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All sorts of things - archiving takes, helping find temp music, programming streamers and punches (although that is very rare these days), conforming old temps or mockups from a composer to a new version of the movie during the editing process, helping find things for soundtrack reissues, stuff like that. once in a while i help with the printing and copying of the sheet music, and I used to do some orchestration work, but not really anymore.

I work with a music editor, and I know a few composers. I went to the same school as Joe Kraemer and have since followed his career with great interest, it's true. I am a huge John Williams fan, especially of his Star Wars music, so I usually only post about that, but since I kind of know Kraemer I post about that too sometimes....

I used to be. Now I am Lorne Balfe.

Who, John Ottman? Nope. Damon Intrabartolo conducted it from the original conductor's score (maybe even the Hal Leonard signature version (I'm not sure about that, though)) I suspect he did, but I don't know that for a fact

I had not heard that JW was offered Shadows and turned it down, I had heard that he was not aware of it until the CD came out. Interesting! My understanding is that the nature of the quotes in the original versions of the cues was such that JW felt it was a direct presentation of his music rather than an oblique reference to it. Basically, if the score to R1 was going to use actual pages from JW cues from other Star Wars movies, the credits for the music on the film would need to be rewritten (i.e. Music by John Williams, arranged and adapted by....), giving JW top billing on the music card. This would probably have also meant even more expense for Disney in the form of some kind of payment to JW. The easiest solution was to remove these major quotes and replace them with less derivative music. By major quotes, I mean the way JW's Superman theme was used in Superman Returns (which literally used the conductor's score for Superman March), only more intrinsic to the fabric of the entire score. The term I heard used was "cut-and-paste" in reference to the way JW Star Wars themes were being quoted. Honestly, I wouldn't blame JW if he WAS being a "bad sport". He's a human being like the rest of us. Getting back to the main subject of this thread, I don't imagine Joe Kraemer would be very happy if MI6 "cut-and-pasted" his Solomon Lane theme into Fallout after the way things have gone.... I meant no offense

PS - I apologize for dragging Star Wars into this thread. Back to the subject at hand - as reported earlier, Joe Kraemer was not replaced by Balfe on MI6. Joe Kraemer was never hired for MI6. Apparently, McQuarrie stopped talking to him after MI5 came out, until he emailed Kraemer to tell him he wasn't hiring him for Fallout earlier this year. So in this case, Balfe is not replacing Kraemer in the way that he usually replaces composers.

I explained all of this in a previous thread (the one about the remastered CDs, I think). I can't provide a specific source as this is all stuff I know firsthand and it obviously wasn't printed in the Hollywood Reporter or Variety or an article on FSM. I have a good reputation on the board - I don't post often, but when I do, I post accurately. My post is not a thesis, it's what happened. Consider this - AD was offered and took the job because he had worked with Gareth Edwards on Godzilla. Having already followed JW's footsteps with Harry Potter, he made it clear on this one he wanted to make his own contribution to the Star Wars universe of music, rather than just ape JW's style. To that end, he insured with the filmmakers that he wasn't going to use JW's themes or style. This is all fine with everyone involved at this point because the movie is SUPPOSED to feel different. He doesn't want any SW music used in the temp scores, he wants to do his own thing. Now, a year or so later, Disney has mandated that the film's tone needs to be completely rethought, including the music, which should feel like Star Wars. They don't mean a quote of the Imperial March here or there, they mean a ground-up rethinking of the film's score to be comfortably in the Star Wars style, to do what AD considered to be "aping" JW's sound. The entire temp was redone from scratch using over an hour of JW"s scores from the 70's. The way Hollywood works, if AD says "no, I quit", he gives up the balance of pay due him. If he refuses to quit and waits to get fired, the studio has to pay him the balance he's owed. So, savvy businessman he is, AD understands he has no reason to give up on his ideals of not imitating JW - if he sticks to his guns, the studio will either back off and let him write what he wants, or fire him and he gets paid anyway. Up to this point, the Oscar-winning AD had never been fired from a project, so he felt bulletproof. On top of that, the longer Disney waits to replace him, the less time the replacement has to write a score, something which also works in AD's favor. The filmmakers dragged their feet on this decision for over a month, from August to September of 2016. Part of the reason was loyalty to AD, part of the reason was that R1 had already replaced so many key people on the film that they feared replacing another would doom the film's publicity. In the end, no one wanted to insult anyone, no one wanted to hurt anyone else's careers, so they allowed the story to be that AD had to leave due to scheduling, which is all fair and good, and minimized the damage done to the publicity by making it AD quitting the movie rather then being fired. Again, I can't prove this to you, so feel free to not believe it, but I promise you on my reputation here on the board, which is all I've got, that it's true.

