Mr. Who

A cover I made:
Apollo 13 by James Horner by hahah123 Covers, on Flickr

Rush and Frost Nixon are good.

Because John Williams fans are insecure about their favorite composer’s alpha status.

If I have a wild guess, 2 CD's Complete score, 1 CD Original score, 1 CD Melanesian Choirs. I hope I'm so wrong about that. If it includes a film mix of 'Journey to the Line' (with the Taiko's in full front), all is good. I wonder if the Cosmic Beam cues will be included though.
 
Can't wait to finally have this precious score in full lossless quality. I will definitely revisit my own mix and adjust accordingly.

Technically, one could look at art design and direction as the most expendable part of these sets - the discs would still contain Matessino's remastered and reassembled takes on Maestro Williams' wondrous scores if they came in these:

That is why going the extra mile counts so much, and Jim Titus is a master of this. Let's explore this set and discover how he unifies the entire thing and makes us feel that we got a hell of a lot more bang for our significant amount of bucks!
 
The first thing you see is of course the outer box: a sturdy, pleasing matte black base with gold and silver inlaid text, minimalistically telling us only the most important information about the set in order to not ruin the aesthetics: a stylish front face and spine tell us the name, while the back elaborates on the contents sparsely. All three are framed with pleasingly simple, hand-drawn looking designs.

When we take a look at the disc spines, we can see the labeling: first it tells us we're looking at the John Williams Soundtrack Collection, then lists the three titles again. A spine is very slim and the Potter font is not the most legible, so a large help is provided to us: the cases are all colour-coded, helping us see at an immediate glance which set is which. 
The colour choices all tell us something about the score/story within: Philosopher's Stone, the largest set (3 discs in a clamshell case) gets two colours: warm, embracing, but bold red and yellow, showing it's a pleasant, welcoming story of introduction and exploration. Chamber of Secrets' pastel green represents the sickly and sickening corruption spreading throughout Hogwarts literally from the walls, and Azkaban's greyish pale blue could be linked to the sadness and coldness Harry feels as he is isolated from his friends and battles shadows of his past in the film.
Hang on a moment now - Red, yellow, green, blue - where have we seen that before? Of course, the Hogwarts crest, these are the house colours. Bold red represents Gryffindor, home of the brave and reckless, warm yellow is Hufflepuff where the friendly and loyal folk go - these values are indeed major parts of film 1. Green is for Slytherin, where the cunning or malicious reside, and it fits Chamber of Secrets since we not only get to know the house better, but its founder is central to the plot. Blue is Ravenclaw, home of the intelligent and workaholic ones, and that's where I can't find great parallels - wrapping your head around the Time-Turner immediately would require a great deal of intellect?

These colours are not only on the spines, colouring the titles and presenting a striking splotch at the bottom - they are closely linked to the sets' art design. Both the Hogwarts design on the discs themselves and the back cover's content and rights information brandish the set colours, as well as the booklets all over. Even in the outer booklet, the tracklists' backgrounds are colour-coded, and even the lyrics of the songs are painted red and blue to immediately visually present which set they can be found on. This approach of using the chosen signature colours in as many places as possible helps marry it to the set in your mind quickly, so next time you look in the box to get the one you want, you can instinctively pick it out without having to stop, rotate your head 90 degrees, read the small lettering, or try and see which of these jewel cases is the double one - it will quickly be second nature even if one carelessly places the sets in the wrong order.


That is not all, though - every set has one more signature design element to set them apart, most notably seen on the borders of the covers, which one might not even notice are different at first: PS has a series of coloured rombuses, Chamber a series of lines, almost illustrating a snake weaving around the cover, and Azkaban a thick line of rotated squares. This element carries over not only to the inner tray, select pages of the booklets and above the coloured splotches of the spines - once noticed, one can go back to the outer box and see these are present there: PS' rombuses beautify the front face, a mix of Chamber's lines and Azkaban's dot-like squares lines the back face, and finally all three are present together twice, above and below the spine, framing the set title when on the shelf. These borders help further differentiate the sets when one pays attention to it, but also tie them together in that they all have it, and they are quite similar, and definitely in the same style. These design elements alone are heavily reminiscent of the post-Columbus in-universe commercial art style, but another element builds on it heavily, too: the booklets vary fonts and typography, with big and striking initials - compare a booklet to a page of the Daily Prophet below:
 
 
 

 
Additional details I noticed: in the outer booklet, by Williams' Children's Suite liner notes, the pictures represent the miniatures being spoken about on the page opposite - with the exception of the finale Harry's Wondrous World, which is an overarching unifying piece, and Voldemort, for whom I presume no sufficient promotional artwork was provided, and it fits the spirit of lurking in the shadows waiting to strike well.
The inner tray artworks are as follows: Harry having seized one of the thousands of Hogwarts letters bombarding the Dursley home, feeling joyous; Harry in the Quidditch Match, excited and happy if a little worried for his own safety; Harry being in utter shock as he finds Nick's "body"; and finally, Harry, Ron and Hermione hiding behind Snape from the werewolf. This succession of images conveys the continuous shift to a darker tone within the series.

 
These all seem like simple or minor things (or even things I try to force into what I see), but add up to an exquisite, pleasing package, which with its own delicate care and attention to detail represents the same in Matessino's process of presenting the music to us, and Williams' way of constructing these scores to begin with. One must only look at Disney's recently released Star Wars Original Soundtrack "demastered" CDs to see what a striking difference this attention and an actual unifying vision makes - in those sets, the spines use a generic font, the inner artwork is not too carefully selected or carefully arranged, and the signature colours of the sets have no particular rhyme or reason to them, they don't all represent their respective films or their moods too well, and they are only present on the front cover, a tiny strip on the disc, and as the image borders in the leaflet which presents no information or interest, and thus doesn't drive you to ever take it out and open it.
In conclusion I can say that Jim Titus at least visually transformed this collection of laser-engraved thin, wide plastic cylinders and unfortunately cheap, brittle plastic jewel cases into a first-rate premium product you can always take out and wonder at. And as a finale, let me paraphrase a certain secondary antagonist: as long as Mike Matessino is working on John Williams scores, "Let us hope that Mr. Titus will always be here to save the day."

