He also extensively reworked the audio and music tracks for “Futursound”, an 8 track magnetic sound system based on Universal Pictures’ Sensurround. Most notably, Cozzi also colorized GODZILLA using a technique involving colored gels that created a nightmarish, glowing effect far different from the pastel colorization attempts employed by Ted Turner in the 1980s or the digital technology now used by Sony Pictures and other studios.
The finished result— released in Italy in 1977 as GODZILLA, but often referred to by fans and the director himself as “COZZILLA”— stands as a real oddity in the long and often bizarre history of the Godzilla franchise. The film is worth a look just out of pure curiosity value alone.
Well, COZZILLA is known for having quite a bit of extra footage mixed in. Seeing as you used the U.S. version, which itself had already been altered, why the decision to insert so much extra footage such as old newsreels from World War II?
Luigi Cozzi: The decision to insert extra footage was because the original picture was 1 hour and 20 minutes. This was normal length in the fifties but in the mid seventies a picture to be shown theatrically had to be at least 1 hour and 30 minutes long. So we were forced to add material to it in order to reach that length. Its final length was 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Some of the real-life footage that was inserted into the film was pretty graphic. There were plenty of scenes of real life death and destruction in your version. Newsreels of people running around on fire, scorched bodies, etc. Why the insertion of such graphic footage?
Luigi Cozzi: The graphic scenes in my own GODZILLA version were intentional, trying to give an “up-to-date” and more violent look to the old 1954 movie, considering that it was going to be re-released theatrically in the second half of the seventies when the audience’s tastes had obviously changed a lot.
John DeSentis: There are two clips in particular that I would love to ask you about that were added in for this release. One is a shot of three prison convicts getting swallowed up by a flood that was taken from Godzilla’s second movie, GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. The other is the scene where the shark eats the octopus which was from THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. Any recollections about the insertion of those two scenes?
Luigi Cozzi: Me being an old time sci-fi movies fan, I owned in the early seventies some 16mm prints of my all-times favorites like GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN and Ray Harryhausen’s BEAST FROM 20.000 FATHOMS. So I thought to blow up to 35mm some of these scenes in order to use them as “quotations” or “tributes” for my colorized GODZILLA, and this is what I did.
John DeSentis: Can you tell us about the colorization process used in the film, “Spectrorama 70”?
Luigi Cozzi: “Spectrorama 70” is just a name I did invent to help advertising. It refers to colorization but also gives a feeling of 70mm which at that time was typical of every big budget Hollywood blockbuster. This invented name, in the style of William Castle, helped to give a “bigger” look at my GODZILLA theatrical re-release advertising materials.
John DeSentis: Your colorization was not a traditional colorization like what Ted Turner went on to do in the 1980s. It was more of a series of “color gels”. How did you decide upon the colors to use?
Luigi Cozzi: How we did decide the colors? Simply by using our imagination in trying to reach the best effect. Anyway, what really mattered was the color effect of the guns and explosions: a strong red. The problem was when, in the original movie, the camera moved… we really had a lot of trouble because in these cases we had to move the gels, too, and that didn’t really work well.
John DeSentis: How about the mastering of the soundtrack in “Futursound” (a.k.a. Sensurround)?
Luigi Cozzi: I added length and stop motion colors to the 1956 Raymond Burr GODZILLA, but I felt the picture needed something more to be played in the major and most important Italian theaters. So I decided to process stereophonically its old 1956 soundtrack and then to turn it into a magnetic band stereo version with added music and more special sound effects.
I’ll explain: In those times [early seventies] Dolby didn’t exist yet and we had only optical and magnetic soundtracks. Magnetic soundtracks were more expensive and used only in major Hollywood blockbusters, from WEST SIDE STORY to 2001, because it allowed up to eight different soundtracks all together with fantastic sound results. So I recreated the GODZILLA soundtrack, added music and more sound effects to it, and then I put it on the magnetic band which gave a much stronger result than simple optical track.
Then I did create some Sensurround effects; Godzilla roaring, building collapsing, tanks exploding… adding some special giant loudspeakers to every theater which played this movie. The Sensurround effect is similar to the one used in Universal’s EARTHQUAKE [1974] and ROLLERCOASTER [1977] movies which were a big hit in those days. We did the same.
So my GODZILLA was in color, was longer than the original, had an eight-track magnetic soundtrack band and additional Sensurround special sound effects. This all was done to help the box office power of my re-release. Of course only a few major theaters in Italy could play my GODZILLA with magnetic band and Sensurround, but where it did play in this way, it was a giant spectacle.
En RARBG:
Godzilla.1977.ITALIAN.1080p.BluRay.H264.AAC-VXT
Godzilla.1977.ITALIAN.1080p.BluRay.x264.DD1.0-FGT
Enlaces:
https://rarbgunblock.org/torrents.php?search=%22Luigi+Cozzi%22
http://www.bidrevolution.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=5758
https://concdecultura.com/entrevista-cine-luigi-cozzi-mitico-director-italiano-invitado-en-b-retina/
https://concdecultura.com/exclusiva-entrevista-a-luigi-cozzi/
https://neonharbor.com/the-psychedelic-version-of-godzilla-youve-never-seen/
http://www.scifijapan.com/articles/2009/05/31/talking-cozzilla-an-interview-with-italian-godzilla-director-luigi-cozzi/
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario