.

“Since we wanted to do another massive crane shot it would have been impractical to silk the street, even if we could get the materials in.

Fortunately, the day started out as grim as the shot needed. While 300 plus extras were being dressed in period costume, Okada and crew shot a small interior across town. “When we came back to the street, it was like time travel,” he says, awe still in his voice. “Because of the setup, there was no reference to the modern world. We literally felt as if we’d been transported back centuries!

“With Tommy Walker on the arm of the Pegasus, controlling the arc, we moved along about 50 feet of dolly track, captured the tops of the buildings, and then boomed down to the carriage. Even the weather cooperated, that day.”

Combining all the various challenges of the exteriors, and even adding some of the interiors, still didn’t bring the degree of difficulty up to the exquisite ballroom sequence filmed inside one of Russia’s most historic locations. “This is an early sequence, meant to establish the opulence of the era,” Okada explains. “We found a magnificent ballroom filled with gold framed mirrors on every wall at the Summer Palace in Pushkin, outside of St. Petersburg. We needed to see the gold and the exquisite art in as much detail as possible.”

Ordinarily, a director and cinematographer might design this kind of shot to introduce the ballroom by going through some doorway leading into it. But Bernard Rose wanted to show that this large ballroom was just a small part of this palace.

“There were at least 20 rooms and galleries, leading to the ballroom,” Okada explains. “Each room lead into the other, in a straight line. Going from room to room you began to see a tunnel of gold framed doorways with a vanishing point. We thought this could show the size and scope of the era building to the ballroom sequence.”

“Because we were going to time this to music, Tchaikovsky of course, the challenge we took upon ourselves was to move through all the rooms and into the dancing in one continuous take, letting the audience experience the size of this place.” That meant lighting every room and then the entire ballroom!

“The lighting was only one of several challenges,” Okada says, taking an involuntary breath as he remembers the headaches of working out this particular shot. “We had only a limited amount of lights available. We had to make them work, in all the rooms. Planning carefully, we parceled them out, room by room, praying we had calculated properly. It wouldn’t do to run out of lights, just as we got to the last room!”

Okada ended up using one main source per room as if it was from a chandelier, directing HMI lamps and tungsten units into 4x8 bead boards differently in each room. “This allowed us to keep with the character of the room, and provide a surface for the gold leafing to reflect from. The HMI lamps gelled with half CTS, plus another quarter CTS, were referenced as normal color to the scene so the tungsten lamps would go warmer to enhance the gold and match the particals.

“Placement was essential. Because of the historical significance of the rooms, we weren’t able to clamp anything to the walls, so everything had to come from the floor.

“Fortunately, we figured it right, and had just enough light as we came to the last room before the ballroom.”

If Okada had miscalculated during pre-production, he would have had to live with it. Not only was he limited to where the lights could be placed in the room, he was also locked into his choices. Once he okayed a design, the layout had to be submitted to the government. Before a light could be put in, the crew had to have approval in writing.

“Talk about pressure,” he says, shaking his head. “Once I  made the lighting plan I was committed to a 50mm anamorphic lens which would keep the units just out of the frame in each room. If a light had to be closer to a wall or a wider focal length preferred on the day, there would have been nothing I could do about it. The thought uppermost in my mind, as I chose the focal length, was to make sure each piece of art, each bit of gold, was as crisp on the screen as it was to our amazed eyes.”

While the crew was waiting for placement approval, Okada turned to the choice of camera, lens type, and movement. ”We couldn’t use the smaller anamorphic lenses, because we would see the thousands of practical bulbs in the shots,” he explains. “The C-series would cause blue streaks to go everywhere. We could only shoot this room with Primo anamorphic lenses, which—due to their size—ruled out the Steadicam.

“A dolly would not fit through the doorways safely at the speed we needed to travel, nor was the floor smooth enough. There were also thresholds like speed bumps that could not be removed between some rooms. We realized that we could pull the shot off, if we had the Libra mount to take out the bumps. Key grip Mike Hodges built a wheelchair rig with the Panavison Platinum in the Libra mount, video transmission for the director, and a place for the operator.”

With approvals for placement, and a rig designed to everyone’s satisfaction, Okada turned to the even bigger challenge of lighting the ballroom. “We would be out of lights by the time we got to there,” he says. “Fortunately, I had stopped at the BSC equipment show, when we prepped cameras in London. I saw a few people who were showing helium balloon lights. Unfortunately, most of what I had seen simply didn’t have the output we needed for the ballroom.”

“However, one of the manufacturers had been working with an 8K Tungsten balloon. I thought we could light the ballroom with a half dozen of them as a base ambience toward the middle of the ballroom. The rigging solution would be simple. Inflate them, and let them rise to the ceiling.”

A great idea, for a regular ballroom. Not such a great idea for a room of such historical significance. “Two days before we were to shoot, we found out that we couldn’t let the balloons touch the ceiling. There were precious paintings that were part of the ceiling.

“We created a tether system across the ballroom. Lines were rigged to the bottom of the balloons, holding them back from the ceiling. This stopped them from touching the paintings. At the last minute a fire department representative walked in and said we could not use the balloons at all. They thought they could explode in flames like the Hinderburg. After a lot of pleading they issued a special license to Jack McCollum, the electrical best boy, for $35.00. We had the card translated after they left and it basically said it was a balloon license for professional clowns. Then there was the heat issue.”

