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Writer of Light -- The Cinematography of Vittorio Storaro (compiled and edited by Ray Zone)

Storaro is always seeking the meaning of different colors. For Storaro there is a world of symbols and emotion that underlies the color spectrum. He extracts the particular meaning of a color or chromatic progression and welds it to different points of a cinematic story.

In preparation for a film he creates an outline that explains the story to himself in colors and light and the corresponding symbols and emotions of those colors. He calls this document his "ideation". It's a single-spaced document that scene-by-scene outlines a color progression allied to story transitions, narrative events and the emotions of the characters.

The word "photograph" is derived from Greek, it means "to write with light."

Michelangelo Antonioni's films, made mainly during the 1950s, were a big influence on Stararo. He used light in a very realistic way. Stararo is also influenced by paintings, books, pictures and faces.

"Making a film is like resolving conflicts between light and dark, cold and warmth, blue and orange, or other contrasting colors. There should be a sense of energy, or change or movement, a sense that time is going on. Light becomes night, which reverts to morning; life becomes death. Making a film is like documenting a journey and using light in a stye that best suits that particular picture... the concept behind it."

The idea behind "Apocalypse Now" was to show the conflict between technical and natural energy -- one culture on another. Example: The dark, shadowy jungle, where natural energy reigns, compared to the American military base, where generators and lights provided the energy.

He used color and light to create the mood of conflict in subtle ways. The way a red fire in a camp contrasted to a blue or black gun in the foreground; the way the color of a weapon stood against a sunset; how a soldier with a blackened face was seen against the green jungle or blue sky... that all helped to create the mood and tell the story.

The color black is like a magic color; you can reveal patterns and moods against a dark scene that aren't possible in other ways. Marlon Brando's character represents the dark side of civilization, the subconscious, or the truth that comes out of the darkness.

Eastman color negative film 5247 is good, it has the latitude to show the contrasts between the whites and blacks.

Before each film Stararo finds an artist's paintings that "speaks" that film, and applies it to the project. Apocalypse Now was based on a Paul Gauguin painting called "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" -- jungle leaves, greens, jungle vegetation, animals, birds and natives. It even has a Buddha-like statue. Bright yellow, and red -- the color from Joe Lombardi's smoke grenades.

The jungle scene when Chef wanted to find mangos, but instead found a tiger, was shot at "Magic Hour" at 4 p.m. -- Nice, soft lighting with no artificial lights. They had 30 minutes to do 12 shots.

Little Buddha was shot on both 35mm anamorphic format (2.4:1 aspect ratio) and 65mm (2.2:1 aspect ratio). In Jan. 1994 Storaro told an audience he intends to only work on feature projects shot in 65mm. He had shot the Michael Jackson 3-D speceal "Captain Eo" in 65mm. He's convinced the old concerns about shooting 65mm are no longer valid.

Since "Ryan's Daughter" (1970) Ron Howard's "Far and Away" (shot by Mikael Salomon) has been the only feature shot on 65mm. (it bombed at the theaters)

65mm

The ENR process

In Little Buddha he used older Technovision lenses in some scenes where he wanted a warmer look. Newer lenses record sharper, colder, and more defined images.

They used the ENR process on Warren Beatty's "Bulworth". Storaro has used the process on every film since "Reds".

Kodak is developing a new print stock with blacks as rich as those in ENR. Technicolor is reviving a version of the 3-strip process with great color and contrast and doesn't fade. The ENR process may soon be unnecessary.

Storaro's "ideation" follows Bulworth into a series of encounters that seem politically suicidal. Illuminated by colors.

Lighting on Bulworth

Storaro currently uses a black-and-white monitor for his contrast glass. As he plays the dimmers he can judge the ratios from the screen. But on Bulworth he used the CEI color tap because of its more accurate gray scale rendition in black-and-white.

Photography is just one single image. Cinematography contains movement -- not only different images, but a kind of sentence.

 

Color Timing (A.C. mag. 5-97)

It's difficult to manipulate the look by varying the film's 3 primary colors - red, green & blue. Good communication with the color timers is important. A Red warm or an orange warm? A Blue cold or a cyan cold?
There are about 125,000 combos of red, green & blue with which to work.
Normal exposure is good.

Overexposure (say close to a 50 light):

A film's color image is rendered by the 3 primary color layers (red, green & blue, or RGB) when the neg. is contact-printed onto another piece of film.

Manipulating the light exposing through the neg. onto the raw film stock is done on a Bell & Howell Model "C" printer. Splits a beam of white light into its 3 RGB colors. A shutter system alters different degrees of brightness from values of 1 to 50 - infinite range of variations.

