Daryn Okada, ASC was born and raised in Los Angeles. He displayed a very early keen interest in the visual arts, including both still photography and motion pictures. Okada began documenting family trips and experimenting with a Super 8 mm camera during his pre-teen years. He graduated from high school at the age of 16, and began working part-time as a projectionist at East Los Angeles City College.

Okada worked as a volunteer on student films and low budget independent movies mainly as a grip. He subsequently found opportunities to shoot occasional aerial sequences for commercials, and earned his first credit for Nomad Riders, an ultra-low budget film in 1981.

During the mid-1980s his career was put on hold for several years when he was injured in a helicopter crash while shooting aerial footage. Okada refused to give up. He shot several independent films during the late 1980s, and earned an Outstanding Achievement Award nomination from the American Society of Cinematographers for the Mini Series In A Child’s Name in 1991.

Okada has compiled more than 30 credits, including Lake Placid, Anna Karenina, Captain Ron, Dr. Doolittle 2, Joe Somebody, Cradle 2 The Grave, Mean Girls and Paparazzi.

Following are excerpts of a conversation:

ICG: Is it true you one of those rare California natives?

OKADA: I was born and raised in Los Angeles. When I was around three, we moved to South San Gabriel, where I grew up.

ICG: Were you born into a film industry family?

OKADA: No. My father was a draftsman at Hughes Aircraft. When I was young, I thought that a career having something to do with space or technology would be interesting, but I really loved movies. By the time I got into high school, I was seriously into still photography. I talked to the high school counselors and asked them how I could get into the motion picture industry. They would look at my aptitude tests and say, ‘you should be preparing to get into engineering or the pharmacy business.’ I was pretty disappointed.

ICG: Are there particular movies that influenced you?

OKADA: There were tons of them. My parents took me to the Carthay Theater when I was very young to see The Sound of Music. I wasn’t into the story, but I loved seeing the visuals on a gigantic screen in an incredible movie palace. I remember those feelings now.

ICG: That’s really interesting, because most people who are movie fans aren’t particularly aware of the visuals. It’s the actors and music that they remember later on.

OKADA: I don’t know what it was, but when I was a kid it was always the visuals that stood out. I could tell when films were made in a studio in a controlled environment. They had sort of a slick look. When I was very young, I saw a movie that Owen Roizman (ASC) photographed, The French Connection. I think I was around 11, so my mother had to take me to see that film because it was rated R. It was an incredible experience. I was totally swept up because of the way it was photographed. It put me right into what was happening.

ICG: Any there other movies you remember from that period?

OKADA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid photographed by Conrad Hall (ASC) had a look that was non studio like. It was just the images on their own, not a formula western look. Bladerunner impressed the entire world, but that came later. Jordan Cronenweth’s (ASC) work was wonderful.

ICG: Were you also into still photography, early on?

OKADA: Still photography seemed to be the one accessible, visceral medium that I could participate in even before I went to high school. I immersed myself in still photography and the photographers who were doing black and white. I thought Ansel Adams was amazing. That was my first exposure to looking at photography as art. I have incredible respect for the photographers who shot those wonderful photographs for the government during the 1930s depression. I recall seeing Dorothea Lang’s work. It was entirely different subject matter in black and white, but there was a human element where a single photograph captured the emotions of the people at that time. There was a period when I aspired to becoming a black-and-white still photographer, but I knew I would have to figure out how to make a living, and that would be kind of a tough way to do it.

ICG: How did you started taking still photos?

OKADA: I’ve been taking them ever since I can remember. I was always the kid with the camera since I was six years old. I got my first Super 8 camera when I was seven or eight, or maybe I was 10. It was a magical experience when my dad let me buy a splicer, and I started cutting out parts of shots that weren’t showing what I wanted to get across. That’s when I started thinking maybe I should work in the motion picture industry.

ICG: Did you take still photos of people or things?

OKADA: I did both. I took pictures of landscapes around where I grew up. It’s a totally urban area today, but there were places you could find that had an open sky. There were train yards where I took photographs. I just sort of explored everything that I knew. I felt like I couldn’t photograph anything I didn’t know, I guess because I was just a kid. Nobody was telling me what was good or what was bad.

ICG: What period are you talking about?

OKADA: I was just starting high school.

ICG: How did you pay for this hobby?

OKADA: Black-and-white film was pretty cheap if you developed it yourself. I didn’t have a darkroom at home, but I was able to use the darkroom at the high school. I would stay after hours. In high school, the photography program started in your sophomore year, because the instructor felt freshmen weren’t mature enough. But, my very first semester, I asked if I could develop film and use one of the enlargers if I stayed out of people’s way. They let me do that. By the second semester, they let me into the photography program. I was the first freshman.

