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John Williams begins recording Star Wars Episode VIII score today in Los Angeles


TownerFan

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2 hours ago, Stefancos said:

ROTS has moments of pure brilliance, but also loads of cues that really don't do much. Also, unlike any of the other ones it doesn't really have any overarching thematic presence. All SW scores Williams did have a prominent theme or two that is carried through the whole film. This just isn't the case in ROTS. The lament comes in quite late and is ony heard three instances. Battle Of The Heroes is essentially a setpiece cue. The General Grievous Theme is good, but also used a few times. The old themes are used of course, but often as mere cameos. The score lacks any thematic focus. Very rare for Williams and unheard of for an SW score.

 

One could say ROTJ has the same problem. And TPM too (The DOTF statements are pretty scarce during the first two thirds of the score, Anakin's theme only shows up halfway through the score and isn't used much... Though, for some reason, that score still feels well-structured, I'll give you that).

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I think Williams had (justifiably) given up on wasting his time crafting a prequel score with thematic coherence and gradual development of themes after what happened on TPM and AOTC. Why would you even bother? It's just going to get tracked, cut up and moved around anyway.

 

It was a very smart decision by Williams to switch to more scene-specific scoring and, to my ears, it sounds like he was just going for broke in individual scenes with less regard for how the overall score would flow from scene to scene. He just packed the score chock-full of brilliant individual highlights. It's probably my favourite prequel score (the most listenable, anyway).

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3 hours ago, Jay said:

1 TESB

2 ROTJ

3 SW

4 TPM

5 TFA

6 AOTC

7 ROTS

8 R1


Exactly my Star Wars ranking too. I'm just not sure between ROTJ and SW. Maybe SW is on #2 these days, after listen to Giacchinos references to the 1977 score.

I rediscovered the brilliance of the original SW score.

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ROTS frustrates me because of all the "this is really epic!" choir stuff, and the incoherence obviously. Which makes me sometimes rank AOTC higher, but you know what? Save for Across the Stars, AOTC is pretty incoherent too. At least ROTS gave us all the Force themes variations we'd need for the next ten years (and come to think of it, that was kind of the unifying theme of the film) and JW actually scored the climax. Beyond the chase, all the other AOTC action cues are pretty boring too. ROTS has that kick ass opening at least. Anyway, I really tire of both of them so it'll be interesting in a bit to see where I finally place Rogue One because at the moment I'd much rather listen to that than ROTS or AOTC (blasphemy I know, but it's probably more just the fun of the new).

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What is this Prequel trilogy people are talking about? There is no such thing.

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20 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

Personally I quite love the brooding tone and the dark colors of the music in ROTS. In terms of cohesiveness, I think it was a difficult task to keep up with a film with so many sequences and talking heads stuff. But the music still gives the film much more gravitas than was probably needed. At times, Williams pulled out all the stops to give th film an operatic flair otherwise absent--I particularly love the piece when Anakin is on the balcony on Mustafar after killing everyone, with those blasting fanfares that seems to come straight out of Čajkovskij's Manfred.

 

So great, in fact, JW wisely chopped it down on the soundtrack. ;) But yes, it's probably one of the highlights of the score (in complete form, of course).

 

There's so much brilliant music on Mustafar... I can't think of a single cue in the third act that isn't some of the most dynamic music in the whole saga. The stretch from Padme's Visit right through to the end credits is god-tier Williams and probably the type of symphonic bombast most people associate with the "Star Wars" musical sound. In fact, there's probably only about 30 seconds of the film unscored in that entire stretch; a testament to Williams' diversified writing.

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Excuse me if I haven't read the 6 pages of this thread, but has anyone received any information about why Williams has started recorded for this film a year in advance? Was it trailer music, as suggested on the first page? Something else? The film doesn't end its shooting untill July next year.

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

Excuse me if I haven't read the 6 pages of this thread, but has anyone received any information about why Williams has started recorded for this film a year in advance? Was it trailer music, as suggested on the first page? Something else? The film doesn't end its shooting untill July next year.

 

The answer lies somewhere in page 7.

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

Excuse me if I haven't read the 6 pages of this thread, but has anyone received any information about why Williams has started recorded for this film a year in advance? Was it trailer music, as suggested on the first page? Something else? The film doesn't end its shooting untill July next year.

 

You're wrong, the film wrapped shooting months ago.  (Of course, there could be small reshoots next year)

 

And this is more or less the same scoring schedule as Episode 7, and don't forget JW also has to record scores to The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and Ready Player One in 2017.

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

 

You're wrong, the film wrapped shooting months ago.  (Of course, there could be small reshoots next year)

 

And this is more or less the same scoring schedule as Episode 7, and don't forget JW also has to record scores to The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and Ready Player One in 2017.

 

You're right, I somehow misread the info at Wikipedia -- July 2016 morphing into July 2017 (at this point in my life, the years pass by so fast they turn into each other).

 

But what if massive re-shoots and re-edits happens between now and December next year, like it did for ROGUE ONE? Will we have another CHAMBER OF SECRETS on our hands?

