Michael Giacchino's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) - 2022 Expanded Edition now available

[Incanus 5,715]

3 minutes ago, Daniel Clamp said:

William Ross actually wrote the whole score.

John Williams envy is an ugly thing. Brings out the petty and cruel in people in the business and outside it.

[mrbellamy 6,287]

10 minutes ago, Daniel Clamp said:

William Ross actually wrote the whole score.

 

William Ross is Angela Morley.

[crocodile 8,017]

2 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

 

William Ross is Angela Morley.

Sex change? Not that it is any of my business.

 

Karol

[Incanus 5,715]

1 minute ago, mrbellamy said:

 

William Ross is Angela Morley.

And Angela Morley is Alexander Courage's pseudonym.

Of course Courage is just another codename for Ramin Djawadi.

[mrbellamy 6,287]

William Ross has actually written every John Williams score except COS.

[Incanus 5,715]

1 minute ago, mrbellamy said:

William Ross has actually written every John Williams score except COS.

And the theme for Legend of Zelda!

[crumbs 14,317]

Wait, so Conrad Pope wrote Back to the Future?

[mrbellamy 6,287]

No, Conrad Pope wrote LOTR.

[crumbs 14,317]

9 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

No, Conrad Pope wrote LOTR.

 

Ah, but James Newton Howard replaced him on The Hobbit?

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Bilbo 3,709]

Just now, BloodBoal said:

My head... It hurts...

 

Large bottle of cider over ice will cure that. Perfect hair of the dog 👌 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Now you are talking!

[Bilbo 3,709]

That first large bottle on a hangover. Magic stuff. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

If only you were a woman....

[Bilbo 3,709]

This got weird 

[Jay 37,369]

1 hour ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

And William Ross did the orchestrations? That's interesting to be sure!

I seem to remember he was even credited with more than just orchestration on The Force Awakens on the Blu-Ray.

Did he not get an "additional music by" credit? Considering Williams had massive amounts of time to write the score, I do really wonder what is behind that...

 

No no no!  You are completely wrong! William Ross absolutely received no such credit on TFA, because that would be wrong, because Williams absolutely wrote TFA entirely himself! 

 

Ross orchestrated and conducted. 

[leeallen01 2,136]

Music Composed, Produced, Orchestrated, Conducted, Packaged, Shipped, Listened to, Criticised and Shunned

 

By Howard Shore.

[Jay 37,369]

I just saw this post in the FSM thread:

 

Just saw the film-which is the best SW movie since TESB. The score sounds fantastic, uses some thematic ideas from EP 4&5 but not so much and it's typical Giacchino in military/Star Trek mode with Star Wars brass. The only problem is that it lacks Williams' melodic and emotional power, especially when it goes Into héroïc territory-Jyn's theme is Rey's theme in much less lyrical and her "Call to arms" speech is nearly killed by its somewhat triumphant music, which does not fit in such a dark and martial score/film, not to mention Felicity Jones's awkward acting. 

But in the end : very good and powerful score/orchestrations.

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

 

[Pieter Boelen 740]

5 hours ago, Jay said:

 

No no no!  You are completely wrong! William Ross absolutely received no such credit on TFA, because that would be wrong, because Williams absolutely wrote TFA entirely himself! 

 

Ross orchestrated and conducted. 

That's what I thought as well!

I should double check what it actually says on the Blu-Ray; I definitely remember being surprised and confused by what I read there, but maybe I'm misremembering.

[Jay 37,369]

And the same FSM poster followed up

 

As far as I can remember (I paid more attention to the film than to the music, even if it's LOUD), Luke's/SW's theme launches the end credits, the Force theme is quoted in one scene, but you definitely can hear the Rebel fanfare and quotes/variations with the Imperial March AND the Imperial music from EP IV. 

The score is almost wall-to-wall, so I guess the album will miss about 30-40mn of music.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

1 hour ago, Jay said:

I just saw this post in the FSM thread:

 

 

 

 

So crucial elements sucked, but 10/10 best since empire?

 

wow...

[Jay 37,369]

What?  Almost all of his commentary was regarding the SCORE, but his "best since TESB" was about the FILM.  The only really negative thing he had to say about the film was in regards to the lead's acting.

