Film Score Friday 10/16/98
by Lukas Kendall
Yesterday we printed the
track list for the new recording of Superman which Varese Sarabande
is releasing next Tuesday. Here's some more info on what a couple of those
tracks are:
From: Hiphats@aol.com
"The Penthouse" underscores the scene where Superman arrives
at Lois' place for his interview. And "Flying to Lois" is a re-titling
of the second part of "Chasing Rockets" as heard on the original
soundtrack CD (the somber part of the "Chasing Rockets" cue on
the CD that actually underscores Lois' so-called "death"?).
On the Unofficial John Williams Home Page (http://www.classicalrecordings.com/johnwilliams/),
in its "Superman" section, you will find an article MegadethDC
and I wrote on the film's score. We dissect each and every moment of the
music as used in the various versions of the film, as well as the CD releases.
We are planning an update for next month to incoroprate the new Varese
release.
Cool - thanks! You can visit Hiphat's Superman 60/20 shrine at http://members.aol.com/hiphats/superman.html.
As I like to say, it's nice to have a hobby.
Here's more info:
From: Bob Gutowski <Rgutowski@nycds.org>
I'm drooling all over my keyboard reading about this CD, and I appreciate
the advance information. "Chasing Rockets" will presumably be
the full piece (as heard on the original LP/CD) as compared to the hacked-up
version in the film - and "The Flying Sequence" will be better
for the lack of Margot Kidder's druggy, high-school drama class line readings,
I think! (Go ahead - tell me they got Bo Derek to fill in and kill me now!)
FYI: "SUPER TRACKS!" "The Penthouse" is a brief
swirl of music, a variation on the main theme which we hear while Lois
waits in her apparently preposterously expensive roof-top garden for the
unnamed hero who saved her life to drop by. The sequence comprises the
magical POV shot as Superman approaches the building by air, his landing,
and his opening remarks ("Nice place!"). "Flying to Lois"
follows a close-up of Supe, happy to be finished repairing the earthquake,
as he suddenly "intuits" that Lois is in mortal danger, mouths
her name, and takes off. It continues with first a frantic and then a mournful
re-statement of the "Love Theme" as he discovers Lois' car buried
in a fissure and unearths the vehicle and pulls her out, discovering that
he's too late to save her.
CHOP-CHOP!! Incidentally, speaking of hacked-up cues, I was checking
out the "launch sequence" in Titanic (which culminates in the
magnificent God's-eye view shot of the ship's entire length seemingly passing
before the camera) yesterday on LD at NY's J&R MusicWorld, and I saw
again how changes in the length of shots must have necessitated snipping
out bars of Horner's cue. It's not quite as egregious as that famous manual
cut performed by Jerry Goldsmith in Poltergeist (as a result of the "ghost
procession" sequence having been shortened), leaving the score now
signaling "danger!" while the visual is giving us "stately
spookiness, " but it's still jarring.
GLUB, GLUB. While we're on Titanic, has anyone noted how the elegiac
last track on the first CD (obviously end title music) was almost entirely
replaced by another version (or the exact same track?) of the more upbeat
"launch" cue in the film eventually released? Was this a preview
decision, I wonder? It reminded me of how the orchestral version of "Tradition"
that concludes the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack was instead replaced
by a similar reprise of "To Life" on the actual soundtrack of
the film.
About the Titanic pieces, I don't know, I'm not that acquainted
with the score. But this is a pretty common occurrence, for a score to
be slightly edited following its recording.
Trailers
From: SinglrtyRc@aol.com
I've always been curious what the music was in the trailer for "Strange
Days." I really loved it, and it's of course not on the soundtrack.
From: "RomanDeppe" <roman.deppe@metronet.de>
Since DANTE'S PEAK came out, I wonder what music they used in its
trailer. No, it's not at that website you mention. I thought it is a piece
of music specificly written for the trailer, though with the big (latin?)
choir it is pretty big. Well, recently the same piece of music appeared
in some German show-trailers for German stuff, so it must be available
somewhere, because the German music editors always take music from CDs
(Favorite: SPEED). It's really a cool action cue, sounds a bit like James
Newton Howard... maybe anyone knows...