That was the straw that almost broke the shot. Not only was there a restriction on where the lights could go, there was also a limit to the amount of heat the crew could generate. “That meant we could never turn all the lights on at once when lighting, if only to see if the entire shot looked balanced from beginning to end, ” Okada adds, quietly. Used to lighting through the camera, this really put Okada on the edge when deciding on the exposure. “I usually light by eye then decide on the final exposure with a combination of meter readings and how it looks through the Panaflex, so with this many rooms and no way to see it all at once made my toes tap.”

Long ago, he had become resigned to the curves thrown to the production during the shooting in Russia. This was just another in a string of challenges they had to meet.

“While we were rigging the interior on the weekend, praying that everything would work, a circus was taking place outside the palace,” Okada recalls. “We had over 130 windows in this palace, and every one of them had to be blacked in. If we had been in the States, we would have had an endless amount of duvetyne. However, this was Russia, and we hadn’t been allowed to bring these materials with us.”

“Days before the shoot, we were out scouring the markets. We bought everything we could find that was black. When all the windows were finished, it looked great inside. Go outside, and look up to the second story of the palace, and you would see the oddest mixture of black things on each window. Talk about improvising, this was the most fascinating homage to what desperation and creativity can do for a crew!”

The day of the shot finally came. The wheelchair rig was in place. All the lights were in, and hopefully would all go on. The balloons were inflated, and tethered. Over 200 of Russia’s finest dancers were costumed in period grandeur. Okada and his dolly grip Tommy Walker were hearing Tchaikovsky’s music, in their heads. The need for the headsets had long passed. Both were sure they would hear the dance music for the rest of their lives.

“I sat down in that rig with a lump in my throat,” Okada admits. “John Boccaccio was setting the aperture and checking the wireless focus, as I settled in. Had we calculated properly? Would all the lights work at the right level in each room? Would we make it through all the doorways without hitting anything? Would the exposure be okay once we got to the ballroom, and most importantly, not catch sight of ourselves in the large mirrors?

“And, would we be able to time the camera movements as we lead our actress through the rooms, and still arrive on the crane platform at just the right moment in the music?”

“Oh, right,” he laughs. “I forgot to tell you. Not only were we going at a variety of paces as we moved from room to room, once we got to the ballroom, we would roll the wheelchair rig onto the Pegasus crane, and start dollying to the back of the ballroom craning up above the dancers, as grips drove pins into the side of the rig to secure it to the crane.”

“At the same time, remaining crew members, production managers and producers who had been counter-weighing the arm down, would have to remove their weight, in a synchronized movement, so as to gracefully transfer the wheelchair rig to the crane and keep pace with the dancers.”

Was that all Okada had to do? “Probably not,” he laughs. “But now that this chess game is over, it is hard to remember what we did move for move. I think we all are trying to block that moment out of our minds!”

What Daryn Okada does remember, is that it took only six takes to get the shot and then they moved on. “The length of the camera move was 590 feet,” he says. “We couldn’t have pushed everyone to do it too many more times. The more tired we all got, the more mistakes we could have made. I couldn’t believe all the lights worked as we turned them on section by section like a runway just as the camera rolled by.”

“I probably have to sit in a theater, to enjoy what the ballroom scene looks like. That is most likely the only time I will be able to see the whole thing lit!”

While much of Anna Karenina, especially the exterior shots, was done in natural or relatively little supplemental light, a good portion of the interiors were illuminated to enhance what was there. When he did get a chance to use light, natural or man-made, to drive some of the story points home, Okada really enjoyed playing with what he had.

“I had never experienced a peculiar phenomenon called ‘white nights,’” he explains. “When I heard about it, I thought it would be a kind of magic hour, that would last all night. When I saw this strange, and sometimes frightening, white night that was totally cold and blue, I realized this would be the perfect accent to the part of the story where Anna falls deeper and deeper into depression and opium addiction.

“To enhance her emotional degradation, we left the windows of the palace we were using un-gelled. Shot with uncorrected 5293, to embed the blue glow we used a Tiffen 812 on the lens to remove the excessive UV light that might contaminate the blacks. We then added a little more glow to the floors by using foamcore above the doors, to bounce this strange light into and off of various areas of the floor and walls. When the light fell on the faces, it literally drained the color from them. It was scary, but perfect for the effect.”

Okada also used other colors to enhance the emotional moments of this epic love story. White night provided the coldness of Anna’s lonely fall towards death. Double straw gels gave the room where Levin and Anna’s husband Karenin face each other, as Anna lies on her bed possibly dying from the fever in an intense, emotionally exhausted mood. The golden glow gave their actions the accent that only words could not accomplish. An Aurasoft was used to project soft light across the room without spilling everywhere.

“Looking back, all the pieces to this film came together because of the teamwork shared between our entire crew, American, Russian, British, French and Italian. I also had incredible support from Panavision, relied on John Ensby’s reports from Technicolor, London and knew in the end that David Orr at Technicolor/Los Angeles would turn out a beautiful answer print.”

It is no secret, Daryn Okada has crossed the line from a comic cinematographer to a major player in the dramatic world of epic movies. Anna Karenina was quite a challenge for him. Because he had stockpiled a library of ‘how-tos,’ there wasn’t a moment when he couldn’t reach for an answer to what seemed to be an insurmoutable challenge.

“You can’t become confortable and stick with one style of movie, if you are going to survive in this business,” he says. “You have to take each project on its own merit. You have to be ready for every contingency. Whether it is a comedy or a sweeping period drama, a movie will always be a series of shots telling a story combined with a series of challenges, which can be solved by going back into your storehouse of ‘possibles’—whether they are shots you have created over the years, or inspirations produced from studying the work of others.

“There isn’t anything a cinematographer can’t do, as long as he keeps challenging himself with every shot he makes.”