ICG: Was there a teacher who influenced you or helped you?

OKADA: There was a teacher who taught humanities and photography. He was really into photography as art, rather than the technicalities. He would constantly bring in different books, multimedia and documentary films. This was during the early to mid-1970s. He exposed his students to all kinds of visual arts that could inspire something within us. The photography class would go to plays and musicals in addition to art museums.

ICG: How did you get your first Super 8 mm camera?

OKADA: It was the family camera. My dad wasn’t a photography buff, but he wanted Super 8 films of his family. I guess that’s what families did during the late 1960s. My dad would use it now and then, and eventually I ended up with it the whole time. I would be the one who documented family trips. I tried to do different things with the camera, including animation.

ICG: Did you save any of the film, or is it gone?

OKADA: There is one film that is sort of story that I made up about a kid who is ostracized by the other kids. It was totally silent. He is pals with a dog he finds. I have no idea where it’s at, but I’d love to find it one day.

ICG: Did you point the camera and shoot, or experiment?

OKADA: I took the work lights my dad had in his garage, and used them to light interiors. For some reason I didn’t want to shoot things the way they were. I wanted to make silhouettes and do other things. For some reason, I just had an innate sense that I wanted to do something with light.

ICG: How else were you finding out about cinematography?

OKADA: By the time I was about 15, I’d go to the library and read magazines. I took a proficiency exam and got out of high school when I was 16. I was frustrated that nobody there could tell me what path to take to get into the motion picture business. I figured I’d try to find out on my own. I immediately got a job at East Los Angeles College. They had a 2,000-seat auditorium and needed somebody to project films they were showing to the community. Most of them were classic Mexican films that I hadn’t seen before. A guy there taught me how to thread a 35-millimeter projector that ran on carbon arcs. Around the same time, I learned that there was a roster program for the union. I went to the contract services office. I remember going up to a little window and saying, ‘I want to sign my name up for the off roster program for the camera local.’ Someone asked ‘if I had an uncle or anybody else in the business?’ I said, ‘No.’ They told me I might as well use invisible ink. That was discouraging.

ICG: What did you do?

OKADA: I decided that getting into the camera Guild was being too ambitious. Maybe I should try some of the other unions. I got the same story from the grip and electrical unions. At that point, I started thinking about film school, but I knew I could never handle the costs or class requirements since I got out of high school early, I would have to take classes I missed. As for the financial side, I went to UCLA to kind of scope it out. I walked around the campus, and I could see people there who were well beyond the means I had growing up or at that moment.

ICG: What did you do?

OKADA: I checked the bulletin boards at the Film Schools and saw ads looking for people to work on student films. I looked for the ones that were most interesting, called up and said I would work for food, doing anything that needed to be done. One of my friends who I met at East Los Angeles college was working on a film, and was also going to film school at UCLA. He told me about a posting on the bulletin board for a really low budget film that a young director named Don Coscarelli was doing. They were shooting on 35 mm Eastman film, and they had a Panaflex camera. They had a little van that had a few lights, and were only shooting on weekends. The film was called Phantasm. It ended up being a cult hit.

ICG: What did you do?

OKADA: I did whatever needed to be done. It was a horror film, so we shot primarily at night. We had one 5K and an assortment of smaller lights. I had no idea what they were. If someone asked for a Baby, I’d go running to the van and carry back every light. That’s how I learned what the different lights were. You had to learn to recognize them. There were no labels.

ICG: Did you shoot a lot of student films?

OKADA: Only a few, because when I started working on Don Coscarelli’s film, it took up all the energy I had. During the week I was working at the college doing all the things that the students didn’t want to do themselves. I figured it gave me an opportunity to see what was going on, and to decide if I really wanted to pursue trying to find a way to get into films.

ICG: About when was this happening?

OKADA: It was during the late 1970s.

ICG: How did you keep from getting discouraged?

OKADA: I just kept going. I never knew if I would make it, but I watched everybody who was coming along and learned enough so that if I ever got my chance, I could give the director real feedback about what would help get his movie. When I was working on these independent films, I was always analyzing why they looked the way they did. We’d shoot all weekend, and then during the week, we would go watch studio and foreign films and talk about lighting and composition.

ICG: Were there cinematographers whose work influenced you?

