ST John Williams scored TFA - incl. Soundtrack discussion

Ouch! If you're married, don't let your spouse see that quote. ;-)

 

You've just described exactly what Williams avoids. Describing the story or tone of the film to him does not help. Things change over time through editing, dialogue, performances, and so on. Not only do things change in time regarding the story, but there's a chance what Williams envisions is entirely different from what the director had in mind. He doesn't want to come up with a beautiful melody or theme for a young female lead only to realize it simply won't work in any of the scenes she's in during the rough cut because of the dialogue, setting, or the way the woman who they cast plays the role amongst other reasons. He's not trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

Sure by now he knows that a Star Wars movie will involve space battles, the force, lightsabers, and good versus evil, but he won't know the tone of the film until he views the rough cut. Even when he does learn the tone, it doesn't mean the music will be as dark or light. He says this about ROTS in that he doesn't believe it's the darkest of the scores yet it's probably the darkest of the films. He'll get a grasp on the tone once he sees the rough cut. From there he'll work with Abrams while writing to come up with the appropriate score for the film.

Right now he's probably working on some concerto or classical piece.

 

I'd posit that most of the strongest themes from SW aren't actually borne from cues, but from melodies based on simple ideas... The Imperial March, Princess Leia's Theme, Across the Stars etc. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Williams has multiple ideas before he even sees a frame. I think it's one of the reasons his scores are so thematic I.e. he doesn't work cues into themes, he uses themes to contract cues.

 

I am not saying the strongest themes from star wars do not come from melodies based on simple ideas, I am just saying those simple ideas come when he starts working on the project which is around when he sees the rough cut. As he said in the interview in the link I posted yesterday, he prefers to be surprised and not know what is going to happen before he sees the cut. He doesn't think it's a good idea to have preconceived ideas.

I'd like to think, for a project he hasn't seen nor have any idea would require such a dramatic piece, he wasn't figuring out duel of the fates while he was being paid to score Stepmom. The same for Anakin and Padme's love theme while he was writing Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. His schedules in the past have been quite busy. One score after another during the star wars years. Right now he could be working on an oboe solo or maybe he's scoring another film that just hasn't been reported yet. The Book Thief came out of nowhere.

Though I do find the mental image of John Williams crossing his fingers, hoping that J.J. Abrams (unlike George) enjoys electric guitar solos during chase scenes.

 

Oh I don't doubt that's what Williams states, and I don't doubt that's his working principle, but in practise I think it's something else. Even talking just about Ep VII, he'd obviously agrees to do it prior to principle photography... I don't buy that JJ, or whomever, wouldn't share the broad brush strokes of the story... and I don't know a single composer (I know several classical composers) who doesn't constantly write and have several pieces on the back burner waiting to be applied to something. Also - if Williams is going to score the entire ST (which has to be the wish), then he needs to be working on all of them sooner rare than later (given his age).

 

He'll get all his soundtracks mixed up, and VII will now be stuck with the Empire of the Sun score.

 

He agreed on principle to do VII because he enjoyed doing the films and had no problem coming back, if Lucas had changed his mind. Much like he had already agreed to KOTCS way before the script was finalized. Unlike what happened with "Superman II", where he had a director that he clashed with, a smaller budget and a lack of prep time that resulted in his saying no, Williams has already penciled in time for VII and he might have talked to Abrams, to get a feel for him. As to the ST as a whole, he's going to take that one at a time. Everyone involved, including Williams, knows that anything can happen and that they would have alternatives in place should he not make it to IX.

 

I'm hoping that they release a more comprehensive soundtrack up front for Episode 7 with a complete score to follow a few months later.

It would be ideal if they could release a complete score up front.

 

Ideal, but that's generally not how Williams operates. We're still waiting on complete scores for the PT.

 

The PT is a different matter from the OT. The OT got a comprehensive release because RCA and Arista were both interested and willing to give it a shot. Sony took over and weren't that interested in doing a full release, but did so, only to do it on the cheap by using film stems and not going through the arduous process of finding and sorting everything out. Because the Ultimate Edition didn't do well and got a lot of flack, Sony has refused to give due consideration to the other two PT films, much less a proper release for TPM. It's unclear if Sony still holds the rights to the Saga now that the sale is complete. We know that they did in 2012 when the 3D release of TPM came out and the soundtrack of the original commercial release, with track 33 from disc two of the UE included as a bonus, was released.

If Sony still holds the rights, it is possible that Disney and Lucasfilm will push for an expanded release for all films. If Sony no longer has the rights, then whoever gains the rights, will probably do an expanded release over time.

 

Complete remasters of the OT and full releases of the PT are MUSTS.

