SF1_freeze

Well, hats off... great work and nice to see/saw you back on it in september and october. Your excellent Poltergeist and Alien entries really were my motivation to continue and build on the foundations you have set. I only saw it a few days ago, otherwise i would have contributed earlier. I just need others doing stuff too to get in the mood. So if no one else contributes substantially over the next few weeks i may lose interest again...
Now about what i have done over the last few days. I basically took your structure from february and applied it to many other articles. I uploaded covers and created infoboxes in your new design for many entries.
But we should start to agree on an ideal structure which we can apply to all the entries on the wiki.I still used the older one for now cause we don't have the ideal one yet:



But i also saw your updated structure in the Alien entry which i will post here under the spoiler too.



Now my suggestion for an ideal unified structure would look as follows and we could apply that without too much effort just by adding or renaming the certain subtitles in relevant entries.



I would put the Comission and Temp tracking sections under the bigger section "The composing process" to make them optional subsections only if enough informations are available to make them worthwile.
I would suggest renaming the "Recording" section into for example "Recording the score"
The "Post-production changes" section is a great idea considering how often things get changed.
I also suggest two seperate sections called "Structural Analysis" and "Themes and motifs" instead of only the "Structural Analysis section". My reasoning is to give more emphasis to the "Themes and motifs" section which is better visually seperated and visible that way. This is important to make looking for the audio snippets as easy as possible.
I don't know what's the better name for the last section, References or Sources?
In my opinion the biggest highlight of the wiki now are the small audio snippets of the thematic material. Great job adding the audio player template Uni. I always envisioned a perfect wiki where you can easily check out and listen to every thematic idea of a score in a fast and easy way. We can now offer that with the "Themes and motif section" and this may be one of the biggest reasons scorepedia will be successfull in the long run.
It's just such a convenient tool. Let's say you mention a motif and another person doesn't know it. Then you can just link to scorepedia and tell him/her to play the correct audio snippet of the motif. You even have a tracktitle and timestamps if he/she wants to check it out on cd.
The important thing though is the server load and space. Therefore i suggest to create ogg files with the lowest possible resolution of 94 kbs which only need about 200-300 kbs of space. That would mean about 3 Mb for a big score and should be justifiable even on the long run.
I added audio snippets to my Minority Report entry for every important thematic idea present in the score. I also started fleshing out the E.T. entry and posted a few audio snippets.
It would be great if we could agree on an ideal structure now so that we could have templates for every entry to make adding stuff easier without having to think about which sections are still missing.

Well, hats off... great work and nice to see/saw you back on it in september and october. Your excellent Poltergeist and Alien entries really were my motivation to continue and build on the foundations you have set. I only saw it a few days ago, otherwise i would have contributed earlier. I just need others doing stuff too to get in the mood. So if no one else contributes substantially over the next few weeks i may lose interest again...
Now about what i have done over the last few days. I basically took your structure from february and applied it to many other articles. I uploaded covers and created infoboxes in your new design for many entries.
But we should start to agree on an ideal structure which we can apply to all the entries on the wiki.I still used the older one for now cause we don't have the ideal one yet:



But i also saw your updated structure in the Alien entry which i will post here under the spoiler too.



Now my suggestion for an ideal unified structure would look as follows and we could apply that without too much effort just by adding or renaming the certain subtitles in relevant entries.



I would put the Comission and Temp tracking sections under the bigger section "The composing process" to make them optional subsections only if enough informations are available to make them worthwile.
I would suggest renaming the "Recording" section into for example "Recording the score"
The "Post-production changes" section is a great idea considering how often things get changed.
I also suggest two seperate sections called "Structural Analysis" and "Themes and motifs" instead of only the "Structural Analysis section". My reasoning is to give more emphasis to the "Themes and motifs" section which is better visually seperated and visible that way. This is important to make looking for the audio snippets as easy as possible.
I don't know what's the better name for the last section, References or Sources?
In my opinion the biggest highlight of the wiki now are the small audio snippets of the thematic material. Great job adding the audio player template Uni. I always envisioned a perfect wiki where you can easily check out and listen to every thematic idea of a score in a fast and easy way. We can now offer that with the "Themes and motif section" and this may be one of the biggest reasons scorepedia will be successfull in the long run.
It's just such a convenient tool. Let's say you mention a motif and another person doesn't know it. Then you can just link to scorepedia and tell him/her to play the correct audio snippet of the motif. You even have a tracktitle and timestamps if he/she wants to check it out on cd.
The important thing though is the server load and space. Therefore i suggest to create ogg files with the lowest possible resolution of 94 kbs which only need about 200-300 kbs of space. That would mean about 3 Mb for a big score and should be justifiable even on the long run.
I added audio snippets to my Minority Report entry for every important thematic idea present in the score. I also started fleshing out the E.T. entry and posted a few audio snippets.
It would be great if we could agree on an ideal structure now so that we could have templates for every entry to make adding stuff easier without having to think about which sections are still missing.

