Ironically, wind and rain were constant hazards. Southern California was hit by record-breaking rainstorms just days before photography commenced, and wind worked relentlessly to blow the entire structure away. On the first day of the shoot, “the silk was full of water and was drooping on top of the roofs,” recalls Robinson. “That’s when Dion really showed his cool and his patience.” Fortunately, Robinson had an epiphany. “I realized it was more than rigging the silk — we actually had to learn how to sail the silk, very much like a boat. We had to trim the sails and learn how to adjust to the different winds that went through the valley.” Within a week, the rigging crews stationed on north and south towers were not only in control of the canopy, but competing like America’s Cup teams.

During daytime scenes, the silk effectively controlled the sun, and Beebe produced his own “sunlight” using BeBee lights to create a controlled three-quarter backlight. But the filmmakers soon discovered another advantage. One day, when dusk came, gaffer John Buckley threw some toplight onto the silk to continue the daytime scene. “It was the most beautiful light you ever saw,” says Robinson. “It looked like winter light, and at that point we started incorporating [night for day] into the shooting schedule.” Buckley positioned two BeBees on fully extended crane arms above the silk, then added 18Ks in alleyways and behind façades to bounce light into whatever dark holes existed at street level.

Unfortunately, the canopy structure did not make a bird’s-eye perspective easy, and this became a problem for a key transition: it’s cherry-blossom season, and Chiyo has just received coins from the Chairman. She runs through the town, up some stairs, and into a temple, where she makes her wish. The camera then drifts up to the sky, snowflakes start to fall, and then the camera comes down with the snow across the rooftops, finally flying through a window to reveal the first glimpse of the older Chiyo. This seemingly single shot actually started on the backlot, transitioned to Japan and the Fushimi Inari shrine and a second Buddhist temple, and then resumed on the backlot.

“That was a key shot that Rob and I discussed early on, and a lot of the layout of our backlot hinged on it,” says Beebe. “As we came across the rooftops, we wanted to see the real depth of the world. We couldn’t do that in one big shot, but we could in a series of big shots. When they were cut together, it would feel like this was a world bigger than just this little town or our backlot.”

For the overhead view, the filmmakers considered using a Cablecam or Spydercam but rejected both ideas because the necessary cabling would have been too costly. Beebe and Reynolds studied the scale model further. “Again, the advantage of the model was that we could look at it and say, ‘You know, the façades only come up 30 feet, so we could drop a massive platform over the rooftops.’ And that’s what we did.” They built a 35'x100' platform, which held dolly tracks and a 50' Technocrane. “It was easy to envision when you’ve just got little cut-outs,” says Beebe, but harder to accomplish when a construction crane is needed to put the Technocrane in place. But “it worked beautifully,” he says. “We dollied the Technocrane as we did the move, swinging off the sky and coming down into the alleyway and right into the house. It was quite an achievement.”

This kind of fluid camera movement is a constant in Memoirs of a Geisha. Dollies were used 80 percent of the time, with Steadicam and crane work splitting the balance. “[A-camera/Steadicam operator] Peter Rosenfeld and [B-camera operator] Sion Michel did a great job with so much moving camera,” says Beebe. A Chapman PeeWee dolly served in tight spaces — and there were many because the interiors were built to Japanese scale. Practical ceilings were used because of the camera’s waist-high perspective, which was designed to convey the eye level of a person kneeling or seated on the floor.

If a 20' Technocrane couldn’t fit inside a space, the crew would mount a small Arrow crane with a 12' jib on a Chapman hybrid dolly and fit it with a remote HotGears system. For numerous low-angle moves, an underslung Cartoni/Lamda head was used. Able to pass through small doorframes and reach into rooms, “it was essentially our tool for doing moves inside the sets,” says Beebe. “And we did some quite complicated moves with this system.”

One example is a two-minute shot when Sayuri is first seen in her lavish apprentice-geisha costume. After a montage showing her dressing and applying makeup, says Beebe, “we move from a little courtyard, past the characters Mother and Auntie and toward the paper doors, which slide open before us. We push in and find Sayuri in full kimono and full makeup for the first time. She turns to us. Then the shot moves from inside this room, back out the sliding doors, through the courtyard and out into the street as she climbs onto a rickshaw and takes off.”

Such camera movement isn’t surprising, given Marshall’s background in choreography. “Rob loves to choreograph the actors and camera, and he really understands movement,” says Beebe. This is especially evident when Sayuri makes her public debut with a solo dance. “I think that’s a wonderful moment,” says the cinematographer. “The dance is fantastic and wonderfully choreographed, but what defines the moment are the faces of our key players in the audience as they watch Sayuri perform. Rob can take those theatrical elements and weave them into the story.” Robinson adds, “Rob can make a dance tell a story. Everyone was part of the rehearsal, so everyone understood each segment, the timing, the cues. That made it easy to shoot sequentially.”

For the dance, three to four cameras were rolling instead of the usual two. “We used a lot of traditional tracking dolly shots,” says Beebe, “as well as the Arrow crane for close-up movements along the runway. We also ended up running a 30-foot Technocrane up on the stage; we’d telescope the arm all the way up the runway so that as she did her dance, we could retract the arm and pull her along the elevated walkway. Because there was no room to put any track down or have an operator, the Technocrane worked particularly well.”