Tell me why half the Episode Two score is from Episode One

Oh, for crying out loud!

Did it ever cross any of your minds that maybe John Williams composed music that was completely inappropriate for the scenes which George used TPM music instead?

Yes, even John Williams can get a scene wrong.

For example, take Jerry Goldsmith and his score for Legend. Many people claim that the Goldsmith score is completely superior to the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, but if you watch the movie with the Goldsmith score (thanks to the Ultimate Edition DVD) there is clearly A LOT of places where the Goldsmith score is simply not appropriate for what is happening on screen. Jerry Goldsmith has been composing for films longer than Williams has, and if Goldsmith can make a mistake, you bet your bottom dollar that Williams can.

Most of what was cut from AOTC, none of us have even heard, and yet a lot of you are automatically ASSUMING (bad word!) that you are being deprived of the most beautiful music ever. I can't wait to hear your disappointment when you actually do get to hear that music that George chose not to use. You may actually find out that George made the right call, and your world may actually come to an end. Heaven forbid!

Interesting how no one chose to comment on how Williams rips parts of his own scores and puts them in other movies. Looks like no one here wants to see the flaws in their god.

 

Nope, Lucas was just too cheap to pay for extra score sessions.

 

Vonn:

I don't really now what happened with the movie version of the AOTC music and unless you're JW, Gl, or someone around them you don't know either, right? So maybe GL is responsible maybe JW is. I don't really care. For me they both share the responsibility. JW for giving us a soundtrack (I mean the CD album) that is clearly not one of the highlights of his awesome career and GL for having butchered whatever JW gave to him (maybe it was indeed for better though) and using old music.

Fact remains though, and that is all that matters to me, that the AOTC album wasn't the best SW album. It had some good moments like Across the Stars and some great moments the Finale and End Credits, especially the last 1 minute, but overally it was very boring and unmemorable. That said, it is my humble opinion that John Williams IS GOD and if there is a person that his work is equal (or even better) in the PT than in the OT is JW. And no JW does not make mistakes... j/k

On a sidequestion: I read something here and there from some people that the TPM soundtrack was bad. Are you talking about the music that it is on film or the CD album (normal edition)? Because as the CD goes I think it was one of JW's most complete, coherent, inspired, and generally greatest work.

I mean there was the great "Duel of the Fates" theme which is the most epic music piece for SW (save only perhaps the SW main theme), easily in the top-5 SW themes (with no. 1 IMHO "Darth Vader's Theme") and the whole album was generally much better as a whole than any previous SW albums. Almost every track is memorable. The Flag Parade, The Droid Battle, The Trade Federation theme, Anakin's theme, The Appearance of Darth Maul, Qui-Gon's Noble End and Even the 2 minutes of Augie's Great Municipal band were great pieces of music.

I'd like to hear your opinion on that, if you are not bored to right.

And the thing about JW plagiarising (sp?) his own themes. Look, he is just a guy and as a human being he has a LIMITED creativity. He cannot come up with completely new things all the time for the last 40 years!!! It's insane!!! For what he has done so far he is GOD. Besides who the hell said that you cannot borrow from your own ideas? And you call THAT plagiarising? Sheesh...

 

There are people who say Williams is plagiarizing his own themes from Star Wars? LOL!

 

I would want to see a quote of someone saying that. I'd bet it was misinterpreted.

 

Just take a look at Vonn's post about 5 post above mine to see what I mean with plagiarizing. I also saw the same thing said by another person somewhere in the first 3 pages of this thread...

Sure JW's themes and scores have common elements. SHOULDN'T THEY???

 

"Sure JW's themes and scores have common elements. SHOULDN'T THEY???"


Yes, Star Wars is 1 big 6-part movie, all the prominent themes should be heard all throughout.

That's why - I believe ? that all the big themes: Force theme, Luke?s, the Emperors, the Imperial March and Yoda?s haven?t hit full crescendo yet.
In a normal movie you would introduce the characters themes and build them but from there.
Hopefully, in Episode III it?ll all be gelled together. Anakin?s theme needs to evolve into Vader?s, and the Imperial motif in A New Hope needs to bridge to the Imperial March as well. The same goes with Luke?s, and Luke and Leia?s too. Much still needs to be done for the saga to work musically.

