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Trying to find a specific JW interview


dead_lizard

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Long time lurker, think i might have posted like 5 years ago or something.

Anyway I'm just trying to find an interview someone posted here last year sometime. The part I'm interested in is where the interviewer asks him about timings and Williams starts talking about how many sprockets there are per second on a (movieola?) projector.

Just want to show this to people who think he's just bashing out pop tunes for orchestra. The fact that the depth of the man's knowledge is so vast that it even extends to the mechanical minutia is staggering.

hope someone can help,

Ben.

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Long time lurker, think i might have posted like 5 years ago or something.

Anyway I'm just trying to find an interview someone posted here last year sometime. The part I'm interested in is where the interviewer asks him about timings and Williams starts talking about how many sprockets there are per second on a (movieola?) projector.

Just want to show this to people who think he's just bashing out pop tunes for orchestra. The fact that the depth of the man's knowledge is so vast that it even extends to the mechanical minutia is staggering.

hope someone can help,

Ben.

Most likely is the BBC special on John Williams, from 1980, with bits from the recording sessions of Empire Strikes Back. I think you can find it at youtube.

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The series you're referring to, Miguel, can be found here:

I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, dead_lizard, but it's got more footage of Williams spotting and composing than you'll find elsewhere - and on such a monumentally complex and effective score as ESB, no less. :D

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I think I may know what you're talking about...I remember an interview on John Williams on Radio (footwarmer) where he discussed trying to match music to picture (maybe in reference to conducting E.T. with the film in 2002?),in but I'm not sure if that's where he mentioned the amount of frames in one reel.

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alas, it's not the BBC doco, mighty as that is.

it was audio only. pretty sure it was streaming. from memory it was for a magazine or newspaper article which had a link at the bottom to the full audio.

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Interesting...I hope someone can help you out. I'd like to hear that, too. And it'd definitely be helpful for demonstrating that Williams isn't exactly a bashing-out-pop-tunes-for-orchestra sort of guy, although in my experience, people who think of him that way usually can't be reasoned with. They've got their biases, just like we've got ours, and I'd usually rather just let them keep their misconceptions.

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I don't have access to these files right now but I should in the next few days so I'll let you know...but this CD consisted of (I'm assuming) purely audio interviews, so I'm thinking my thought could be the one you're looking for.

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I just listened to the interview I was thinking about and, unfortunately, it does not contain this passage. I definitely remember hearing this, though. I'd suggest listening to his commentary on E.T., as he may talk about conducting E.T. live and the challenges of timing that out.

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nope, sorry. I'm pretty familiar with the ET features. this was an online interview. fairly recent. one on one. wish i could remember something else from the interview that might help jog someone's memory.

i tried searching the forums for "interview" but i only got 50 or so hits, which can't be right. it would be cool if there were a sticky thread just with actual interviews from williams. i know there's a youtube thread, but it would be nice to see and read all of williams' stuff in one place, no performances, just text and dialog.

"16 sprockets per second...."

Ben.

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it would be cool if there were a sticky thread just with actual interviews from williams. i know there's a youtube thread, but it would be nice to see and read all of williams' stuff in one place, no performances, just text and dialog.

Well, the JWFan main page has a quite resourceful and well-compiled section on interviews. Check it out.

Maurizio--who wonders how many people actually still consult the great JWFan main page.

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I use the main page far often than I log on to this board. Great for news, recent albums I need to get. The discographies/filmographies are nice too, even though they have some errors and omissions.

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ok cool. i'm thinking it's either the knoxville symphony one or the bbc one. i'll have a listen to them both when i've got a better internet connection.

i'm hoping it's not from some interview which has since had its link removed.

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Found it! It was the Knoxville one.

"JW: ...you need an orchestra that's attentive to the conductor not every four bars or eight bars, but every bar.

so that after four measures of fast music we're not too soon to the fifth measure or too late to it. if you're too late to it you never can catch up, so....

JR: well i guess the fact the the film runs at a rate of 24 frames per second, and if you were out by two frames, a twelfth of a second, it would feel out of sync.

JW: yeah, the eye can see it. and amazingly so. not to be too technical, but each one of those frames has four sprocket holes. and if, for example, a chorus is out sync with the orchestra by as little as two sprocket holes, you can hear it. so it has to be so precise in order to sound natural and right, and when we get it right people won't even notice it."

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