Rumor Control: when Desplat was hired, Rogue One had not yet been filmed and it's tone was intended to be very dark and very serious. After TFA's mega-success, Disney was taking no chances and wanted R1 to feel more like a traditional Star Wars movie, not less. Key to this was doing a score in the vein of JW, something AD explicitly said he didn't want to do when he was hired. Disney and Lucasfilm gave AD every chance to keep the job, but in the end, he just wasn't willing to write the music they wanted. JW had nothing to do with the decision, he wasn't a "music consultant" on the film or anything like that. In fact, JW was...perturbed, let's say, that he was never offered the movie, as he had come to regard Star Wars as his musical universe (ref the ruffled feathers over Shadows of the Empire). During the recording of MG's score for the film, JW learned that there were major quotes of his themes in the score, and for reasons you can read in other threads on this board, those themes were removed and replaced at the last minute by original material by MG. JW also had control over what films were done live to picture in NYC last fall, and what films were not. However, AD did not spend a year working on the picture. He spent a year *thinking* about working on the picture, but by his own admission, he does most of his writing in the last three weeks of the schedule (one example: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30413134). Part of the reason he does this is that it leaves the directors less time to give him notes and meddle with his music, a choice I can definitely relate to. He's learned how Hollywood works and knows if he gives them too much time to rethink things, directors create a lot of busy work for every one around them in stead of trusting the people they hire.

In those days, movies were still mixed for large theaters that added 2 seconds or more of reverb to the sound. So they mixed everything dry knowing the theater itself would add reverb when the film was projected. Small multiplex theaters/home theaters weren't a consideration yet

Then why take the job? My point is everyone makes excuses for the final product of R1 in a way that they don't for other things simply because they like the composer. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that - my point is that they won't admit that's what they're doing. And other composers in comparable situations deliver the work without saying they didn't have enough time to do it right, and without their fans having to claim a short schedule as a justification for some kind of shortcoming. And frankly, there wasn't a lot to "invent" for R1. It was the 8th film (9th if you include Clone Wars, 11th if you include the Ewok movies, 12th if you include the Holiday Special) in a franchise with a well-established musical vocabulary and he was hired to write in that style. I admire and applaud him for taking the job on, but I don't accept allowances from his fans that he didn't have enough time to do a good job on it. LET ME BE CLEAR ABOUT THIS: I was reacting to a claim by a fan that it was ok that R1 might not be as good as it could have been because the composer didn't have enough time to do a good job on it (not necessarily my opinion of the score, by the way, either). I was simply illustrating that THAT is not a valid excuse, in my opinion Lots of composers get calls at the last minute to write scores. That's what a career in film music is all about. It's not about dreaming up ideas for months and months and taking time to explore options. You get the film on Monday and you record in a few weeks, maybe a few months. PS who said life (or JWFan) was fair? ;-)

Chinatown : this article says 10 days, I'll concede that's more than one week. http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com/chinatown_review.htm Mission Impossible: this interview claims he had 5 weeks, but I've been told by people who worked on it that it was one week. I suspect he was hired 5 weeks before the movie came out, and that has been misinterpreted by this journalist, and DE doesn't correct him. I'll concede that I cannot find a link proving it was one week. http://www.runmovies.eu/danny-elfman-on-scoring-mission-impossible/ Catch Me If You Can - I concede that I cannot give you a link to prove this. I was told this personally by a musician who played on the original sessions and the rewrites. Rosewood - i cannot find a link confirming how much time JW had to score Rosewood, but here is a link proving he replaced Wynton Marsalis: http://www.movie-wave.net/titles/rosewood.html, WM eventually release his score to Rosewood as a CD called Reeltime, which implies he had already written music for the film, thus implying he was fired late in the post-production process. Here's another example: Air Force One. According to this article: http://articles.latimes.com/1997/jul/15/entertainment/ca-12822, Randy Newman was fired from the film on June 1. The film came out on July 25, approx 7 weeks later. If you figure in time to mix the film, create the prints and ship them to theaters, that probably gives Jerry Goldsmith about 4 weeks to score that movie. I will concede though that it is not a classic on the scale of a JW Star Wars score, and also that Jerry had help from son Joel. It was announced on Sept 15 that MG had replaced AD on R1. The film came out on Dec 10. The score was recorded the first week of November, according to this article on Variety.com (MG caps a busy year with Rogue One Score - website won't allow me to link to it for some reason). Even though the article claims he did it in 4 and a half weeks, Sept 15 to Nov 1 is actually 6 weeks. Is that enough proof for you? ;-)

Similarly, as an Ahmed Best SW character, Jar Jar Binks is great I was told by someone who would know that early during the scoring session for Catch Me If You Can, JW recorded a singular cue with a jazzy feel. He wasn't sure if Spielberg would like it or not, but Spielberg loved it. So JW asked him if he could end the session early and go back and rewrite the score in the style of this jazzy cue, and reconvene in 2 weeks to record the new cues. If what I was told is true, the first draft of JW's score was not jazzy at all.

