Storaro structures his use of colors on the Greek philosophers’ belief that four primary elements bring balance to our lives: water (green), fire (red), earth (ocher) and air (blue). He believes that when our lives are in balance, these colors combine to form pure energy, which is white. During his preparation for every film, Storaro writes an "ideology" that guides his use of colors for conveying information and emotional subtext.
This "ideation" is never quite the same. In Dick Tracy, he used bold colors, purple roads, cobalt-blue skies, green reflections and yellow shafts of light as a conspicuous signal to the audience that this was a comic book on film. Viewers could identify heroes and villains simply by color.
In The Last Emperor, there is an unforgettable moment staged in a courtyard, in which the sun appears as a giant red ball on the horizon. It suddenly drops below the horizon, and the red tones that had permeated the scene vanish. There is a brief interval of neutral color saturation before the moon rises, and then the color of light becomes an increasingly deeper shade of blue. This transition tells the audience, in clear metaphorical terms, that the sun had set on the Chinese empire.
From the beginning of his career, Storaro has also searched for ways to perfect his control over artificial light. He made a giant stride in that direction while working with Coppola on One From the Heart in 1981; on that ambitious project, he pioneered the adaptation of stage-lighting techniques for the cinema by presetting all of the lights on a dimmer-control system. Storaro refined that technique in 1986 when he filmed the miniseries Peter the Great in the Soviet Union. By using AC current instead of the DC that was more popular in the film industry, he created the advantage of using a comparatively smaller control console (which Storaro labeled an "electronic desk") that could be operated by one person. This enabled Storaro to orchestrate the color, intensity and direction of light in more precise synchronization with physical factors, such as the actors and cameras, and to create subtle or obvious transformations of time or mood.
This technique is now widely accepted and has made cinematography comparable to choreography, with a liquid consistency linking light, colors, movement and time. It can be applied not only to complex situations, but to all shots. For example, in The Last Emperor, there is a scene in which the Japanese invaders have Pu Yi seated in a small conference room. As he is confronted with the reality of his situation, Storaro orchestrates the passage of time from day to night by gently manipulating the color, angle and quality of sunlight streaming through a window behind the emperor.
Storaro also pioneered the use of the proprietary ENR process developed by Ernesto Novelli-Raimond, his longtime collaborator at Technicolor Labs in Rome. The cinematographer first used ENR during the production of Reds (1981), which began his fruitful collaboration with Warren Beatty. This technique allows the cinematographer to record deeper, more saturated blacks by retaining more silver during the processing of prints. Storaro was the first and, for many years, the only cinematographer to regularly employ this technique. Most labs now offer proprietary versions of the ENR process, and many cinematographers regularly incorporate ENR or other special processes into their visual strategies.
During the production of Tango (1997), Storaro explored new territory with director Carlos Saura, another frequent collaborator. The duo pioneered the use of a new, two-way TransLite as an alternative to building elaborate sets, shooting at real locations or digitally compositing image elements to place characters in settings that may have been impractical or impossible to shoot. Ninety percent of Tango was filmed on a single stage in Buenos Aires in front of such TransLites.
The Rosco Mural can be used as background for day and night scenes, and for filming transitions from night to day and day to night. For Tango, 15 still photographs were taken of men, women and children, symbolizing the migration to Argentina, in day and night situations. The images were scanned into a digital format and composited into a montage by Storaro’s son Fabrizio, who used Adobe PhotoShop software and a personal computer. Rosco digitized the photos at film resolution and produced a 90’ long x 30’ high TransLite. Day, night and transitions at sunrise and dusk were created with front- and backlighting.
Storaro recently made extraordinary use of the two-way TransLites on Goya in Bordeaux and the TV miniseries Dune. The directors and actors on these projects responded enthusiastically because the TransLites put them in environments where they could respond more naturally to motivated light.
Like most cinematographers, Storaro is opposed to panning and scanning. However, unlike anyone else, he has invented an alternative: a universal format called Univisium (see AC Feb. ’00). The format uses a standard 35mm 3-perf frame for production. Images are composed in a 2:1 aspect ratio, which he proposes as a universal standard for TV and cinema screens. "I believe it is very important for audiences to see films exactly the way they were composed by the director and cinematographer," he explains. "This is a solution."
Univisium requires some modification of a camera’s internal movement and a new 2:1 gate. Clairmont Camera and Technovision have already made these modifications in Arri 435 and 535B cameras. Technicolor Labs in Rome, London and Los Angeles are also supporting the patented Univisium system.
Univisium also increases the running time of film magazines by 25 percent, thereby reducing the total cost of film, negative-processing, answer-print interpositives and silver master separations by 25 percent. In addition, archiving all elements of a film requires 25 percent less space. Release prints for cinemas can be made in 4-perf 35mm format, or projectors can be inexpensively retrofitted for 3-perf print film without compromising image quality. The latter would trim film-print costs by 25 percent, which would radically alter the financial argument for digital projection.
Univisium could change the future of television. The producers of Dune were considering originating in high-definition (HD) 1080 24P format to keep production and visual-effects costs down. Storaro showed them how they could produce the miniseries for the same budget on a soundstage with film production values by using the Univisium format and TransLites in lieu of digital compositing and a computer-controlled lightboard.
There is a mantra Storaro consistently repeats: "We can never go backwards. We should always move forward and look for ways to improve the art of making movies. I think of my career as a continuous search for balance and harmony between the opposing elemental forces of life: light and shadows, conscious and unconscious, matter and energy, men and women. Filmmaking is a lifelong journey."