OKADA: Everybody was influencing me. It was a real high point for cinematography. Vilmos Zsigmond (ASC), Laszlo Kovacs (ASC), Owen Roizman (ASC), Conrad Hall (ASC), William Fraker (ASC), Haskell Wexler (ASC), Nestor Almendros (ASC) and so many others were making their marks. That’s when I really began to understand the importance of knowing how to control and mold light, and how the grip and gaffer could help you.

ICG: Did Phantasm lead to other independent films?

OKADA: Yes. Since it ended up being very successful, everybody doing an independent, low-budget horror film wanted to get the people who worked on that film on their projects.

ICG: When did you get a chance to work on a camera crew?

OKADA: I was working on a film titled Falling In Love Again. It was a low budget film shot in Los Angeles. They managed to get Elliott Gould and Susanna York to be in it, and Michelle Pfeiffer had a starring role. I think it was the second feature she had ever done. I had volunteered to be the key grip, because there was a better-qualified person for gaffer. I was also the dolly grip, so I helping to make camera moves, which I thought was the closet thing to being an operator. Several cinematographers worked on that film. The first one was Dick Bush (BSC) from England, who had a certain way of looking at and lighting things. That film went so long that he had to leave for his next film, and another cinematographer replaced him. Yet another cinematographer replaced him. We got to about the last week of shooting, and they exhausted everybody else they could find. The only other person who was consistently there was the gaffer, and he went onto another film. I was doing key grip, gaffing, and dolly grip work. We had a few more days left, and they had no choice, so they let me finish shooting it.

ICG: Had you ever done a 35 mm shoot before?

OKADA: I had look through the lens once in a while on Phantasm, but for some reason I wasn’t intimidated by the camera; maybe because I used them so much when I was a kid. Cameras just never seemed to be to be intimidating. That never entered my mind. When I was the grip, I’d sit on the dolly during lunch breaks and practice on the gear head not cutting somebody’s head off when they got up. When I got my chance to work for those few days, it seemed very natural to me.

ICG: What happened next?

OKADA: I didn’t have the credits to get camera work, and it was really competitive, especially if you were working on non-union, low budget films. I decided to learn as much as I could about postproduction. I felt that if I was going to be a successful cinematographer one day that one of the keys would be knowing what shots to photograph that an editor might need to really tell the story. I started hanging out with friends in editing rooms. I spent about a year doing that. I wasn’t making any money.

ICG: How were you supporting yourself?

OKADA: I lived at home and still worked part time at the college.

ICG: How did you get a chance to finally shoot?

OKADA: I started working on commercials that were shooting in remote places around the world, where they wanted to cut costs by bringing somebody who was both the camera assistant and gaffer. I also often did aerial shots with a Tyler mount on a helicopter while the cinematographer was working on the ground. My first job was for a commercial producer who had been involved in some short films I had worked on earlier. The other thing in my favor was that I had a passport.

ICG: What was that first commercial?

OKADA: It was for a fruit soda. That led to a few more jobs with a small ad agency in Los Angeles. I also started shooting other things for them, and got more involved with other independent and student films in Los Angeles as a key grip, gaffer, and occasionally operating an extra camera.

ICG: How often were you working as an operator?

OKADA: There weren’t very many opportunities for operators in the non-union world of Los Angeles. Most cinematographers operated their own cameras, and I knew I would never be a good assistant cameraman. I was more interested in lighting. I was finally asked to work on a really low budget motorcycle movie they were going to shoot in Palmdale (a Los Angeles desert suburb). Most of the people working on that project were film school students. I seemed to have the most experience around cameras, so I was asked to shoot it.

ICG: What was the film?

OKADA: It was called Nomad Riders (1981).

ICG: Did that project open any doors?

OKADA: No. But it did give me confidence that I could do the work and I could do it well. I was happy with what I did. After that, I worked on a commercial that was shot in Sri Lanka. I did the aerials. Some people who ran a local production company in Sri Lanka asked if I would be interested in coming back and working on other projects. I was around 23 years old, and I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I never thought they would call me. Just about nine months later, the owner of the company wanted to direct his own film. He called and asked if I wanted to come back and shoot Janalaya: The Balcony. I said, ‘Sure.’ He told me he was in Los Angeles. He had bought an old synch sound Fox rack over camera, a gear head and a dolly. I thought it could be fun. It was like working in an era before my time. We ended up having to build lights out of car headlights and wooden frames.

ICG: Was that just a great experience?

OKADA: Actually, it was. I knew they used aircraft landing lights in rock n’ roll shows. We went to the airport and bought landing lights and wired them together. I wanted to soften the lighting on people at night but we didn’t have any gels or diffusion. I had big pieces of wood painted blue and other colors and we bounced light off them. We also made wooden boxes to bounce light into for interiors controlling it with the sides of the box.