May I politely ask why you've gone to the trouble to come to this website and THEN to this thread ABOUT Star Wars music only to look down your nose at the people who post here? The "rushed at the last second" excuse is unwarranted. The composer had 4 weeks to write and record the score to R1. JW had 6 weeks to write and record the score to ESB, according to this excellent documentary from the BBC in 1980 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu7_dMhdciw&t=11s). I don't believe an extra 2 weeks would have elevated R1 to ESB standards. Here are some great scores that were done in less time than R1. Chinatown - Jerry Goldsmith - one week Mission Impossible - Danny Elfman - one week Catch Me If You Can - JW rewrote most of this score in 2 weeks after recording a different set of cues first Rosewood - John Williams - replaced Wynton Marsalis very late in post-production

It is not borderline incoherent. Ask around - it is a confirmed fact within the business that JW pursued scoring the final chapter of the HP series of movies. It is also a proven fact that he was not successful in his campaign to do so. The explanation I was given by people who would know is that JKR, for whatever reason, wanted someone else. I added my "apparently" qualifier because I did not hear this directly from JKR herself. (Other things that I have said "definitively" have come from direct personal experience or from citable quotes in interviews with the actual people involved.) Perhaps some confusion has arisen among readers here because when JW was expressing his interest in Deathly Hallows it was not confirmed as a 2-part film yet. I don't believe Part 6 had even come out yet when JW began inquiring about it. So DY's comments about Part 2 would not necessarily be a factor in the decision made after HP6 that resulted in AD instead of JW. [Based on a quick google search, the decision to split DH into 2 parts was announced in March of 2008, the decision to hire Desplat was announced in January of 2010. DH (the book) was published in 2007, so it's entirely possible JW's people began sending feelers out to the filmmakers in 2007 about having him score the last film (again, not knowing it would be 2 films at that time).] People contradict themselves later in life all the time. JKR could certainly have felt one way about the music for DH and another about the music for FB, the same way Lucas vowed on 60 minutes in 2005 that there would never be an Ep 7, and if there was it would never be about Luke Skywalker and company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W4Eew8WJoU). Perhaps JKR felt that the HP series developed a stronger tie with English and European craftsman over the course of its run, and that the FB movies would be better served by an American composer since the story took place in America.

I apologise for the confusion. I had said "JW apparently tried very aggressively to get the job to score Deathly Hallows, but that JKRowling did not want an American composer. I do not know what that means in terms of JW's opinion of AD's work, but I can imagine that, like any human being, there is some healthy competitive judgement there." I had intended for "apparently" to convey the lack of definitive proof for that comment. The main point of my introducing the whole DH thing was to help illustrate the possible reasons behind some of the things happening on R1. I hope this clarifies my earlier statements No one HAS to believe anything I say. I know what I know, and I share what I think would be of interest. I have no desire to spread lies. And no worries about being curt.

Agreed. The undeniable truth is that JW wanted to score the final act of HP, to close out the story he had started musically. The undeniable truth is that he was told no by someone with the power to say no. I have heard it was JKR, but it obviously could have been DY. It could also have been a scheduling thing or a travel thing, who knows... No not pulling a goof. Certainly not intending to. My goofs include emojis.

Why are you here, then? ;-)

Hahaha, funny I think you know what I meant, though. Barry was considered the definitive Bond composer, and while he was still alive, it was always weird when he wasn't hired to score a Bond movie. Once he was gone, and they had no choice but to hire someone else, it freed a composer up to a certain degree from audience expectations... I wouldn't. And I'm a fan