There is a database for this material at www.filmmusic.com,
but apparently the above are not included. Anyone know?
Concert Records
Earlier this week, in a column about reader
reactions to Jerry Goldsmith's Oct 4 concert in New York, I was asked
if there was going to be a CD of the concert, and I replied: "Not
as far as I know. While there are many live concert recordings of rock
acts, orchestral concerts are more problematic to record and release commercially
-- flaws in the performance which are swept up by 'the moment' stick out
badly when put on an album, and the miking can be problematic too."
From: Josh Gizelt <Josh.Gizelt@gte.net>
Yes and no. Musicians are musicians, no matter how elitist some
people may be about the subject, but the truth is, if you listen to live
rock recordings, you will find plenty of mistakes and hiccups. The difference
is that a recording of music strives for perfection, and a live performance
strives for an experience. Some of the best live rock albums (Rolling Stones'
"Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out," for example) have amp buzzing sounds,
wrong notes hit and so on. But the experience of listening to this record
is one of hard smoking catharsis because of the energy it represents.
A live recording of film music would be a very different animal
from that which film music fans are used to. In addition to the audience
noise (which puts off many classical buyers from live recordings as well)
and wrong notes (which would make many of our brethren CATATONIC), there
is the different aesthetic to a live performance, which is less noticeable
when one is actually at the show. Perfection of performance is not the
most important aspect, rather it is one of giving that particular audience
an interesting experience, be it rousing, tender, confusing, frenzied,
whatever. Sometimes this translates well onto a record, sometimes it doesn't.
As far as miking is concerned, well, live recordings are older than
studio recordings.
From: Preston Jones
I've noticed that there has been no mention of the critical reception.
Did the N.Y. press ignore the event? Praise it? (More likely) Take the
opportunity for more of the usual snide snobbery against film music?
This is a good question. Did anyone in New York see any reviews of Goldsmith's
concert? They would probably have been in the 10/5 paper, or whenever an
Arts section came out that week. Ah, the New York Times... how I miss you.
CD-ROM of the Site
Last
week I asked if people would be interested in buying for $15 a CD-ROM
of this web site, so they could read articles quicker. The poll on our
home page is currently running a survey of this, with results mostly in
the negative. Still, if only 20% of 250 say yes, that implies that 50 people
are interested, and since we'd be making custom CD-Rs, it might be worth
it. We'll investigate further... and get a new poll up soon.
From: Mike Watson <mike.watson@utoronto.ca>
The CD idea is a good one, but this is not the right time for it.
There are simply not enough good articles to make it worthwhile.There are
probably only a hundred useful articles in the FSD archive right now -
not a criticism, it's just that some of them I don't need to read more
than once. Would you prune out the filler columns, like today's? (again,
no offense) As it is right now, the site doesn't take that long for older
articles to load. If there were in between two to three hundred columns
that I would want to see again, I would buy it. One more question: would
they be loaded as regular html files, or as a single archive in some kind
of stand-alone document program?
I don't know. That's up to our huge research & development staff
(?).
From: "Kyle Beatty" <kylebeatty@sprynet.com>
The CD-ROM idea has merit. I suggest that it have content impossible
or merely impractical for the online site. Such as video or audio of the
editors doing Film Score Monthly -ish things. There is a dearth of imagery
on the site, but quite a lot in the mag, perhaps a library of images that
soundtrack aficianados would find interesting. A lot of reference materials
seems like a must.
I dunno... do people really want to see us ugly editors and our messy
office?
The River Wild
From: "Kenny Hui" <kennyhui@indigo.ie>
Just a brief question:- was Jerry Goldsmith's main title for The
Edge, "Lost in the Wild", based on any traditional song similar
to the way "The Water is Wide" was arranged for The River Wild?
I was in a restaurant here in Ireland where the background music
playing seemed to be a female vocal version of Lost in the Wild. Unfortunately,
I couldn't make out the words and the staff had no idea.
I didn't think this was based on a particular folk tune, but it's possible
- it's also possible that it merely resembles something else, since it's
a pretty direct, straightforward melody.