ICG: How long were you in Sri Lanka?

OKADA: I was there for about four months. It was a great experience working with absolutely nothing. I was there through Christmas on an island off the coast of India. I got to experience the country and meet people in a way you could never do as a tourist.

ICG: How did that experience affect your progress?

OKADA: I came back to Los Angeles determined to aggressively get into shooting. I was sort of at a point of no return. I felt I could be a cinematographer, but I had to how to make it into a career. After I got back to Los Angeles, I started knocking on doors. I shot a couple of commercials that got me in the door with a company that was shooting openings for a Saturday morning animated kid’s program. It was kind of a music video. The other cinematographer who was shooting for them was Tom Ackerman (ASC). We alternated shooting those little films on a slow, 16 mm negative stock. I also shot a couple of other commercials. At that same time, Frank LaLoggia, a director who I had done some postproduction work for on a film called Fear No Evil, had an idea for a movie called Lady in White. We talked about it for about three years. He had a big binder filled with storyboards. He wanted to shoot a trailer to raise money from investors. It happened that the weekend prior to doing that trailer, I went to shoot a commercial in Arizona. I promised him I’d be back in time to shoot on Saturday. I was shooting aerials for this commercial when the helicopter went down. I was lying in this field. I couldn’t feel my legs at all. I just felt this incredible pressure in my back. It felt like a basketball was lodged in it. I knew something really bad had happened. Luckily, we were right on the edge of the airport at the Grand Canyon, so the medics were able to get to me right away. All I could think of was that I had to get somebody to fill in for me the next weekend. The producer of the commercial thought I was delirious, but I insisted that he call Frank LaLoggia. I had the number memorized. He made the call, and they were lucky enough to get Russell Carpenter (ASC) to shoot the trailer, and later, the movie. That’s how I met Russell in the middle of 1985.

ICG: How long were you laid up?

OKADA: I was laid up for a couple of years. I basically had to teach myself how to walk again, and after that I used a cane. When I went on interviews for films, the cane was the first thing they saw. We would talk about the script, and then I would get a standard lecture. ‘You know, this is going to be a really hard shoot, and we don’t have a lot of money, so we’d need you to also operate.’ I’d tell them I could do it, but all they could see was the cane. Things were looking pretty dismal, because no one thought I could physically do the job.

ICG: How did you keep yourself going?

OKADA: By not thinking that I had a handicap.

ICG: How did you get back to work?

OKADA:  Don Coscarelli, the director who I had worked with on Phantasm, was shooting a film called Survival Quest. He was going to both shoot and direct it, because that is what he had done on all his previous films. He asked me to operate the camera, so he could concentrate on the actors. That film was shot in the mountains in snow on the sides of cliffs. We also did a river rafting sequence.

ICG: Did you do more films with him?

OKADA: I shot Phantasm II (1988), which was financed and released by Universal. It was real fun going back to my roots. Don is a great director who has his own way of thinking. He knows everything about everything on the set.

ICG: Tell us about your next project, Elvis the Early Years (1990)

OKADA: Elvis was a half-hour, single camera series that was shot in Memphis. It was great project. That’s where I met (director) Steve Miner. We approached every episode like it was a half hour film. It was set during the late 1950s and early ‘60s, when Elvis was just starting his career. We couldn’t afford to dress the entire city of Memphis, so we shot on real long lenses. That way, we just had to dress a narrow corridor down the street, but the shots looked like they had incredible depth. We had a television schedule, so we shot a lot with two cameras. The problem was that it was on ABC on Sunday against 60 Minutes.

ICG: What about Boris and Natasha?

OKADA: That was before Elvis the Early Years. Charles Martin Smith was the director. Unfortunately, it was one of those films in the independent arena that ran out of money when it got to postproduction, so it didn’t see a theatrical release. That was the first film where I made the transition from using really old equipment to a Panaflex, because I knew we were going to be shooting in tight corners.

ICG: In 1991 you got an ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for a miniseries called In a Child’s Name.

OKADA: In a Child’s Name was a two-night miniseries for CBS. Someone at the production company called me because they liked the look of Elvis and recommended me to the director Tom McLoughlin. We didn’t have very much time to prep. We shot in Wilmington, North Carolina. I went out every day as if we were shooting a feature film, but we also had to keep on our schedule. When that show was done, I got a movie in Puerto Rico called Captain Ron for Disney. While I was there, I got a telegram, which was the surprise of my life. My miniseries (In A Child’s Name) was nominated for an ASC Award. At first, I thought it was someone playing a joke.