I do not believe JW had anything to do with AD's involvement, or eventual lack of involvement, with the film. AD was hired by Gareth Edwards because of their previous working relationship on Godzilla. Also, KK had worked with him on Benjamin Button and considered him a friend. I do know that Tony Gilroy, who eventually took over the film in many ways, has a long-standing relationship with JNH and that JNH's schedule prevented him from even being considered for the scoring duties if AD was replaced. I have inferred that JW was not annoyed that AD got the boot, so to speak. JW apparently tried very aggressively to get the job to score Deathly Hallows, but that JKRowling did not want an American composer. I do not know what that means in terms of JW's opinion of AD's work, but I can imagine that, like any human being, there is some healthy competitive judgement there. I have also heard that JW was asked to score Jurassic World. He turned it down but lobbied hard for William Ross to get the job in his stead. Put all this together and you get a situation where people's egos, intentions, and an enormous amount of money are on the line. JP was hired for Solo by the original directors, and when they were fired, JP assumed he might be too. As long as JW is alive and well, anyone else scoring a SW movie is stepping into a tangled mess of corporate directives conflicting with artistic ambitions. As a famous orchestrator observed to me, right now scoring a star wars movie is job "you can only fuck up" It's very much like Bond when John Barry was still alive.

As I heard it explained to me, JW became aware of certain decisions that had been made by the final composer for R1 and was not happy with the way elements from his original scores were being integrated into a score being credited to someone else and that changes had to be made either to the music or to the credits. The decision was made to change the music. I think JW's feelings about the final score can be inferred from the fact that it was not included in the program of SW films performed live in NYC last fall, despite Disney's wishes that it would be. In defense of the final composer for R1, given the politics of the situation at that point in the process, I'm not sure anyone except William Ross would have been a satisfactory choice for JW, who I have inferred was very unhappy with the way things were handled with the score for that movie from the very beginning (very much like Shadows of the Empire). As far as JW approving Powell for Solo, I don't know the details. I do know Ron Howard depends very much on Zimmer for all his musical decisions now, and that HZ vouched for Powell. I also infer that, based on his recent announcement that after Ep 9 he will be retiring from SW films, JW has realized that Disney is going to keep cranking these things out long after he has become an ex-parrot, and that it was as good a time as any to let go his desire to try and keep some sort of quality-control over the material. I also suspect that JW writing the Solo theme was an effort to placate him after the disruptions he may have caused late in the game on R1. There is no single BEST release. The closest to a definitive is the 1997 SE CD of Star Wars Ep4, but that is currently trapped in the 44.1k/16bit world of 1997 compact disc mastering. In my opinion, to get the best version possible, one must get the '93 boxset, the '97 cds, the '16 HD releases and the '18 HD remixes, learn how to use Pro Tools or a similar editing system, and create a new edit using their favorite bits from each release. Every release has plusses and minuses. If you are really only looking to buy one, I side with Jay and encourage you to get the 1997 cds. Although ESB and ROTJ suffer from weaker sonic presentation than the '93 set, the completeness of the content itself is the closest to definitive.

According to an FSM article from 1997, MM went through the score to Star Wars and phased different elements against each other to make sure he used the correct takes for the 1997 SE CD of Ep 4. If you phase the 1997 Ep 4 against the 1993 Ep 4, it reveals that many different takes were used in the '93 version, all of them wrong, and many of them with clams in the orchestra. I've done it myself, so I can testify to this. The reason MM had to use phasing is that the paperwork is a mess for SW (and ESB). Again, no one thought in 1977 that any of this would matter once the movie was mixed and the album was made. They did what they had to do to make those things and then forgot about it all. I honestly think the main problem with the new CDs is a misguided intent to try and make all 6 scores sound more like one another sonically. SW and ESB are just never going to sound like ROTS, no matter how much reverb you add. The best thing about the intent behind was the '97 versions was that, despite Lucasfilm's insistence on de-hissing everything as much as possible, there was seemingly no attempt to make the scores sound like something they weren't, but rather to present them as they actually sounded in the room.

You're not wrong, but, again, as I understand it, they planned ahead for that one in a way that made it less difficult to do live than the prequels for whatever reason.

I can't say how I know this to be true without betraying a confidence more than I am comfortable doing, but there are people in this community who can vouch for me that I know what I'm talking about. JW feels a very proud sense of ownership over the musical legacy of Star Wars and had a vested interest in making sure it met certain standards, at least up until he announced that EP 9 would be his last Star Wars score. As I understand it, the big problem with the PT is that the sheet music for the cues as they were heard in the films doesn't exist, so doing them live to picture would entail a massive amount of prep-work, whereas with the OT, it was basically minor adjustments to the scores as they were written.

Funny, but not true. But JW did have veto power over what Star Wars films were included in the series of live-to-film concerts in NYC last year.

I can tell you definitively that JW had approval over the score for Rogue One, and that cues had to be rewritten on short notice to his approval