Suspiria 4K Edition Being Overseen by the Film’s Cinematographer
Jonathan Barkan
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The awesome folk over at Blumhouse and Shock Waves had the chance to recently interview Synapse Films’ Don May, Jr., who spoke about their upcoming Suspiria 4K restoration. While May wasn’t able to give a release date for the highly anticipated release, he let slip two fantastic pieces of information, both of which will make any fan of the movie cheer and hate the wait for the release all that much more!
Related Story: Synapse Releases Suspiria Comparison Photos Against Videa’s Blu-ray Edition
May told Shock Waves, “We are working with Luciano Tovoli, the cinematographer, which is the ultimate reference for Suspiria. He’s been working with us every step of the way, and we’re going to get his ultimate sign-off. There are other companies that are touting restorations and doing their own thing, but if you don’t ask the guy who created the imagery, what’s the point?
So that means we can expect the 4K restoration to look absolutely magnificent while also bearing the seal of approval from the film’s cinematographer, which is a huge boost. But Synapse isn’t just focusing on making the movie look pretty; they also want it to sound incredible too!
May explains how Synapse got its hands on a very cool edition of the film that will give it a sound that few have heard before: “One of the other things our Suspiria has that no one else has used – in ’77, they made prints with magnetic LCRS 4-channel sound. In other words, when you go to a movie theater, you have optical sound on the print. It was read off of an optical reader, and it played the sound. Well, [for] Suspiria certain prints had mag tracks on them. Two mag tracks on the left of the frame and two on the right. And each one of those was left, center, right, and a mono surround. And it was discrete surround, so it wasn’t like Dolby where you get a stereo and certain frequencies would just throw to the back. Suspiria was specifically mixed with directional dialogue. Nowadays, you get a 5.1 and all the dialogue is in the center. In Suspiria there’s people talking as they walk behind, and you hear things way over to the left and way over to the right. There’s one funny scene where there are girls talking in a room, and there’s one girl sitting in the center of the frame with a pair of scissors, and the only thing in the center channel at that moment is her scissors noise! So they really did this crazy surround-track, and we’re going to be the first people to present it that way on home video. It’s really crazy.”
How cool does that sound?! It seems like a ton of work went into the original audio presentation for the film, so for Synapse to find it and work on remastering that speaks volumes, no pun intended. This will be THE definitive edition of Suspiria, mark my words!
As for any other features that might be included on the disc, May states that there will be some surprises in store for viewers! “We’re going through it and getting it together and working on some extras. I don’t know if we’re going to get some of the things that we had planned, but according to one of my supplementary producers, we may have something from Nicolas Winding Refn and Guillermo del Toro. 20th Century Fox sent me a vault list of some of the things that they have, so we’ll use those for extras as well,” May tells Shock Waves.
You can listen to the full podcast at the above link.
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