 

Interesting how no one chose to comment on how Williams rips parts of his own scores and puts them in other movies. Looks like no one here wants to see the flaws in their god.

Vonn post proof of this or retract your statement.

 

"...JW rips part off his own scores..."

His own scores? His OWN scores? Like he has writen them for fe. Jurassic Park and then uses them on SW? Well, shame on him! How dare he uses some elements of a score that HE wrote for another movie in SW?

Cast him into the fire at once!!!

or better yet...

Cast him into the Pit of Carcoon, the nest of the allmighty Sarlac, where in his belly he will meet new definition of pain and suffering while he is going to be slowly digested for 1000 years!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

Sorry I got carried away. It usually happens when I read that kind of posts...

 

Well for some inexplicable reason my topic must be posted here. So here ye go:

(For those who didn?t get the new Star Wars Insider there's this great article on the scoring of Episode II. I?m not positive when it was written but this quote from Lucas seemed to be just a little odd:

"Generally I?ve had to make about four or five little fixes, which amount to about a minute and a half out of a movie that?s two hours and ten minutes. I hardly make any changes at all. It?s always spot on."


What?!

Where does he go from making a few little changes, to tracking on -- what was it? --20 minutes of the Episode I score?

I guess adding on 10 minutes to the movie crippled a chunk of the end action music.)

 

Here's some interesting excerpts from a Mix Magazine article (some of it may already have been seen by people here):

The final [sound] mix of Episode II started on March 4 [2002], at which point [re-recording mixers Gary] Rydstrom and [Michael] Semanick were joined at the Neve DFC by veteran L.A.-based re-recording mixer Rick Kline, who would be handling the music. This schedule was in contrast to so many movies these days, where final mixing and premixing overlap, and multiple stages are working simultaneously at the last minute. "They schedule enough time so we don?t have to do that," says Semanick. "George locked the picture early enough so that we?re not beating our heads against the wall trying to finish it up at the last second, which I think is pretty smart if you can plan it."

Lucas was not able to be there for the predubs and began each reel at the final mix (after a play-through with faders at zero) by soloing the dialog. He would then make ADR and reverb selects, often asking for more worldizing. "Although there are great programs available for both the 480 and the TC [6000], sometimes worldizing is more noisy and raw. A little grit never hurts," says Semanick.

Lucas would then have Kline solo the music and would pick through it, commenting on transitions and places to drop or change cues. Effects did not, as a rule, undergo this "solo microscope," presumably because Lucas had heard effects throughout the picture editorial and temp dub process.

Excepting one playback of the first four reels [first hour-and-a-half of the film], the first screening that Lucas and the crew had of the whole movie was only days before the end of the final mix on Saturday, April 13. This and another screening that week for friends produced 12 pages of notes from Lucas that were addressed over the last days of the mix.

Many of these notes revolved around dialog intelligibility issues. Lucas had asked those attending the second screening to let him know if any dialog wasn?t clear. Semanick, being the dialog mixer, remembers with glee Lucas? mantra during the final mix: "Everything is subservient to dialog."

Music was recorded by Shawn Murphy at Abbey Road Studio One in London, the site of the Episode I recordings three years earlier. With 14 sessions from January 18-26, Murphy recorded to two 2-inch Dolby SR-encoded 24-tracks. The mix was done simultaneously to Pro Tools via a 2-inch 16-track, including a 5.1 main orchestra and 3-track (LCR) groups of synth, percussion and choir. Kline says that the music was "wall-to-wall-to-wall," absent for only a few minutes and playing "full tilt" for most of the time.

As to the challenge of weaving all of this music around dialog and effects for 142 minutes, Kline says that his work was made easy not only because of the composing of John Williams, the masterful editing of his longtime associate Ken Wannberg, and the excellent recording by Shawn Murphy, but also because of Rydstrom?s deft handling of sound effects. "Gary is such an incredible mixer. He has a real sense of the music and is very tuned-in. He?s forever creating space to allow textures of the music to come through. It was such a treat to work with his and Michael?s talents. I think it came out to be a very good blend [of dialog, music and sound effects]."

Williams had composed the film to the edit as of last December [2001], and as a result extensive editing was required to conform the tracks for the final mix. The smallest number of fade files in Wannberg?s Pro Tools sessions for a reel was 7,000; most reels had from 12,000 to 14,000. Kline remembers assistant music editor Steve Galloway asking him for some heads-up to reel changes, since sessions sometimes took 20 minutes to open!

