Vittorio Storaro: ENR and Color

From American Cinematographer, Storaro and Bulworth by Garrett Brown (June 1998)

"On Bulworth he used the ENR process. It makes the blacks blacker but it also desaturates color, which I didn't know until working on this film. So he overlights with color—he oversaturates. Rosco has made double CTOs and double CTBs, and they are working on a triple lavender that he particularly likes."

- Gary Tandrow, Gaffer for Storaro on Bulworth

Storaro saturated the back wall of one office set with a remarkable deep green, to the extent that the mountainous black bodyguard and the flowered sofa on which he is seated become so camouflaged against the wallpaper that he rivets your eye when he moves—an amazing shot. I am convinced that Vittorio perceives the color spectrum with much greater intimacy than I do.

"He's the only cameraman I've ever worked with who can tell perfect greens and magentas. He can walk into a place and say exactly what it needs. We had to shoot under fluorescent conditions and match it, and he knew we needed more green. I couldn't see it with my eye."

- Gary Tandrow, Gaffer for Storaro on Bulworth

Incidentally, Storaro says that Bulworth will be his last film shot for ENR. Kodak and Technicolor (which he humorously charactizes as his "mother and father in the creative world"), both have technology in the pipeline that could make ENR unnecessary. Kodak is developing a new print stock with blacks that are said to be as rich as those in an ENR print. Technicolor, however, is reviving a version of the inbibition three-strip process, which provides ultimate color and contrast control and ensures longevity for the original prints.