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

But what if massive re-shoots and re-edits happens between now and December next year, like it did for ROGUE ONE? Will we have another CHAMBER OF SECRETS on our hands?

 

I don't think that will happen with this film, but if it does, who the hell knows - no way we can predict what new schedules will be, especially since we don't even know what all the scheduels are now.  Why does it mater, anyway?

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2 hours ago, Thor said:

 

 

 

But what if massive re-shoots and re-edits happens between now and December next year, like it did for ROGUE ONE? Will we have another CHAMBER OF SECRETS on our hands?

The powers that be would have long since seen a rough cut of the film (before Williams ever laid eyes on it).  I don't see it happening.  Johnson himself might order some small reshoots, but those would be minimal.  I get the sense that he is a more confident filmmaker than JJ (or Lucas) in the sense that he knows what he wants the first time around, and thus there is no need for ongoing reshoots. 

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Plus, the execs were always going to be more involved in the post production of the first film since buying Lucasfilm for $4 billion, making less interference with each film now that the first made billions

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I hope so. Wish Gareth Edwards had enjoyed similar free reign on ROGUE ONE. He's in the same category as Rian Johnson to me (although I probably prefer Edwards a tad bit more).

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54 minutes ago, Jay said:

Plus, the execs were always going to be more involved in the post production of the first film since buying Lucasfilm for $4 billion, making less interference with each film now that the first made billions

 

Not just that but, from a narrative standpoint, they needed to make sure TFA set things up the right way for future installments. Johnson was writing the scripts for VIII and IX when TFA was shooting and surely that impacted things after the fact. I imagine that they now finally have everything figured out (which is probably one of the reasons why the release date was pushed back) and the chance of major elements of the narrative changing in post and requiring extensive reshoots beyond what is normal is very unlikely this time around. If the story for VIII didn't work in all the ways it needed to, they would know by now.

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16 hours ago, Tom said:

The powers that be would have long since seen a rough cut of the film (before Williams ever laid eyes on it).  I don't see it happening.  Johnson himself might order some small reshoots, but those would be minimal.  I get the sense that he is a more confident filmmaker than JJ (or Lucas) in the sense that he knows what he wants the first time around, and thus there is no need for ongoing reshoots. 

 

These are movies made by committee. The director is a gun for hire, there's no way he is having "free reign" over something. Even JJ Abrams, who surely had a quite strong contractual power that he used to set up things the way he wanted, was at the mercy of the studio in the end. In the current Hollywood's blockbuster machine, the stakes are just too high to be let in the hands of a single person.

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It's an illusion of control but one would hope that Johnson figured out long before now the artistic parameters he would need to stay within on this particular project as it's been taking shape and how to specifically communicate that vision. It's a matter of getting himself, his collaborators, and the powers that be on the same page and keeping it that way, so that he can produce something that ultimately satisfies his tastes while also avoiding unpleasant surprises for the Mouse House. By this point the film should more or less reflect the conversations he's been having for 2 years with dozens of people, the latest being John Williams. 

 

Seems like that's often where directors and other creatives run into trouble, when they haven't articulated themselves clearly enough -- or stuck with their original intentions, or executed them like they said they would, or it's actually the fault of the person who should have been listening -- but at any rate suddenly somebody goes "Wait I didn't know you were going to do it like that!" 

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Judging by the results in his career thus far (from visuals to performances to the score), Johnson knows exactly how to communicate his vision. That's probably the most important trait for a film director.

 

I'm much more assured with a Star Wars film in his hands than Abrams'. I think he'll be vastly more confident with his edit and will do a better job communicating his expectations of the score to Williams (rather than just giving him free reign to do what he thought the film needed).

 

TFA ended up with so many alternates because Abrams constantly changed the edit, re-arranged scenes and made tonal adjustments up until the dying days of post-production. Not to mention how much music Williams recorded for scenes that didn't need it (and thus went unused in the final cut). Abrams comes across as an indecisive "I want to see every option first, then I'll decide what works" type of director.

 

6 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

It's clear now. They interviewed William Ross.

 

He's been impersonating Williams since Chamber of Secrets, turtleneck and all.

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34 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

I wish more than anything that Edwards would just replace Trevorrow on Episode IX.

 

I'd agree with that. Trev's visual style is pretty pedestrian.

 

I'm not all that worried about his script because the story group will ensure that conforms to the universe and gives the trilogy a satisfying resolution. They'll be giving plenty of input along the way (plus it's based on Johnson's treatment anyway).

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2 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

 

I wish more than anything that Edwards would just replace Trevorrow on Episode IX.

 

Trevorrow, while his visual style might be considered "blander", as at least handled characters quite well in Safety Not Guaranteed, which I found to be a delightful little film. I haven't seen such capacity for empathy in Edward's work (though I still haven't seen Monsters)

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55 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Another photo from the recording sessions. Who's the guy on the left? It looks like David Koepp! 

 

 

 

Hey! I was just coming here to post that! ;)

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6 minutes ago, crumbs said:

It's been up for a week! :lol:

 

I wish Rian would post something on Instagram relating to the sessions. He's always putting up little teases... :(

 

He hates the score so he'll never mention it on social media!

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