Thats not the way it works ms Jurassic thang it just continues the flaws of voting when waterheads are allowed to vote. It is a 5 star score no matter what some tarded poll says.

I just discovered this excellent analysis of music throughout the Potter series, figured this was a good thread to post. The author seems very well researched musically, is this a poster on here?
 
 
 
 
Yeah, quite a few. At least half a dozen further alternates that aren't on the LLL set for whatever reason (whether because someone prevented them from being included, or they weren't recorded in the first place, is not clear).
 
Off the top of my head:
Alternate version of 3m10 Remembering Mother Alternate version of The Great Hall Ceiling, 3mE (which I believe is different to the Big Doors alternate, 3m11A) Alternate opening for 4m3+4 Woods Walk Alternate opening for 6m4 Sirius and Harry Original version of 6m5 First Frozen Lake String Overlay for 7m2 My Dad Conjured the Patronus (Williams' first revision for the werewolf chase, before they went with the Grievous-esque percussion) Original version of 7m7 Whomping Willow Revisited An alternate of 1m4 Aunt Marge Points the Finger (I believe the final film version is 1m4x)

Great piano transcription of what I think is the single best cue of the year - The Crimes of Grindlewald from The Crimes of Grindlewald. The section from 1:21 is my favorite one. Really highlight a great soaring melody.

Speaking of the Dufay collective, what instruments are used in that marvellous hogsmeade pub cue? Is it recorder and harp, or recorder and hurdy-gurdy (what a word)?

Nice interview :
 
https://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.underscores.fr%2Frencontres%2Finterviews%2F2018%2F12%2Fentetien-avec-alexandre-desplat%2F
 
 

Did anyone notice the statement of Buckbeak’s Flight in “The Rescue of Sirius”? It’s subtle but you can just about hear it from 0.38 - 1.22.

BEST SCORES OF 2018:
1. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald by James Newton Howard
2. Westworld Season 2 by Ramin Djawadi
3. Red Sparrow by James Newton Howard
4. Solo: A Star Wars Story by John Powell
5. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom by Michael Giacchino
6. Black Panther by Ludwig Göransson
7. Avengers: Infinity War by Alan Silvestri
8. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms by James Newton Howard
 
BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR:
1. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
2. Mission Impossible: Fallout
3. Avengers: Infinity War
4. Black Panther
5. Isle of Dogs
 
FILM SCORE LABEL OF THE YEAR:
La-La Land Records
 
BEST CATALOG TITLES OF 2018:
1. Harry Potter 1-3
2. Jack the Bear
3. Schindler's List
4. The World Is Not Enough
 

I really like the Hobbit scores. 2 is my favourite.

I really like the Hobbit scores. 2 is my favourite.

I really like the Hobbit scores. 2 is my favourite.

Great list but add Hobbit 3:)

As of recently, 2014 was a killer year for film scoring. 
 
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Whiplash
The Theory of Everything 

But if I want to waste my time listening to 'uninteresting music', that's my problem. No one needs to take that decision for me.

They should have released a good OST.
 
Take Titanic for example. The OSTs were terrible so if some unofficial material came out or if people made edits then that is fine in my opinion. Now we got a great LLL edition, which I bought, so maybe not a relevant example but still.

I stopped listening to bootlegs because they always seem to have problems, but I couldn't care less about them being illegal. They only exist because people are determined never to give us the proper album presentation from day one, meaning C&C. I'll buy any proper release of scores I like straightaway.

But composers don’t make much money at all from CD sales. They get money from royalties and studio contracts.
So you think it's a problem if someone buys the blu ray of a movie, rips the audio and makes some edits using that audio?
 
Using this logic, you shouldn't listen to the Art of the Score HP3 Podcast episode either because they play "illegal stuff" which is always wrong...

The reason that bootlegs exist is that the OSTs often aren't good so it's great that companies such as LLL release these scores as they were meant to be heard officially, thus making bootlegs for said scores redundant.

Nice straw man's argument. Come on mate, you're far better than that. Leave the whole 'putting words in other people's mouths' routine to the usual suspect (the one most people have on ignore).
 
 
I agree with your sentiment but disagree with the context. The artist in question was paid to write this music for a film we paid to see. A film we've paid to own. A score we've paid to hear performed live by an orchestra. A soundtrack we've paid to listen to. And now an expanded soundtrack we've paid for as well.
 
The music in question was previously unreleased and unavailable for purchase, for no insignificant length of time either (nearly two decades for the first score, two thirds of my life!)
 
Studios have ignored our community for years simply because we're a niche market. You can't turn around and complain when people acquire unreleased materials if you're refusing to sell them (especially when the same people are more than happy to pay for them, as evidenced by this very release!)

Didn't read that post properly.
Still I think they can mostly just blame themselves for not releasing it in the first place. Or they just have to find the right market, like say I dunno, 5000 limited copies? Preferably including things like a new superior master, unleaked bits and a wonderful packaging. Seems familiar...

The reason that bootlegs exist is that the OSTs often aren't good so it's great that companies such as LLL release these scores as they were meant to be heard officially, thus making bootlegs for said scores redundant.