ICG: How and when did you get into the Guild?

OKADA: I got into the Guild in 1992 after they opened the membership. I had been trying since the late 1980s.

ICG: Was it for a particular project?

OKADA: I was going to do a series of commercials for McDonald’s, but I hoped that being in the Guild it would open doors for me to work on studio pictures.

ICG: When did you get an agent?

OKADA: It was just after the Elvis series. I did a feature with Steve Miner called Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken that Disney picked up. Steve’s agent had pursued me for about a year.

ICG:    Do agents ever get you work, or they negotiate deals?

OKADA: They negotiate deals, but getting jobs is sort of a process of being in the right place at the right time, and having the ability to make something out of the opportunity.

ICG:    In the early part of the 1990s you did a bunch of television movies. How did that happen?

OKADA: A lot of them were with directors who I had worked with on other projects. Sometimes, it was an exercise in trying to make a film on schedule.

ICG: How about Anna Karenina?

OKADA: I got connected with that project through ICON Productions. I did one small film for them called Airborne that they liked. Mel Gibson is one of the owners of Icon Productions and he asked me if I could shoot the last scenes for his directorial debut The Man Without a Face because Don McAlpine (ASC) was on another picture. After that they were finishing a film called Immortal Beloved with Bernard Rose, the director that would do Anna Karenina. There were a couple days of re-shoots and the original cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky (BSC), wasn’t available. They asked me if I would do it. That led to a chance to shoot Anna Karenina. I just felt really connected with the material, and it was my first chance to shoot anamorphic. I had just shot pieces of other people’s films in anamorphic.

ICG: Where was that actually shot?

OKADA: It was shot in Russia on a pretty tight budget, but I was allowed to bring my camera, grip and lighting department keys. The camera crew are all members of the Los Angeles local. Before we left, I looked at a lot of photographs of Russia and noticed that the buildings all seemed to be horizontal. That told me this film had to be shot in anamorphic format. I looked at a lot of Russian films, and almost all of them were wide formats. Even before anamorphic lenses, Sergei Eisenstein experimented with using two and three screens and multiple projectors.

The locations were just incredible, but it was also very difficult logistically. We were allowed to get into palaces no one has ever photographed before. Being in the film business, you get to see and do things that other people never get to do.

ICG: How about Lake Placid, which you shot in 1999?

OKADA: Lake Placid was written by David Kelly. It was a really witty script. Steve Miner was the director. I had worked with him on Elvis and a few features, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken and My Father The Hero. When I got the script for Lake Placid, I thought this film is too outrageous to believe. It dealt with a 30-foot long crocodile and an ensemble group of characters who are trying to figure out what’s in this lake. The first studio backed out, and the film got delayed. When Lake Placid finally did get a green light, we had to figure out how to do the movie. One option was shooting on location in Minnesota, using real lakes for day exteriors and shooting night exteriors in a tank. By the time we were greenlighted, it was December, which was not a great time to be shooting exteriors in Minnesota. Jamie Lee Curtis asked Steve if he would consider doing the 20^th Anniversary Halloween film, and he said yes because we could shoot that film and start prepping Lake Placid in the summer. It was great working with Jamie Lee Curtis. We wanted to be true to the original Halloween that John Carpenter did with Dean Cundey (ASC). The assistant director was Mark Cotone, who I had worked with on Anna Karenina. (Executive producer) Kevin Williamson had worked with Steve and I on the pilot for Dawson’s Creek. We had a great time on that film, and then I immediately started prepping Lake Placid. Our production designer, John Willett, added the numbers up and figured out that we could actually build our own tank and have it accessible where and when we needed it. Stan Winston designed and built the animatronic crocodile. We figured out how to shoot it at different depths in the water. I talked Steve into shooting in anamorphic format, because we wanted to fit the whole length of the crocodile into shots with the actors. We were shooting exteriors in lakes and forests to make the film to look as realistic and rich looking as possible.

ICG: How do you do take an unbelievable subject like that and make it look and feel realistic?

OKADA: The hardest part of that film was making the audience believe it was a real crocodile in daylight. I structured the day exterior work so the water was always glistening with life. There was always something that attracted your eye. Everything was backlit, so you have a sense that you are seeing the sun reflecting off the water. We figured that making the environment look real made it easier to accept the unbelievable element.

ICG: Where does that instinct come from? Is it something you learn over the years or is it something you’re born with?

