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.