American Cinematographer - October 2012 - 87

Opposite page and above: Frame grabs from Steve Sanguedolce’s experimental film Blinding illustrate the extensive treatment his images undergo through unusual photochemical processing.

an ISO of 10 or 12 and gives him about 2 stops of latitude. “You pretty much need to detonate a grenade to get an exposure indoors!” he says. “If you’re off by a stop, everything can go completely black or completely white, so we tend toward highcontrast subjects, like trees against sky. If we shoot faces, we have to be very careful about it. The amount of moisture in the air, and which wavelengths of light are stronger, also seem to factor in.” Sanguedolce hand-processes about 300' of film at once and varies processing as negative or reversal depending on the effect he seeks. By controlling the concentration of developer, the temperature of the bath and the development time, he can make his images extremely high contrast, almost like a lithograph, or relatively panchromatic, like a harsher version of Eastman Plus-X or Double-X, with fuller mid-tones and an array of tonality. He notes he can sometimes coax as many as 6 stops out of the film by controlling development. “Then, I always use non-hardening fixer to lock in the image,” he says. “The hardener acts as a waxy coating that protects the film. Without it, the film is still absorbent, which makes it easier for toners to penetrate.” The non-hardening fixer also results in more scratches and abrasions, which are part of Sanguedolce’s aesthetic. Toning adds pigment to the blackand-white image. With negative film, the highlights absorb toner first, and shadows

stay clear and colorless longer. “You could use pomegranate juice or red wine,” he observes. “It’s very easy to put a piece of negative into a toning bath. The color you’re using is absorbed into the emulsion. You almost can’t overdo it. It’s only going to go to a certain density. The trick comes with split- or cross-toning, where you have multiple colors, which you see a lot in Blinding.” After the first toning stage, the film is pulled out and washed. Next comes a toning bleach stage. “Berg Sepia toner comes with a toning bleach that coats the film, giving it a milky color and protecting it from taking on any more color. I often only bleach for a minute after toning it for four or five minutes. Then, I put it back in very diluted, weak, used developer. That removes some of the toner and parts of the bleach. After washing it again, I put it in a second color, which is absorbed into different areas. Highlights might assume one color, and shadow or dark areas another.” The process works more intensely on black-and-white negative treated as color negative, because black-and-white emulsion lacks the color couplers that help control hues on color reversal. The result can be almost psychedelic, super-saturated colors, a key part of Sanguedolce’s expressionistic style. He currently shoots interiors on Eastman Double-X 7222 and uses highly concentrated developer for a contrasty negative. That way, he doesn’t have to
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“melt the subject.” “If I wanted uniformity, I’d go to a lab,” he says with a laugh. “Some of the scratches I get are phenomenal. Sometimes the chemicals stick the film together, giving it sprocket lines running through. Occasionally I’ll flip the lights on for half a second while the film is in the developer, so the film is casting shadows on itself. This creates a kind of solarized or sabbatier effect, wherein the tonalities invert in places going from negative to reversal and back to negative again.” He delights in the unexpected. “At times, with a really high-con image, you get this kind of reticulation around outlines, and it’s a beautiful, golden glow. It almost looks like someone did a rotoscope drawing of the image. There are probably ways to execute these effects to perfection, but I’m working with randomness. I am very careful about times and temperatures, but every batch of coloring is different, and if I don’t get something nice, I put that batch back in the developer, and it all goes back to blackand-white. It might be a little more scratched, but I could start over with the toning.” A Steenbeck flatbed was not exempt from Sanguedolce’s passion for bending technology to his needs. “I have a small library of 16mm that I’ve collected since I began shooting in the early ’70s,” he explains. “I might find a piece of color footage that I want to reshoot, process and
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American Cinematographer - October 2012

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