ChrisAfonso
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Posts posted by ChrisAfonso
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How does sheet music tell you about exact changes in the film?
I don't know if you have seen any Williams sketches, but he writes notes about what's happening above the music (for syncing purposes), so it's possible to get a rough idea about the scene, the characters who appear etc. from those.
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I think I made out another thematic connection, namely a foreshadowing quote from the unicorn theme in "The Adventures of Tintin". Listen to the harpsichord at 2:11 in track 1 (shortly before the statement of Tintin's theme in minor key). If we look at these two bars, we see that the contour greatly resembles the core of the unicorn theme: Rising and falling motion in each bar, delimited by the notes d (both times) at the bottom (shown in red), and b-flat (first time) and high f-d (second time) at the top of the melodic range (shown in green). The first group of notes in each bar (d e f) is different from those in the standard presentation of the unicorn theme (d f a), but identical to the start of the third phrase of the unicorn theme (marked with a bracket below), which reoccurs in different shapes throughout the score (most prominently at the end of "Finale").
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Really? Don't remember that... So again, anybody gonna see the movie twice in the theater? I am considering it...Oh, I just remembered the most funny thing 3D-wise I have seen yet: (possible spoiler)I think it was immediately after the plane crash (not sure), but in some desert scene the sand piled up against the screen
Now that's a creative use of 3D.It was at the bottom of the screen, and looked like the screen was some kind of glass pane that stopped the sand from spilling out.
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Oh, I just remembered the most funny thing 3D-wise I have seen yet: (possible spoiler)
I think it was immediately after the plane crash (not sure), but in some desert scene the sand piled up against the screen
Now that's a creative use of 3D. -
The dust flying around in Marlinspike Hall and Tintin probing around with the flashlight also looked good in 3D. Sakharine holding his saber under my nose seemed rather typical an effect.
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Mine wasn't sealed either... and the cover of the case was a bit scratched. Well, not a real biggie, but I was a bit disappointed, I expect better from amazon.
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Ok, I just saw the film (it's fantastic), and took some mental notes on some things (many of which have been answered already
-The opening ostinato motif from track 1 appears once in the film, when Tintin notices someone following them in Bagghar (turns out it's the Thompsons). Fitting, since him being followed is reminiscent of the opening animation
-The inverted Haddock theme from track 5 plays when Tintin first discovers the scroll (hinting at the secret of the Haddocks)
-The "oriental" treasure motif is first heard when Tintin finds out about Sakkharine heading for Bagghar, so it seems to do double duty for the treasure and the exotic location that the search for it takes our heroes to.
-From what I heard, the "B" theme is definitely for Tintin, used sneakily like in track 5 for him sneaking around or "actiony" when he does more dangerous stuff. I recall it playing when he's jumping or running around during the falcon chase and on the ship earlier. You could say that it scores him taking it up against the bad guys.
I recall someone writing that there was no curse and Williams made that track title up
but there definitely is a curse, as in Rackham verbally cursing Haddock and his decendants for what he did.Overall the score in the film works exceptionally well
I, too, noticed the good short cues not on the album, Tintin meeting Haddock, making for the radio room, and shooting the plane. Definitely going to see this again!... and just bought the first unicorn book on the way home
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I hear the clicks, but not the distortion... also, at 3:17 (and a bit later again) there is a very short sound, like someone saying "uck!", do you hear that too?
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At least, I have some ideas... I'm not sure I have enough time.
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The spine ideed looks very nice
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Well, if we assume that the "bad guy" in that sequence is the falcon Tintin is chasing, then the "bad guy" music here is the flute flourishes
Also, there's a short passage there with trombone-heavy deep hits that sounds similar to the crane fight music. So based on what appears or doesn't appear in the pursuit track, the question is still undecided /edit: and again I'm too late... that's what you get from touch-typing on your phone...
@filmmusic: Great summation of the motivic connections! Although I feel that the Snowy one is already on muddier grounds than the obvious previous ones (as Josh said, we have to be careful not to overanalyze). If we take this further we soon have Snowy's theme as the early prototype of the Unicorn theme, based on the delimiting notes of the thematic contour - and IMHO, that's a bit far-fetched
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Shouldn't themes basically be distinguishable from each other? (Runs for cover)
Yes that is what Josh has been trying to say quite vocally. I agree but I also understand that a composer can also develop and vary themes and their different versions, sometimes e.g. inverting them and changing their melodic, rhythmic form etc. content for a reason or another.
