Skelly

Any luck?

Yeah; these days he works a lot with Alexandre Desplat -- and Junkie XL, of all people. But Williams's orchestrations have gotten so lean in the past decade that he doesn't really need to send it to a middleman before the copyists get it.

Woah, slow down, guys! Are people still quick to call Horner a hack after all these decades? The movie Karam was probably talking about is "Troy", which Horner had only a few weeks to do from start to finish (Karam got orchestration credit). That's a very good reason to hire ghostwriters. What Karam seems to be miffed about is that this wasn't a crappy movie-of-the-week he was ghosting on, but a real Hollywood picture with an A-list composer. On a project of that caliber he probably would have liked some real cue sheet credit.

(If anyone would like to hear the whole video, he can send me a Pm.)

I didn't take that part literally; I thought Karam was just emphasizing how suddenly he earned Williams's trust on big projects. But you could be right; JW might have been attached to all three from the start. Karam's last movie with Williams was in 2011; he was 82 at the time. He was no doubt ready to retire then! Since then, Williams has just sent his sketches straight to the copyists. I know he sounds sardonic up in the OP, but Karam made it clear in other parts that despite the crazy expectations and demands, working with the best in Hollywood has been a great experience.

Hi! Some of you may know that Eddie Karam was Williams's trusty orchestrator for a long time. Karam gave a talk in 2013 for The Academy of Scoring Arts where he discussed his life in music, his work with various composers (Williams, Mandel, Horner, etc.), and gave some very funny anecdotes. I don't think a thread about this video has been made before, so here are the comments he made regarding Williams. Meeting John Williams: Orchestrating Williams's music: Dividing work between himself and Conrad Pope: "Crystal Skull" story

If it were available, it would be on this page as 17AES-AR04. I checked it in the Wayback Machine and it wasn't available even back in 2017.

I'm sorry I missed this! Is there a recording available?

Here's a copy! Also, "Soundtrack!" magazine did an interview with him when The Phantom Menace came out. (But ignore his response to the Municipal Band/Emperor question -- I think he and Ford were talking past each other.)

Is that something you can see online or was it from one of the seminars Smalley sometimes does?

With the AFM it's a chicken-or-the-egg situation. For 25 years film score fans have been complaining about how prohibitive the AFM's new use fees are, but over that same period of time those royalties have been becoming more and more precious to the musicians. In 1999 Local 47 wages totaled almost $50 million and by 2013 that total had sunk to barely $15 million. For most musicians that's not livable, and so they get their most important paychecks through residuals. If even that isn't enough to make ends meet, you have little choice but to be a "scab" and hope the only people who hear about it are sympathetic. Obviously the musicians don't like this whole development. And they don't like the AFM's leaders who are doing little/nothing to stay competitive with London, where most of the work is moving. LA is the only place asking for these high backend payments. Their justification is that they're some of the best musicians in the world, but that's not a realistic appeal to a producer who only sees music as the thing which goes behind the dialogue/sfx. Why not save some cash and do it abroad? Local 47 has tried in the past to experiment with a London-type "buyout" plan -- having much higher upfront wages in place of new use royalties -- but once the AFM caught wind of that they shut it down. The musicians are very split about it and the leadership of the AFM (who have been winning elections unopposed for a decade now) only wants to keep the status quo. Since all work shut down overnight in March that annual residuals check became so critical that AFM members got theirs a full month early. I'm sure at least a few people who thought a buyout clause was the best way forward are now thinking twice about removing new use entirely, because otherwise a lot of them would have been totally financially stranded.

I did an "isolated score" for Azkaban a while ago (all three actually) to get a better look at how the movie was scored dramatically compared to the first two. Editorially I don't remember anything very interesting dropped out, mostly it just seemed like fat was trimmed from busy fx sequences. According to one anecdote Williams got an outdated cut of the movie to begin with.

The 180-degree turn at 2:02 was evidently added in later, since Wannberg or whoever looped music specifically for the duration of that shot. I guess Williams scored a cut where Voldemort didn't explain the unicorn blood.

I'm not sure about that since this movie doesn't use establishing shots very often just to pass time (there are two, maybe three instances; the sequel has plenty though). Usually it's the way it's cut now where even if the shot starts static, the action rolls in quickly. This was my approximation. But I'm a little doubtful that I got it right since the flutes obviously collide with Hermione.

I wonder if that cue was inspired by a different ending to the mirror scene where Harry asks what Dumbledore sees in the mirror, and he says a new pair of socks. It's a shame that so much music was dialed out in the last scene you posted, because it shows Williams's knack for scoring dialogue. But by that point there'd already been so much music and I think they wanted to avoid underscoring muggle scenes. Plus it makes the Dursleys more comically evil than was maybe intended.