Anime Soundtracks
From: wilson@teleweb.net (Kari Wilson)
Some info for you on anime soundracks:
Firstoff, the person who was asking about Joe Hisaishi should know
that he has his own website, which is at www.joehisaishi.com.
Most of it is not in English, so it may not be of too much help, but there
are photos of individual CDs. Also, there are loads of anime websites that
could have this info as well.
Secondly, about anime soundtracks in general: if only american companies
could do what the Japanese companies do. For any given anime film, and
more so for the big name films, there can be any number of releases. There
is the original soundtrack album, which has the music as it appeared in
the film. Then, there can be a symphonic version of this music, since the
score as used in the film isn't always a symphonic one. Then, there may
be an image album, which is comprised of music which was inspired by the
film in question; I don't have any of these, so I can't say whether it's
symphonic or vocal, etc. Then, there may be a vocal collection, with songs
from and inspired by the work in question. There can even be more than
one volume of the soundtrack, based on how much music there was.
Televison series have a great deal more music, and are more likely
to have huge amounts of discs, but Laputa, the film mentioned by the writer
in today's column has at least five discs that I know of, covering the
various types I mentioned above. I have the symphonic recording of that
score, which is quite lovely. Getting back to television, there is Neon
Genesis Evangelion, which was a 26 episode series, and it has five discs
of soundtracks for the series, and then at least four others for the three
films which followed the series. Escaflowne, mentioned by the writer today,
probably has at least as many as well.
All in all, it adds up to being extremely confusing for the person
who is new to the anime soundtrack scene and isn't sure which CD to buy,
since there are so many. It does show the immense interest in film music
that they have in Japan, to have this much product available in relation
to a given show/film. Imagine if American companies lavished that much
interest in film music for any one given film... Hope this helps, anyway,
in regard to anime soundtracks.
Blame City
From: zambelis <zambelis@eos.med.upatras.gr>
There are many ocassions that some of us believe that music doesn't
work so good in the film, it doesn't enhance it as much as it should. I
can think of many examples like last year's Amistad or Hook (although I
think it is one of the best film music written in the last 50 years). Anyway
my point is that I don't think that the composers are those to blame but
the directors and producers are. I mean that the director ask the composer
what feeling the music should have in a particular moment and he helps
in editing the music in the end. What do you think?
I've sat on this letter a few weeks, and was going to write a long explanation
of my thoughts, but I'm sorry, I'm too tired. It all depends. Sometimes
it's the filmmakers fault (in fact that's often the case nowadays), sometimes
the composer's. What can you do?
Hammer Soundtracks
From the Hammer web site, in which they announce their own record label
to release Hammer soundtracks:
The long-awaited soundtrack album Original Music from Hammer Films
- Volume One is to be officially launched on Saturday 31 October 1998.
Guests at a special event organised by album producer Gary Wilson
and Forbidden Planet, the leading comics and collectables store, will include:
(James Bernard (composer), Martine Beswick (Slave Girls; Dr. Jekyll &
Mr. Hyde), Madelaine Collinson (Twins of Evil), Caron Gardner (The Evil
of Frankenstein), Suzanna Leigh (The Lost Continent; Lust for a Vampire),
Caroline Munro (Dracula AD 1972; Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter) and Roy
Skeggs (producer and chairman of Hammer Film Productions Limited). All
appear subject to commitments.
The event will take place at The Conservatory, St. Giles High Street,
London WC2, commencing at 1.00pm. Entrance is free, and copies of the album
will be available for purchase and signing on the day. This promises to
be the biggest official gathering for Hammer enthusiasts since the Bray
get-together in June.
See www.hammerfilms.com for
more info.
Other Links
The Bernard Herrmann web pages (www.uib.no/herrmann)
recently had an update, including an interview with Varese producer Robert
Townson about their Seventh Voyage of Sinbad recording, and a data sheet
for the upcoming recording of The Egyptian (Stromberg/Morgan). Check itout!
Roberto Zamori, producer of a number of Italian soundtracks (Morricone,
Bacalov, etc.) has a new web site: http://www.ala.it/fmastudio/
See the links section of this site for tons and tons of cool links.
Have a good weekend!
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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