Yes, quite right.
And by coincidence I mean, for example, such a scenario: JW sits at the piano, comes up with the Theme for Tintin (version A). Then he has to come up with a theme for one of the villains. So he sits down at the piano again and plays around, throwing ideas back and forth in his mind. And he comes up with a different theme... but which happens to have a slightly similar structure (or similar chord progression, similar rhythmic interval etc.) as the theme he wrote an hour ago (Tintin's Theme). Does this mean one theme is derived from the other? I would argue no. They are quite different themes... and yet somewhat similar, due to coincidence.
Please forgive me if I misunderstand you here, but this sounds as if you imply that Williams would play around, find one theme, then play around some more, find another theme, which coincidentally contains the same central motivic cell, and not notice... or say "gee, that's funny, I came up with the same motif twice!"
We have three thematic ideas in the film that all contain the same motivic cell - it's highly unlikely that this is a coincidence, because as filmmusic pointed out, this progression of three notes is not a simple arpeggiated chord (like c e g) or a snippet of a scale (like e f g), but a characteristic motif that jumps out at the ear the first time you hear it. I think that this is Williams way of unifying the musical vocabulary for the film - by basing several themes on the same core cell, it defines the "sound" of the score, as much as the choice of special instrumental colors (btw, it's also described as one of the techniques of organising your material pre-scoring in the "film scoring bible", On The Track), regardless if the themes are all supposed to be linked to the same character or not.
Think of it this way: in music there's always an ambiguity of meaning, as music itself doesn't "mean" anything in the concrete sense, meaning in music comes by association and interpolation. Musical logic and contextual logic are seperate things. So in conclusion I would say, there's a clear musical connection between the themes, but if there's also a contextual connection in the movie (either all themes being connected to Tintin, our Tintin and who/whatever the other theme stands for being connected), remains to be see from the film itself
/Addendum: The feeling I get from the B theme is that it could either be a villain's theme, as speculated, or a kind of "sneaking around, detective work, meddling in baddies's business" theme for Tintin, while the A theme is obviously his heroic theme
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If JW scores Lincoln, that would be the 4 US President JW will write a theme for.
JFK, Nixon, John Adams, and Lincoln.
5. You forgot Obama
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I finally got my tickets. Three days to go. Can't wait!
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When piano albums are released it's usually a few weeks (or months?) after the film's release, I think.
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But seriously, the "old" pieces sound fresher to me now than for a long time. I should listen to single tracks more often - more attention available, less tiring out after the first few cd tracks.
...but for the love of all that is holy, KILL THE LIMITER! I can't stand it anymore... each crescendo sounds like it's pushing me away from the orchestra and out of the hall...
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"direct"? Are they making a film?
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The action music sounds really inspired:)
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But the volume limiter is annoying as hell. Who on earth thought it a good idea to make the louder parts sound softer than the soft parts?
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I already have this ... stuff ... on CD! Play the damn horse, dammit! It's past 3am! *getting ready to protest on the street*
Occupy WQXR!
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Introducing the Thompsons and Snowy's chase
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Am I imagining things, or is the volume level constantly changing to get everything playing at the maximal possible volume? The effect is actually quite jarring to me... welcome, loudness wars!
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I just discovered that earlier today French/German tv channel "arte" showed 5 episodes of a quasi-documentary travelogue retelling of Tintin stories (I only watched a small part). It consists of location footage from the places around the world that Tintin travels to, visually combined with panels from the comic books (sometimes recreating frames of the comics with real footage), narration of the plot, dialogue excerpts, and background information about the place and time in focus and Hergé's inspirations.
The first episode is watchable here (The cigars of the pharao), one of the stories contained in the upcoming movie (The crab with the golden claws) is here, and there are everal others available on the site (for a limited time).
Unfortunately it's only availbe in German and French, and I didn't see any subtitle options. But perhaps some people here might find it interesting
The Adventures of Tintin MOVIE Discussion thread
in General Discussion
Posted
Isn't one addict in the series enough?
/edit: Two, if you count Snowy. From the books I've read so far he also really has a thing for whisky.
(His and Haddock's struggle for the floating anti-grav whisky bubble was hilarious... was this adapted from the moon story? I remember that also having floating whisky)
That left me scratching my head, too. In retrospect it seemed like the typical trailer line to make things sound super dramatic and mysterious. Do they think they need to exaggerate the stakes to draw more people in? What's wrong with "A sunken treasure that has been lost for centuries"?