Well, i updated some entries with our established structure and added pictures (Lost World, Chamber of Secrets, Super 8, Minority Report, ET). Now it is easier to tell what is missing in each entry and you can add stuff without having to think about the subtitle structure.

Did you not read Uni's response which Ludwig quoted for you? Wikipedia wouldn't allow detailled information or more than just information cause they want it as short as possible and in form of a lexikon. Scorepedia is more than a lexikon and may contain more esoteric sections, long articles for unimportant scores, sound files, made up names for themes, critzism, etc...
The wikipedia editors often are a pain in the ass. For example when i tried to add a paragraph about the horrible reception the new german Game of Thrones translation got they wouldn't accept it. They just deleted my stuff and dismissed all my arguments. Wikipedias rules seem to be overly restrictive and conservative.

I always prefer the ones with the most variety... i consider TOD better than Raiders, PoA better than SS and TESB better than Starwars. Sparsely used old material in addition to very strong new material seems to let me favor sequel scores.

Starwars always beats Star Trek.

Starwars always beats Star Trek.

I really enjoyed the concert and finally was able to meet fellow filmmusic enthusiasts and also some jwfan members like publicist, Karol, Marian, Markus and Thor. Again big thanks to Thor for organizing this gettogether and to Marian for arranging the location.
I agree with Marian that there definetly was a problem with the orchestral dynamics that lead to many main lines and themes being buried within the orchestration. I am glad they did the medleys because otherwise we would have had even less variety in the short time a concert takes. Of course i would have loved to hear longer developed pieces of Horners older scores like Willows, Aliens, Braveheart or Star Trek II but the compromise just had to be taken in such a mainstream event.

As have the Starwars threads filled with pessimists and prequel bashers. I know how you must feel

Zimmer seems to be one of the few composers who only get worse the older they get. MoS and the Last Batman score or the atrocious PoC part4 are perfect examples of this.
Levine's comments border on worshipping Zimmer as almost every one of his points is easily proven invalid in an objective discussion. I can only recommend to read Justin Boggans post on the FSM board http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=5&threadID=97421&archive=0. I agree with everything he said.

There are close to no interviews/informations about the PoA score apart from some short JW quotes. It would really be great if you still desire to post this interview here on jwfan. Seems you changed your mind or simply have forgotten about it but since you are still active on the board i thought i could remind you
I'm sure many posters here would be greatly interested.

Then count me in too. Bought my ticket months ago.

I'm probably one of the few pro JW fans on this board bothering to post anything in response to the anti Williams stance that some of you try to show in many threads. If Blumenkohl or Koray think that this is strange just look at the title of this forum.. It certainly isn't Giacchinofan.net or Zimmerfan.net and never will be!
JJ Abrams is a true Starwars fan and for a true fan the first choice of composer always is John Williams. He is no puppet but i am sure the film deal will have included JW as composer choice and Abrams agreed like anyone with a sane mind would.

To be honest over the time my appreciation for AOTC grew even more and more. I like that it is such a different and in some ways experimental score for the Starwars franchise. I still think it is worse than the other five scores but only because these scores have such a ridiculous high level of greatness. TPM certainly is the best of the prequel scores!
But i love listening to AOTC! Discovering and rediscovering all these rythmic and motivic layers in the modern JW action sound creates tons of relisten value. I absolutely adore the "Chase through Coruscant" cues. It's the crowning achievement of modern JW action scoring. So if you like his modern voice it doesnt get better than that. Even the other action tracks like "The Jango Fett Fight" or the great "Padme Falls" are fun to listen to just because they are so different to the usual melody based action music. It happens so much on the rythmic side and the whole orchestra has a great kinetic energy.
And then there are the completely unexpected creative parts with the insect like music in "On the Conveyor Belt", the unique melody in "Approaching Naboo Palace", the eerie harp chords for the Coruscant Night Club scene or the Asian flavoured Tatooine music heard in "The Jango Fett Fight".
On this board all the creative stuff of AOTC that has to do less with melody and more with rythm or exotic scoring is criminally underrated!
Many of you said that John Williams took a more relaxed approach and didnt give his best. In my opinion that cannot be true. Most of his more rythmic based modern kind of action music is probably harder to compose than the melody based tracks. He and George Lucas did their best to be different and more creative especially on the action side.