In color timing there are 4 things to worry about:
Density, Red, Green & Blue

With an increased light value of say RGB 30-32-27 you're going toward the secondary colors of cyan, magenta & yellow. Because the negative sees the opposite of people, the increased light value will make red more cyan, a more cold green, the green light more magenta (the opposite of green). The blue light more yellowish.

Keep the density constant & don't change how light or dark everything is. To increase the blue light in the RGB 30-32-27 scale, you might add 3 points of yellow to the image, but decrease red & green by one each, then add 2 to blue, for 29-31-29. This keeps the density but adds 3 points of yellow.

Some labs use a CYM system, then you're dealing with positive colors. If you want more yellow you add points to yellow.

But most labs use the RGB scale which deals with negative colors. If you want more yellow you would add points to blue.

Cyan and magenta (or red and green) have the most impact on density, yellow (or blue) has the least effect.

8 light points on the printer corresponds to 1 camera stop. Hummel did tests by under- and overexposing - ranging from 2 stops under to 2 stops over. He timed the normal exposure to be neutral and then adjusted the density 4 points for a ½ stop and 8 points for a full stop to match the normal exposure.

1st trial print - notes on comments.
2nd print with these changes.
Then the answer print.
The answer print's color corrections are used to make the interpositive.
From the interpositive a fully timed one-light internegative is made.
The internegative produces the release prints.

Don't use a color filter on the negative unless you're sure, it's hard to remove. If you use an amber filter and then try to remove it your blacks will go blue. You've altered that layer in the neg. during exposure.                  

RGB Printer-light Cheat-sheet
       
 Printer light change  =    Effect on the print
 +Blue  =    More Yellow
 -Blue   =    Less Yellow (lighter & bluer)
 +Green    =    More Magenta (reddish-purple)
 -Green         =    Less Magenta (lighter & greener)
 +Red  =    More Cyan
 -Red         =    Less Cyan (lighter & redder)
 +Green/Blue     =    More Red
 +Red/Green        =    More Blue
 +Red/Blue       =    More Green
 +Red/Green/Blue  =    Darker in all colors
 -Red/Green/Blue  =    Lighter in all colors

The generation-steps required to get a release print can add contrast. So when doing tests you should carry it all the way through the release-print stage.

Most timers like Eastman print stocks because that's what they're set up for, but a good lab or timer can adapt their timing lights to bring Fuji or Agfa to Eastman standard. Fuji might require removing some green or adding some magenta.

A normally exposed film can be printed up maybe a full stop without degradation. Blacks get thinner when the light points are lowered. Ideally it should be slightly overexposed.

 

Days of Heaven (A.C. mag. 3-99)

Dir.: Terrence Malick
D.P.: Nestor Almendros

Great "magic hour" vista shots

Normally for day exteriors, reflectors or lights are used to fill shadows to reduce the contrast, but instead they split the difference between the sky and shadow readings; the faces were slightly underexposed, and the sky slightly overexposed, losing some of the blue, but not burned white.

 

The Exorcist (A.C. mag. 8-88)

Dir.: William Friedkin
D.P.: Owen Roizman

Based on the 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty.

Released in 1973. Re-released in 1979. Restored and re-released again in 1998.

Roizman also shot "Play It Again, Sam", "The French Connection", and "True Confessions".

The novel was loosely based on a true story that took place in Mt. Rainier, Maryland in 1949.

They wanted a very naturalistic look, not a Hollywood horror film; wanted it more believable. But didn't want too much of a raw documentary feel like in The French Connection.

Lighting was difficult. They used a lot of indirect lighting. To avoid flatness the soft light was brought in from above or from low angles. It wasn't natural to have soft light coming from the ceiling because the primary sources were supposed to be table and floor lamps, but the effect was subtle, and avoided extreme use of shadows.

The shoot was scheduled for just over 70 days but it went on for more than 180, going over budget.

They wanted a warm and moody house. The windows would be softly bown out.

There is a scene in the dark attic where Ellen Berstyn walks with a candle. They rigged the attic set with inky-dink lights on dimmers to create a traveling candlelight effect.

Roizman lit the stairwell entirely with photofloods and strip lights aimed down through a draped muslin ceiling to create an overall soft-light effect.

Linda Blair's bedroom:

To achieve the right exposure the interior footage was force-developed by one stop. This allowed Roizman to slightly wash out the highlights and print down to retain rich blacks, eliminating the smooth graduations between tones and increasing the contrast. (At the time, he did this process regularly, but later stopped because the scenes were always a bit milky.)