Rydstrom says that Episode II was organized so well in post-production that, by the time they got into final mixing in March, most reels were "almost 100 percent complete and never changed." The one exception was reel 6 [The Arena/The Battle of Geonosis], which was 1,812 feet and 6 frames full of some of the most intense and b

 

//sigh

Regardless, I think those parts of the TPM score works better with AOTC than TPM, anyone agree with me?

 

Yeah I agree. The part you hear when Padme says 'look!' and the Clone Troopers fly into action is perfectly fit with the music.

 

"Yeah I agree. The part you hear when Padme says 'look!' and the Clone Troopers fly into action is perfectly fit with the music."

True, but it still cheapens the experience of hearing lush-new Star Wars music of the first time.

 

The only part I hated was when Anakin and Padme approached Geonosis. The music was from Naboo in TPM and sounded out of place.

 

Music had been end-to-end in the reel, but we thought that it wore the audience out too quickly," says Burtt. "So we dropped a couple of cues, which in the end was better dramatically,

 

from Official Site, Ask the council, Ben Burtt said:

The picture cut of the movie is always changing sync until the very last moment before release. Most often, the music is written and recorded for an earlier version of a scene than what appears in the final cut. Ken Wannberg, John Williams' music editor, has the difficult task of recutting the music to refit the new sync. This can be an extremely difficult job. He is the one solely responsible for making it fit after the fact.

so it appears that Ben is absolving himself from any wrongdoing....

and in response to above, I really like the way that the music fits in with the battle sequence. I also really like that they used the battledroid army cues when first seeing the clone army. It sets up a paralell in the mind of the viewer, and speaks to the fact that, although they are fighting eachother, they are both fighting to the same end...Palpatine's!

 

"Music had been end-to-end in the reel, but we thought that it wore the audience out too quickly,"

Aw, bull pizzle... this isn't a pony ride, this is a ROLLY-COASTER, DAMMIT!!

(Sheesh!)

 

Okay, I cued up the Love Pledge and the Arena track to the movie today (don't ask). There's a point in the film where the cue cuts off. If they left it cut off for three seconds and then brought it back in, it would perfectly fit the movie. In fact, you would hear the love theme as Padme jumps from the pillar, lands on the beast and kisses Anakin's cheek. It even matches up with the droidekas rolling into the arena, the only other part of the cue that actually appears in the segment for which it was written. Why they left the score out entirely, I'll never know, as it works pretty damn well.

Also, the Coruscant chase was extended after it was scored. Matching the two up makes it obvious that the chase itself was elongated, not cut, after it was scored. That's why the score was altered for the film. Although I believe that if they'd left the score alone, it would have worked just fine. The beats would have hit in different places, but some of the beats actually work just as well.

 

I do really like the way the Coruscant chase plays out in the film, both music and film. I love it.

 

I'm too lazy to go over this entire thread. Could someone tell me why half the score was TPM? I don't care too much because all the new stuff is up there with the best in SW. The Love Theme is wonderful as is the mystery music.

 

Dude sorry... read the thread. That's why they are here.

 

Thanks Strilo but I am sure there is one member here who would be kind enough to give me a brief overview to save me reading 12 pages of posts. Yeesh.

 

Okay, I cued up the Love Pledge and the Arena track to the movie today (don't ask). There's a point in the film where the cue cuts off. If they left it cut off for three seconds and then brought it back in, it would perfectly fit the movie. In fact, you would hear the love theme as Padme jumps from the pillar, lands on the beast and kisses Anakin's cheek. It even matches up with the droidekas rolling into the arena, the only other part of the cue that actually appears in the segment for which it was written. Why they left the score out entirely, I'll never know, as it works pretty damn well.

Yeah I agree. I hummed it in the theater (memorizing JW music is not hard for me) and I was totally pissed off because it was so freaking awesome.

 

How about this, hawk. First off the topic itself is an exaggeration. It's not half the score, it's only 14 minutes. We are not talking about recycling themes from previous films, we are talking about taking the exact recordings from TPM and pasting them into AOTC. If you read the first 2 or 3 pages of the thread, you'd prolly be fine.