Focus in Memoirs of a Geisha shifts frequently, as in the three-minute shot that takes viewers inside the teahouse for the first time. Steadicam operator Peter Rosenfeld follows two patrons down a corridor, then turns to trail a waitress, focusing on her tray and sake bottle. Doors slide open, revealing the grand room filled with seated guests. One gets up to leave and the camera follows, pivoting as Sayuri and her mentor enter the room. “Focus was particularly hard because a couple of different hand-offs happen,” says Beebe of this shot. “Once again, we were working under T2.8, which some would say is terribly inconsiderate of the focus puller, even irrational! But it created a quality of light that captured the spirit and atmosphere I wanted.”

The picture’s tricky focus work made 35mm film dailies particularly important. While on the Sony lot, Beebe and his collaborators watched film dailies every day, but elsewhere, high-definition digital dailies were the rule. “The issue of film dailies versus digital dailies is debated a lot,” says Beebe. “It expedites the process to have digital dailies, but it’s important to screen select film dailies in order to keep a reference. We screened footage every day while on the lot, and considering the critical focus, this facility was key to monitoring our work. Plus, what cinematographer doesn’t enjoy screened dailies?”

When Geisha reached the color-timing stage, Beebe had already moved on to Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. But he managed one trip to Technicolor Digital Intermediates (TDI) in Los Angeles, where he spent two days working with colorist Scott Gregory. Because of the compressed timeframe, they would grab key frames in a sequence, grade them, and then move on. These stored frames became reference points for Gregory, Marshall and editor Pietro Scalia later on. “It does work,” Gregory says of this frame-store approach. “That sets the look of the film, and from that point on, it’s basically balancing and trimming.” At the end of the process, Beebe managed one more trip to Deluxe Laboratories in Hollywood to check the first film-out reels and make final timing adjustments with the lab.

The decision to finish Geisha with a DI was made late in the game, and Beebe therefore “approached this film very much in a traditional way,” he says. “I never allowed myself to think, ‘We’ll fix that in the DI.’ We protected ourselves and got what we needed in camera.” The result, says Gregory, was “a beautiful negative — gorgeous and very opulent.”

TECHNICAL SPECS Anamorphic 2.40:1 Panaflex Platinum, Millennium, Gold II E- and C-Series lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, Vision 200T 5274 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383