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Should movies credit session musicians too?


Matt C

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Why not they credit the guy making sandwiches!

Ever watch "In A Minute"? on the Revenge of the Sith Bonus Features disc?

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Why not they credit the guy making sandwiches!

the caterer's do get credit.
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I've been thinking exactly the same thing. They really credit people less crucial to production. And you can actually hear musician's work while watcing film. That's a good point.

Karol

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Why not they credit the guy making sandwiches!

Ever watch "In A Minute"? on the Revenge of the Sith Bonus Features disc?

lol :)

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Well, the score to a single movie may require a number of different sessions to actually record. Maybe each session features a slightly different set of musicians -- like the principal trumpet gets the flu after the first session and takes out the timpani player too after a bad sneeze, and both are replaced by the backups for a subsequent session. If nobody keeps track of who the backup was, they won't be credited. Or if the harp player is featured in only one cue, a segment of music that is dialed out of the final film, she gets credit when she shouldn't. If you name someone who was cut, someone will complain. If you drop someone, they will complain. It's just another paperwork project to keep tabs on.

And if they are going to credit the musicians on the score, shouldn't they also name every musician who performed on every single piece of vocal/pop music (the source cues) used throughout the film? Think about a movie like Pulp Fiction, Armageddon, and Forrest Gump, which feature a tremendous number of songs in addition to or in place of musical score. Or American Graffiti, which was scored soup to nuts with 1950s rock'n'roll. Let's list every single musician that performed each of those songs.

Or all the musicians that were featured in non-vocal classical and instrumental source cues, like the members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra featured in Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries used in The Blues Brothers.

And then remember who gave all of them sandwiches.

The credits would be about as long as Joey claims.

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Hey, let's not get too crazy now. You keep heading down this road, sooner or later you'll have to start crediting the Angela Morleys of the world, and we know how horrible it would be to impugn the absolute nature of Williams' artistic autonomy.

:rimshot:
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But are you watching them, for fuck's sake?

Yes, YES, YES!!! No matter how bad the film is, I always watch the end titles, usually for the music. "John Carter" had great end title music.

Anyway, some end titles can introduce some completely original music, so, often, they ARE worth sitting through.

I left during the John Carter credits, which I normally don't do, because the music was exhausting. The recording quality of that entire score is amateur at best, which is par for the course on Giacchino scores. Cars 2 may be one of the worst offenders of the last several decades.

Credits are too long these days, don't need to make it worse with listing the musicians.

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You'll know when I'm complaining and whining, this doesn't qualify as that. And I do normally watch the credits out of interest mostly for where the film was shot. The music is a bonus for me, well, some of the time, guess it depends on the score/composer.

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Credits are too long these days, don't need to make it worse with listing the musicians.

The credits for Source Code and Lockout were pretty short, even without crediting the session musicians. Your argument would only make sense if the credits were as long as Avatar and John Carter's.

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Well if the credits filled up the whole screen, it'd be a bitch to read. Credits are on average 6 minutes long.

That's why Fox decided to do the centered, fill-up-entire-screen method with the credits for Avatar. If they were done like Cameron's Titanic or even Marvel's The Avengers, it would take twice as long with the number of CGI artists from WETA and ILM being credited alone.

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Why not they credit the guy making sandwiches!

Ever watch "In A Minute"? on the Revenge of the Sith Bonus Features disc?

lol :)

It's longer than the featurette on the screenplay.

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  • 2 months later...

Moonrise Kingdom has also joined the bandwagon, crediting all the New York session musicians (including the soloists). For a Wes Anderson movie, I was surprised at how sizeable the orchestra was for the film.

And even though I didn't mention it earlier, Fantastic Mr. Fox also credits the performers too.

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