OKADA: I think it’s a combination of something you are born with and something you learn over the years. We also figured out how to integrate the crocodile into the environment. I looked at some National Geographic documentaries that were shot on film with really long lenses. That’s how I got the idea for playing around with the scale a bit. I shot from angles that I felt would have been accessible if it was a real situation.

ICG: Right after that you did Texas Rangers, a totally different type of movie. What are your thoughts in retrospect?

OKADA: Texas Rangers is another film I did with Steve Miner. The bulk of our cast were actors who had television commitments, so we had to absolutely be finished with that movie by the middle of July. It was a Western, so we had big exteriors scenes with people on horses and cattle. Because of that, we were at the mercy of the weather. We were dealing with actors sitting on horses, and sometimes we had no idea what the animals were going to do. They were constantly moving and the actors’ heads were around 12 feet above the ground. We have some great tools for handling those situations today, including cranes with remote heads that allow you to track with the horses and riders. Steve Miner originally wanted to shoot this film in 65 mm, which I thought was a great idea, but that didn’t work out for various reasons, mainly the short time the film was green lit along with the quick prep and shooting schedule. We shot in anamorphic. The film was originally written as a rated R film, and it would have played wonderfully that way. They decided to release the film with a PG-13 rating, so they had to cut out everything that makes a true Western. That was disappointing. It wasn’t the film we set out to make.

ICG: Do you think 65 mm is a dead medium?

OKADA: No, I think 65 mm is going to make a big comeback. The American Society of Cinematographers shot kind of a mini-movie that is going to be used to test digital projectors. It’s known as the ASC-DCI STEM. It was mainly shot in 35 mm anamorphic format, but there are also 65 mm scenes. There is a stunning difference. The 65 mm film is like looking through a window and seeing reality as it exists.

ICG: You went from Texas Rangers into a totally different type of picture, Dr. Doolittle 2.

OKADA: Dr. Doolittle 2 was a big effects movie that we didn’t want to look like a big effects film. The director was Steve Carr, who I had never worked with before. We had many challenges, including shooting a lot of exterior scenes on stages where we had better control of the animals and visual effects. Steve and I discussed the tonality of the look. He wanted warm tones, which felt like late afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees. The production designer, Bill Sandell, and I spoke, and he started planning forest sets with multiple elevations, while I researched how we could light and air-condition those sets. We had to bring in ten 12,000 amp generators and miles of cable.

ICG: Did you try to be true to the first film?

OKADA: We took a different approach, since we were creating environments on stages. We came up with a plan for rigging the stages with large silks and space lights with different colored gels to create the illusion of ambient skylight with beams of sunlight. We rigged the big lights so they could be moved around on I-beam tracks mounted to the top of he stage and kept out of shots. The I-beam track system reduced the number of big lights we needed.

ICG: Can you tell us about making your next film, Joe Somebody?

OKADA: There was some pressure to shoot in Canada, but we managed to keep the film in Minneapolis where the story is set, because it was important to capture the character of the city. We convinced the studio that we could make the movie in Minneapolis for the budget they had planned for Canada.

One of the main sets in was a big pharmaceutical company that happened to have a vacant building that had the look we wanted outside the windows and everything we needed on the floors.

ICG: Do you think the audience responds to the ambiance of shooting in the actual environments where the stories are set?

OKADA: I think they definitely get a sense of reality. There are reasons why writers set films in certain places. We need to try to be as true to that as possible.

ICG: Was Cradle 2 the Grave next?

OKADA: It was an action movie with Jet Lee and DMX. The director was Andrzej Bartkowiak (ASC), who is a great cinematographer. It was the third film he directed.

ICG:    What was it like shooting for a director who’s a cinematographer?

OKADA: All directors have visions of what they want to do in their heads. At the end of the day, it was like working with any other director. Sometimes I’d wonder how Andrzej would have handled shots if he was the cinematographer, but he had more than enough to do directing this film. There were a lot of action scenes on helicopters in the air and crashing into another one on the ground. We had up to 16 cameras on the ground rolling on that scene and another in the air. There were a lot of logistics to deal with, but it was never overwhelming. Just because you have a lot of cameras doesn’t mean you have to take days to set them up. We were very efficient because we were prepared and we had a great crew. I think this is where the time I spent hanging out in editing rooms to see what was being used paid off. It always comes back to your experience. When we were setting up those cameras, I was thinking about how the director and editor were going to use the film. I think that’s a big part of cinematography. You have to get the shots that are going to tell the story in a cinematic form.

