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Skelly

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Posts posted by Skelly

  1. For some reason Williams didn't do any press interviews for the movie..  Maybe he talked on radio but I don't have anything in print.

     

    The main dramatic thrust of the movie is internal (which is why the big theme of the movie is about Harry's parents) not external, and so a lot of the "extra" scenes -- the bus, the aunt blowing up, the monster book -- come as is, with special sounds disconnected from each other.  Harry's perception of them isn't as important.  And even Hogwarts has an almost diegetic medieval sound (one scene even has a boy playing the music in the background).  In the first movie it was all about discovering this new world, and they even took the Great Hall music and pasted it over Diagon Alley so that they could keep emphasizing this sense of magical novelty.  Azkaban was different because the music is deliberately meant to be disparate except in scenes of Harry's parentage.

  2. On 08/01/2023 at 5:02 PM, Docteur Qui said:

    Wasn't there a story going around that during the recording sessions it turned out that Williams had not been given the latest edit of the film and subsequently had to rush to revise a whole bunch of cues?


    This story came from the film's re-recording mixer, Richard Beggs.
    http://web.archive.org/web/20160805013817/http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=30499

    Quote

     

    Tonight I attended a master class by Academy Award winning sound designer Richard Beggs. Here are some interesting points I took away:

    • On one of the movies he worked on, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the sound design deliberately did not 'hit' anything 'run of the mill magical' (to suggest that that was normal in the world of Harry Potter).
    • In that same movie (Harry Potter), John Williams was given an old version of the movie (as in: not the final cut). They found out at the recording stage in London where the score was to be recorded live using the London Symphony Orchestra, much to the distress of John Williams (and probably everyone). They had to rewrite and reorchestra parts of the score (the musicians in the meanwhile doing crossword puzzles).
    • John Williams typically delivers 6 tracks of music, to be mixed down with the dialogue and effects. On the same Harry Potter movie, the director didn't like certain harp glissandos. Since they didn't have individual tracks, it was quite a burdon to recut the music to eliminate. In the wake of that experience, John Williams apparently has considered delivering individual stem tracks instead of just six mastered tracks.


    On the last point he mentions something about harp glissandos.  I don't know what he's talking about.  A long time ago I took a good look at the written score and I didn't notice any big harp things which were cut out of the movie.  Perhaps the poster misheard harpsichord as harp, since I remember there were some harpsichord parts in the written score that are either missing or mixed very low in the final score.


    Beggs also did "Sleepers" and JW did him a big favor by respecting the sound effects.  In 2020 Beggs said: "I did a Barry Levinson picture, Sleepers, where I put a tonal sound in a temp mix--a dramatic sound--that had no basis in reality. It worked well. I got a call from John Williams's music editor. John wanted the original sound so he could listen to it and score against it. But not everyone will do that."

  3. Man, all you guys do is complain.  Often they're about things you already have (like the Shawm track and Double Trouble transition) but for some reason want an even more arcane version of.  In fact, I'm beginning to think that you guys don't listen to music or watch movies either.  I think you just complain about them on JWFan all day.  That's why some of you have thousands and thousands of posts.

  4. In 1990 a John Williams Society was founded in France by Yann Merluzeau, and he published a newsletter called "Cantina Band" (journal de la société John Williams).  Over the years Merluzeau interviewed big names like Kamen, Delerue, and Williams himself, and published them in his mag.

    I did a search and apparently this newsletter has never been mentioned on JW Fan before, which surprised me. Does anyone have any information about this?

  5. 5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

    Pope is still available, isn't he?

     

    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.

  6. 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.

  7. 2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

    I didn't know he signed for three pictures at once. I guess that made it easier to "get rid of him" for the fourth installment.

     

    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.

     

    1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

    Then he got fired and wasn't able to work ever again?

     

    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.

  8. 58 minutes ago, karelm said:

    Elfman isn't a great example because he requires an extensive team of producers and talented orchestrators.  Scott Smalley showed the before and after of what he got on Mission Impossible 1 and what he produced. 

     

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

  9. 4 hours ago, Holko said:

    Now this is strange: a lot of it is the expected microedits (even if I have no clue what all could've gone in many of the empty places) but I had to make a significant cut between the face reveal and the fire, both being obvious sync points - I guess he monologued less originally?

     

    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.

  10.  

    6 hours ago, Holko said:

    Well... my best guess here is there was originally another couple Hogwarts establishing shots which were deemed unnecessary, and the cue went out with them.

     

    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.

     

  11. 2 hours ago, Holko said:

    (yes I know not all of it syncs up greatly but it's a vastly different approach anyway, who knows how the scene was originally, and the end is funny)

     

    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.

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