American Cinematographer - June 2001 - 122

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120

asked Technicolor to do

a

wonderful, beautiful world, the world of

what

on

colors.

could

the face of

light, where I discovered

a

They are the children of light and
shadow, and like our children, they have
their own names: red, green, blue. Each
has its own wavelength, personality,
meaning and a specific emotion. Our
entire bodies receive this energy, and we
respond like film does; we're very
sensitive to light and color. Our
metabolism, blood pressure and
emotions change [with exposure to
certain colors]."
The reel of

dye-transfer-printed
Apocalypse Now to which Storaro
treated the Guggenheim audience
illustrated this point while serving as a
blazing tribute to his art. The bold colors
were strong and saturated, and the
shadow details subtle; the footage
looked as if it had been filmed yesterday.
The reel

was

available because

expanded version of Francis Ford
Coppola's Vietnam War epic, which has
been restored using the proprietary
Technicolor process by Storaro and
original editor Walter Murch under the
director's supervision, is scheduled for
theatrical release later this year. At press
time, the film was scheduled to premiere
at the Cannes Film Festival. (Some 54
minutes of footage have been restored to
the film.)
To Storaro, whose passion for the
cinema obviously runs deep, the return of
the dye-transfer process is one of the
most important developments in motion
pictures in years. "When I saw the
answer print struck from the original
Apocalypse negative onto regular
release stock, I was almost crying," the
cinematographer said with great
sadness. "We lose about one percent of
the color each year, so nearly 25 percent
of the color separation was gone. I was
losing the balance between the three
primary colors, as well as one of the
most important elements of the film's
vision, the blacks. Black was the symbol
an

could achieve

roll test "to

use

the

matrixes. From the matrixes, we could
make the

dye-transfer prints, thereby
skipping the double passage of the
interpositive and internegative steps.
When I

the results, I realized that

saw

because the three matrixes
record every
could read
information

are

able to

single primary color, they
more deeply into the
on the original negative.

When I visited him and described the
test, Francis was convinced

-

without

any results - and gave the goahead to re-edit the negative and print to

seeing

dye transfer."
After

meeting with Coppola,

Storaro returned to Rome. "Dale Grahn
of Technicolor Los

shipped the

new

Angeles, a great timer,
dye-transfer reels to

Technicolor Rome, where I worked with

Carlo

La

Bella,

supervisor

the

We

there.

terrific color

made

comments and transferred the reels

Angeles. From there, Dale did a
improved set of YCM matrixes from
the original negative, from which we are
producing the new print that will be
shown at Cannes and, I hope, many
additional prints that will be shown all
new,

around the world."

Storaro is thrilled about the
commercial

revival

of

dye-transfer
printing. "That process is the greatest
system, because it pulls more
information out of old negatives, and
because the prints don't fade. Everyone
today is arguing that film is dead, and
digital cinematography is what we
should use. They should be aware that
digital cinematography is reading onethird of the information obtained with
normal
preserve
a

a

film

negative. We should
films using dye transfer to have

reference of what

a

film look is about

in order to

emerges, and was one of the
elements of the [film]."

rise to the level of film, rather than

Having seen what dye-transfer
printing could do for the road-show prints
of Bulworth (see AC June '98), Storaro

our
back

to Los

of the unconscious, from where the truth

main visual

see

Apocalypse. I
original negative [which
had been stored at Coppola's Zoetrope
studios along with deleted scenes and
outtakes] directly to make the YCM
we

movies go

give the chance for digital to
letting
down to the digital level." ■
American Cinematographer - June 2001

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