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‘Sunset Boulevard’ gets a new restoration — and screenings— for 75th birthday
Austrian-born film director Billy Wilder (L) and American film director Cecil B. DeMille stand on either side of American actor Gloria Swanson on the set of Wilder's film "Sunset Boulevard" in 1950. DeMille appeared as himself in the film.
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Sunset Boulevard, the classic tale of the dark side of Hollywood, turns 75 this week.
Paramount is celebrating with a beautifully-crisp new restoration, which will play on the big screen on Sunday and Monday.
The new restoration looks stunning, but a lot of work went into making the audio sing, too.
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Hollywood classic 'Sunset Boulevard' has been newly restored. We talk to one of the people who's made it shine
Andrea Kalas, vice president of media and archival services at Iron Mountain, has preserved or restored more than 2,000 films during her career.
And she oversaw this latest restoration of the Billy Wilder classic during her time at Paramount.
How they did it
Kalas said her team was able to separate out the dialog, music and effects for this release, essentially making stems of the tracks from the original combined mono.
Engineers also isolated the noise floor to get the best possible result.
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“Make sure you can really hear when you go to the screenings — keep your ears open — because it’s kind of amazing,” Kalas told LAist.
At the same time, the folks who worked on this restoration made sure not to make the audio in this latest release too antiseptic.
Because you don’t want to completely remove all noise and imperfections that add character.
“You don’t want to go too far with cleaning it up, because then you could actually take some stuff away that you want,” Kalas said.
“That’s always been the challenge with digital restoration, using a chisel not a hammer,” she said.
Where to check it out
You can immerse yourself in the just-crackly-enough audio of the classic Sunday and Monday, with several screenings scheduled at local AMC theaters.
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