For the scene where Linda Blair is levitating toward the ceiling, they used the basic technique of wires. When shooting wires against a background of normal tone, simply paint the wires with alternating shades of paint to disrupt the straight line, like a checkerboard pattern.

Max von Sydow's make-up was great! He was actually only 44 years old at the time. But the light on his face had to be angled.

For the scene where the words "HELP ME" raised up on Blair's stomach, it was actually a foam latex prosthetic. They painted a reactive chemical on it to create the rising letters. They ran the camera in reverse to get the effect.

In one scene a phantom briefly appears superimposed over Blair's face. Roizman did this effect in-camera by placing an angled 45 degree piece of glass between Blair and the camera. To the side was the phantom against a black background. When the lights are brought up on the phantom, the image is suddenly superimposed on Linda Blair's face. By doing this they saved an optical effect which would have degraded the image quality.

Scenes in the N.Y.U. Medical Center were lit with the existing fluorescent lights.

Barry Williams shot the segment in Iraq.

The Exorcist earned 10 Academy Award nominations, but only won for Best Adapted Screenplay (Blatty) and Best Sound.

For the film's 1979 re-release, 70mm prints were made in order to take advantage of the stereo sound processes that were then only available in that format.

The 35mm print shown at the 1998 release at the Chinese Theater was made from the original negative because the dupe nagative was in terrible shape. The original has dirty tears and scratches, but is scheduled to be restored by YCM. A new dupe negative will be made.

 

Bound For Glory (A.C. mag. 10-77, Rosco ad)

For on top of the train sequence (Carradine playing guitar) in Bound For Glory, D.P. Haskell Wexler used (Rosco) Tough Blue Frost on the fill lights to match the daylight. It matched the hazy blue-white skies, yet kept attention on Carradine.

 

The Color of Money (A.C. mag. 11-86)

Dir.: Martin Scorsese
D.P.: Michael Ballhaus
Prod. Designer: Boris Leven

Scorsese says it's about a man who goes on a journey of self-awareness. Changes his way of living, changes his values. This arena happens to be pool, but it could be anything. It's about deception and then clarity, a perversion and then a purity.

It's a challenge and fight between 3 people played by Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

Both Scorsese and Ballhaus have specialized in making intimate, mind-probing dramas with strong characterization.

Scorsese grew up in NY's "Little Italy". Son of Italian immigrants. Made award-winning student films at NYU. Received his MA in 1966 and later served on the faculty. Film editor for CBS. Documentaries. Directed "Boxcar Bertha" for Roger Corman.

Ballhaus grew up in Berlin and Bavaria.

Scorsese and Ballhaus worked together on "After Hours", "New York, New York", "The Last Waltz", and "The King of Comedy".

Shot all of The Color of Money in Chicago, except for the Atlantic City scenes.

Ballhaus' camera operator was Frank Miller. Ballhaus is used to operating the camera himself. In Europe, about 90% of the directors of photography operate their cameras themselves.

The basic lighting for most of the movie was low-hanging fluorescent light cages that lit each pool table. Didn't use available light. Normally fluorescent lights are too green, so they changed the bulbs.

Also added fill light. Normally for fill you use bounce light or soft lights, but here they used banks of fluorescent lights for the same qualities, softness, and color temperature. (Normal movie lights have a different quality and color temperature.)

 

House of Flying Daggers (A.C. mag. 12-04)

Director, Yimou Zhang
D.P., Xiaoding Zhao

Super 35mm (2.35:1)

For A-camera they used an Arricam Studio camera

For B-camera and steadicam work they used an Arri 435ES, which can run at 150 frames per second.

Cooke lenses for more detail and lower contrast.

Long lenses -- usually a 300mm -- to accentuate the running motion and gave the sense of confinement.

Filming handheld with 10mm and 12mm lenses were best for the action scenes.

They placed the camera low for shooting the soldiers up in the trees. The trees appeared taller and Jin and Mei's (characters on the ground) perspective was enhanced.

For dramatic scenes in the forest long lenses made the forest look denser and darker.

Shot Kodak Vision 2 500T 5218 for interiors and forest scenes -- fine grain and low contrast. Tried to use sunlight as backlight in the forest as often as possible, the tree leaves looked more colorful under sunlight.

Other day exteriors they shot on EXR 50D 5245.

In a brothel, Zhao wanted the colors to be saturated, and very bright, even light. He rigged 100 Mole Richardson 6K Maxi-Spacelites with white silk skirts along the studio ceiling. On the studio floor used mainly bounce light or light through a butterfly with soft diffusion material.

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