John Williams is a class of his own and the last surviving master of composition. To even use the word bad in the same sentence is an insult.
To criticize him with being too complex is of course bullshit. Some members here have no clue or don't have the "ears" to enjoy complexity and change of style in his music. They always prefer the John Williams of the 80s. They dismiss his modern action style (maybe even gone now with War Horse's new action style) and are angry about the rythmic instead of thematic/motific approach.
In their blind/deaf anger they fail to recognize recent masterpieces (Prisoner of Azkaban, War Horse, The Phantom Menace, Harry Potter 1) and fail to understand the brilliance of his modern action tracks (Best one is "Chase through Coruscant" from AOTC).
I recommend to ignore these members in regards to John Williams because they probably joined the board for other perfectly understandable reasons (It is one of the best forums on filmmusic on the web). I am glad that they are here but i am disspointed when they dismiss or fail to understand John Williams excellent work of the more recent years...

I'm glad that you included all these important articles on the main page. That was also my original hope while assembling and posting the collection.
What a fine site this was and what an even finer site this is after the big overhauls in the filmography sections, layout, articles and interviews. All the stuff already mentioned provides the best insight on John Williams personal timeline and contains background infos for most of his scores. It's like an extensive biography for everyone to read now
Thanks for this great site!
Edit: I have a small suggestion. Many recent articles from 2002 till today are actually links to the original website they were posted on. Wouldn't it be better if we copy and paste these articles into actual postings stored on the JWFAN site to prevent non funtioning links when they go offline someday?

Continuation for articles starting with the year 1993
1993
The Williams Whirlwind - Richard Dyer - 1993



Debut with the BSO - Richard Dyer - 1993



The legacy of JW - Richard Dyer - 1993



Final Bow - Richard Dyer - 1993



1994
Movie Music History - Richard Dyer - 1994



1996
London Independent Interview - Edward Seckerson - 1996



1997
Star Wars 20th Anniversary: Interview with John Williams - Craig L. Byrd - 1997



Amistad Press release - 1997



1998
Spielberg and Williams on Saving Private Ryan - Richard Dyer -1998



Boston Pops Concert 98 - Richard Dyer - 1998



JW many facets - Richard Dyer - 1998



Students learn from Master - Richard Dyer - 1998



1999
The Making of TPM - Laurent Bozerau - 1999



Making 'Star Wars' sing again - Richard Dyer (Boston Globe article) - 1999



2000
Angela's Ashes - Richard Dyer - 2000



JW listens to a song of a tree - Richard Dyer - 2000



2001
Williams casts spell for `Potter' score - Richard Dyer - 2001



2002
The Movies's Music Man - Timothy Mangan - 2002



The force is with him - Stephen Moss (The Guardian) - 2002



Schubertizing the Movies - James R. Oestreich - 2002



work in progress
Thanks Incanus, 1998 article added
Thanks Maurizio, 1999 article added

This is a collection of all the rare and not so rare Richard Dyer / Boston Globe articles i could aquire over the years. In it JW often talks about the score he worked/works on at the time of the article. This would be great to be added to the corresponding filmography sections as a bonus.
This is a work in progress topic. If you have any other JW articles please post them here and i will add them to the main post!
1980
JW is new Pops Maestro - Richard Dyer 1980


JW passes Test with flying Colors - Richard Dyer - 1980



QA with John Williams - Richard Dyer - 1980



Where is JW coming from - Richard Dyer - 1980



1981
Borok and Williams make Merry - Richard Dyer - 1981



JW quiet side - Boston Globe - 1981



1982
Orchestrating a new pops season - Richard Dyer - 1982



1983
Williams Answers Spielberg's Call For Music - George McKinnon - 1983



1986
Getting ready for a big date - Richard Dyer - 1986



1987
Pride and Pops - Richard Dyer - 1987



1988
Pops well tempered for upcoming season - Richard Dyer - 1988



1989
JW begins 10th year with Pops - Richard Dyer - 1989



Orchestrating Indiana Jones - Boston Globe 1989



JW pursuit of Excellence - Boston Globe - 1989



You will be hearing from him - Richard Dyer - 1989



How JW celebrates Christmas - Boston Globe - 1989



A new recording contract for Pops - Richard Dyer - 1989



1990
JW talks pops past and future - Richard Dyer - 1990



The Music Man - Richard Dyer - 1990



1991
JW to retire in 93 - Richard Dyer - 1991



1992
Hook and JFK - Richard Dyer - 1992



Articles from 1993 till Today are included in my next posting below