One can only hope that VII will make this happen in the run up to the film or more likely after.

As they say "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!"

 

It's a crime that they've not done expanded releases of the AOTC and ROTS OST. There's some real gems that, as yet, haven't seen the light of day.

 

AOTC particularly is in my opinion some of Williams best work. It's such a shame the soundtrack was (very noticeably) completely butchered in the final movie because of the big scene additions and major edits so late in the game.
Alongside a complete soundtrack that mirrors the movie (like the Phantom Menace release we got) I'd be very interested to hear how Williams' tracks were originally going to play out. I'd love to hear the original ending to AOTC before the Imperial March replaced it (even though I feel the march works perfect at that moment)...there's a synth version out there and you can hear a little bit of it on the "Across the Stars" music vid.

 

I didn't know that...

 

John Williams is 82. I wonder what contingency plan they have in place if he dies before the entire sequel trilogy is finished?

 

i have a feeling he's only doing ep. 7 anyway, regardless of his health.

 

I got the complete score to TPM are you trying to tell me that you can't buy the complete score for episodes 2 and 3 i am pretty sure you can buy the complete scores for episode 4, 5, and 6 as well I thought I saw it on Amazon.com I probably bought over a thousand things from Amazon over the years......

 

82 is the new 28.

 

The plan would be to hire a different composer, one who is comfortable using Williams work with some of their own. If not using folks like James Horner and Alan Silvestri, then I could see someone like Kevin Kilner

The OT SE's were released in 1997, just in time for each film. The commercial release for TPM was in May of 99 and the UE was in 2000. There are only the commercial releases for AOTC and ROTS. AOTC did have five different CD covers, one with the film's poster and the others with individual characters. I have Jango Fett's. There was a Target exclusive which contains "On The Conveyor Belt" which was the original version of the Droid Factory score. ROTS had a bonus disc, "Star Wars: A Musical Journey". But expanded editions do not exist for the PT, not proper ones. Only bootleg copies exist for AOTC and ROTS. The latter was largely taken from the ROTS video game and another game as well. Someone did take bits and pieces of AOTC score from the film itself, editing out most of the film's audio. There are also bootlegs on Youtube that plays the score as in the film, but as one long piece and not individual tracks.

 

The only cues JW would have considered and written at this time for EP 7 would be source cues, if any.

I'm hoping Disney can someday secure the rights to scores from Sony. Sony does not understand what they have. If only La-La-Land or Varese had ahold of them. I think Disney would give them a much better treatment & availability than Sony has.

 

If they are not working to get Willams scoring the entire ST, then I'd think that would be a big mistake. Williams' music is as fundamental to SW as anything is. I don't think another composer can just come in (no matter how good) and create the themes/cues that Williams does... I'd say 70% of that is pure talent, 30% of that is having that history in scoring SW films. It can't be replicated (satisfactorily).

 

I'm also worried about the future of Star Wars theatrical movies without John Williams as the composer. To walk into another composer's shoes and working his melodies into your own melodies is something very few have the capacity and talent to do. Of course, the soundtrack is also very dependent on the overall style and tone set in the film by the director - which makes it even more difficult to keep the SW tone when there's more and more new people (and less old) working on these movies.

If you take a look at the Harry Potter movies, for example, Williams scored the first three and Colombus directed the first two. The first and second movie share pretty much the same atmosphere and the soundtrack followed that. But in the third movie, even though Williams scored the soundtrack, the visual film style of director Alfonso Cuaron was so vastly different from Colombus - and the soundtrack followed that. Even so, it felt distinctly Williams. Then for the rest of the Harry Potter movies, we got 3 new composers who all made soundtracks with more dark themes.... I guess the only melody they used from Williams work was "Hedwig's Theme", the rest felt nothing like Williams at all. Of course, the tone of the last movies differ vastly from the first movies, but I'm sure Williams would have made it differently if he had the chance to score the last movies aswell. By saying this, I'm not saying the soundtracks for the last Harry Potter movies are bad, in fact they're really good. But they're not scored in the tone of Williams at all.

 

I think Williams has a verbal agreement to do all three films, but only one actual contract that's set in stone. I don't believe he's talked about retirement and from all indications, he's still in good health for his age. He's done "Lincoln" and "The Book Thief" the last couple of years. And he just did "A Capitol Fourth" two months ago. The only thing that's changed is that he's not doing two to four films a year.

 

I bet that the new music will be LOST THE JEDI, used in the search for Luke

 

Can someone change the title of this thread? Again it makes it sound like J.J. Abrams had a choice in the matter.

"John Williams to score Episode 7" is good enough.