ICG: Can you tell us more about Cradle 2 The Grave?

OKADA: It takes place in Los Angeles, and we wanted the locations to ring true. We had a scene near downtown at the bridge at 3^rd Street. I remembered from my childhood that the bridge and the area around it always seemed glaringly bright to me. I silhouetted the actors against that background.

ICG: Right after that, did you shoot Mean Girls?

OKADA: I shot Paparazzi before Mean Girls but they were released in reverse order. Mean Girls was an entirely different film from Cradle 2 The Grave. I was very happy when I read the script, because it jumped off the page.

ICG: Do you typically see a movie in your mind when you’re reading a script or does that happen later?

OKADA: It depends on the script. For some reason, I was able to tune into Mean Girls when I read the script. I got the comedic and emotional beats that were in the writing. What I liked about Mean Girls is that all the humor is directly related to what’s happening in the story. It’s not gags thrown in for gags sake. The humor is correct for the story and for the characters. I think that’s why the film worked. As I was reading the script, I was seeing it in my mind. Tina Fey did such a wonderful job writing the script that I could visualize how to light and shoot scenes so the audience would get it on a subliminal level. I felt connected to the material. It goes back to what I loved about films as a kid. I didn’t watch movies. I experienced them. The visuals affected me on a psychological level.

When I’m reading a script I’m asking myself, should these be polished or raw images? Should the look be harsh or cold or soft and warm? Is this story meant to look like a documentary? All those things convey messages to the audience. You have to find and execute the style that fits the story, so the audience is experiencing rather than watching the film. Along with this great script is a fantastic director Mark Waters who thinks cinematically, it’s one of those times where you knew you had to do this film.

ICG: In Mean Girls, were you trying to help characters be either more empathetic or maybe unlikable to the audience?

OKADA: Part of the experience for the audience is based on the ad age, don’t judge a book by its cover. We had people in this film who initially appear to be winners based on how they dress, look and act. But, when you look deep down inside them there is another level. We wanted the audience to look deeper.

ICG: Which raises another question. How do you encourage actors to trust and open up to you as a cinematographer?

OKADA: I think it depends on the actor. Some actors know innately what the camera does, and what you are trying to do. Sometimes you discuss it with them. Sometimes the director already discussed it with them. It sort of depends on how the cinematographer is working with the director. Maybe on a particular scene, they’re concentrating on the performance, and not necessarily on the way the camera is moving, so you have to concentrate on that. Other times, the director may have a specific camera move in mind. You have to analyze how it works for the story and whether it progresses or distracts the audience from the performance. It depends on what the dynamics are at that point in the shooting of a film. If you feel there’s something you should communicate with the actors, you have to figure out how to do it, depending on the director and situation. I’ve had actors, especially younger ones, actually look through the lens, and I’ll tell them, see the way it’s framed. If you move just this way, the light will catch your eyes when you want it to emphasize a story point you’re making. They get it really fast, and most of them appreciate knowing there’s this other dimension and tool to add to their performances. It’s not all about close ups. That’s how filmmaking has worked forever, but sometimes it gets forgotten.

ICG: Talking about different types of films, you went from Mean Girls to Paparazzi. Tell us about that film. It was also set and filmed in Los Angeles? Were there any challenges convincing the producers to shoot in L.A.?

OKADA: We did have to do a little bit of convincing to keep it in Los Angeles, even though we had $10 million to make it. There were real advantages shooting in Los Angeles. We had access to the best crews and the best, specialized equipment without having to ship and keep it for a certain number of days. We could get a 50-foot Technocrane from Panavision on the day we needed it. The Los Angeles locations were really important. You would think that would be a no-brainer, but it took a little bit of convincing. Someone had the idea that we could shoot second unit in Los Angeles, and everything else in Canada, or wherever. In the end, it just didn’t make any sense, for the same reasons that it didn’t make any sense to take Joe Somebody out of Minnesota. You just don’t get the same sense of the place when you’re shooting someplace else. We had all the actual locations in place without needing to shoot and composite background plates. We also had more freedom, because we weren’t avoiding landmarks, and that allowed us to be more efficient.

ICG: When you say the best crews are in L.A., I think you are referring to the depth of experienced crews with specialized talents. Do people at the studios understand that?

OKADA: We shot Paparazzi in 38 days with a very ambitious shot list, 999 setups to be exact, so we needed a really seasoned crew who had worked with me before. We had chase scenes, where we needed stunt drivers for just a few days. When we put all of those factors together it wasn’t hard to sell that it was cost efficient to shoot Paparazzi in Los Angeles. I can’t over-emphasize the importance of having an experienced crew that moved fast. By keeping the pace up, I think we go more energy from the actors.

ICG: I know you supervised the timing of this film in a digital suite at Laser Pacific. Can you take a few minutes to share your observations about how this relatively new technology could affect the future role of cinematographers?

OKADA: I think that digital intermediate technology is definitely going to be the way of the future. We have to make this transition carefully, because there’s an art to timing movies. The timers at the labs are great, because their experience gives them a sense of how we (cinematographers) want the entire movie to look on the print. Technology can’t replace the knowledge and skill that these guys have, which enables them to time movies so there is a cohesive look. With digital intermediate technology, there are so many options for changing things that it is a must for the cinematographer to be there every second to make sure that what they and the director intended, is what gets on the screen.

ICG: There’s a general perception you can fix anything in post. Do you have a comment?

OKADA: It’s true that you can “fix” some things in a DI suite, but it will take a lot of time and money. It is important to emphasize that it’s preferable to shoot it properly rather than fixing it later. I think its really important for cinematographers to understand what digital intermediate technology involves, so they can use it to their best advantage, and not let it be misused. If you don’t have a solid image on film, you can’t use DI to create an image that has the same emotional impact as photographing the soft shadow on a character’s face.  You can use (Power) Windows to isolate and remove or enhance things in shots, but be aware that it’s going to cost money if you have shot the film without a knowledge of how to use these tools.

ICG: Why was Paparazzi timed in a DI suite?

OKADA: Paparazzi was shot in Super 35 mm format, because we wanted a wide screen esthetic and I wanted to use spherical lenses. If you are using a traditional lab process, you have an extra optical step squeezing the images into a 2.4:1 aspect ratio. Any extra optical step degrades the images. You can skip that process in digital intermediate, which gives you more predictable results. In this film, I used a lot of deeply saturated colors and deep contrast, so I decided going through a digital intermediate process would also give me better control. This process is constantly evolving. Right now, we can cost effectively record out to film at 2K resolution. I think we have to get to at least 4K, otherwise you are making sacrifices in resolution, colors and contrast.

ICG: Do you have any other advice on this issue?

OKADA: You need to have the look fixed in your mind before you walk into the DI suite, and not stray off course in a whole different direction. Another thing I learned is I had to step out of the suite a lot, and come back in with a fresh set of eyes to make sure I was still on track.

ICG: There are people tuning into this chat and reading the transcript who are in their 20’s and maybe just out of film school. Isn’t it inevitable that they are going to have to deal with this technology sooner or later as cinematographers?

OKADA: It’s inevitable that they will have to master digital intermediate technology. I’ll repeat one big lesson I learned, because it is very important. It is really important to expose the negative right, because it scans better, and you have more flexibility for manipulating images in the digital intermediate process. If you shoot a bad negative with not a very good exposure, it scans that way. Sure, you can fix it a little in DI, but you’re never going to get it to really sing.

ICG: How do they prepare for that future?

OKADA: The best preparation for young filmmakers is to really learn how to create images photochemically because if you can do that when you migrate to the digital intermediate arena, you are going to have a far more informed perspective, and your negative is going to scan to higher quality images.

ICG: Should they be playing with PhotoShop?

OKADA: A knowledge of PhotoShop does help, but it starts with a solid knowledge of how to photograph great images.

ICG: You mentioned the film that ASC members shot for testing digital projectors. Pacific Title & Art scanned the anamorphic footage at 6K resolution. That was kind of shocking, because the presumption has been a 35 mm frame translates to about 4K of picture data.

OKADA: I think people probably believed it was 4K based on tests that were done with the old film stocks. I think with the new (Kodak) Vision 2 stocks it has to be way beyond 4K.

ICG: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

OKADA: I’m optimistic about the future. I think there will be an incredible period of exploration as far as what can be done visually, and what we can do to make the audience’s experience in a theater something special. The audience has high definition TV coming into their homes and high-resolution computer images. I think for movies to compete they are going to have to provide an experience that goes beyond what the audience can experience in their homes. The advantage that theaters have is a big screen that is in a controlled environment. It is up to us as the visual storytellers to create experiences for audiences in theaters that they can’t get at home. The possibilities are just mind-boggling.

ICG: We have a more introspective question. You followed a really different career path than most of your peers. If you were starting out again would you do anything differently?

OKADA: There are always things you would do differently, but I don’t think there is anything I would change. I think every experience that I’ve had has led let to something else or has proved to be useful later. I wouldn’t change anything.