[mstrox 6,651]

Yeah, and it's not like Hamill or Christensen or Ridley were putting on a master's class or anything.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

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This score... It's like there's a party in my ears, and everyone's invited!

 

[Quintus 5,399]

38 minutes ago, Blumenkohl said:

 

So crucial elements sucked, but 10/10 best since empire?

 

wow...

 

Silly, every new Star Wars movie is the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back. 

[mstrox 6,651]

I can think of four that weren't

[mrbellamy 6,287]

1 hour ago, Jay said:

 

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As far as I can remember (I paid more attention to the film than to the music, even if it's LOUD), Luke's/SW's theme launches the end credits, the Force theme is quoted in one scene, but you definitely can hear the Rebel fanfare and quotes/variations with the Imperial March AND the Imperial music from EP IV. 

 

 

Neat that Gia brought that back.

 

Wonder if the end credits are the same as the saga episodes.

[Jay 37,369]

I believe I read the start of the end credits is the same

[Will 2,215]

Super excited now with all the reactions! (for the score of course, but I'm much more excited for the film now aside from that as well)

 

I figured there were going to be a ton of groans here when the Slashfilm guy said there were a lot of the "emotional strings we all love." 

 

Regarding the "Why do film studios bother having expensive original scores produced?" discussion, I suppose I was really oversimplifying things. I was looking at it like a company's only motivation is to make profit and they will attempt to do the least work possible to make the most money possible. 

 

But really, that's simply not how any business works. While profit is a motivation, there are often artistic and personal concerns involved, a desire for perfection and to be "the best." Strict monetary numbers don't necessarily govern every decision. It's quite possibly that Disney could spend way less making Rogue One and still make the same amount of money, but they're not going to try and "skimp by" with the least amount of work and money possible. They're going to go all out (at least to some extent). On the monetary side perhaps the reasoning there is that life long fans will be made as they see the consistently large effort put into the production, as opposed to corners being cut. 

 

Is it sometimes "inefficient"? Possibly. But that's just how things work, it seems. 

 

And I don't mind it if original orchestral film scores are one of the results!

[KK 3,307]

To be honest, it would probably be more inefficient to try and work in pre-exisitng music than have a composer fine-tailor original music to the cues of the picture anyway. The additional expense brings the picture greater returns. 

[Will 2,215]

8 minutes ago, KK said:

To be honest, it would probably be more inefficient to try and work in pre-exisitng music than have a composer fine-tailor original music to the cues of the picture anyway. 

 

That's an interesting point and something I've certainly thought about. They'd have to hire expert music editors and possibly pay licensing fees (if the studio was using music that wasn't just from old scores to their own films). And it might take longer, who knows. I don't know how the costs and time spent compare but certainly the tracking option is not "easy." 

 

8 minutes ago, KK said:

The additional expense brings the picture greater returns. 

 

Well, does it, though?

 

That's something I've been thinking about. Hard to really quantify how much you'd lose as a studio if you just did tracking for the score (if anything), so it's difficult to really find any "evidence," but I think this is an interesting question to explore. 

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

It's not easy tracking pre-existing music into your film, particularly classical music. Too many harmonic and mood changes; films demand other type of music in most cases.

 

Kubrick, Malick, Taratino, Scorsese, Disney's Fantasia are some exceptions -but in those cases the music tends to be thought before or as the shooting is getting done. There's probably a reason why tracking is more difficult to do than having an original score, apart from copyright issues.

 

A recent example that comes to mind is Rango, where the tracked Elfman ended up being in the actual film, and most people didn't even notice -myself included.

 

I'd say the answer is somewhere along the lines that filmmaking is an extremly collaborative effort; you can't do it all by yourself, even if it's your vision for a film you need people to complete the product. Even more so in these big Hollywood films, where it seems to sustain a ton of people as contemporary films need more and more people to work on them.

 

And also, this is an idea that just popped, a matter of control. Directors tend to be control freaks. With pre-existing music you hardly have any control over it, but with a hired composer, you can tell him/her exactly what you want and the guy does his job. It's an interesting question though, there's more to explore in it that in seems at first.

[TheUlyssesian 2,478]

29 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

It's not easy tracking pre-existing music into your film, particularly classical music. Too many harmonic and mood changes; films demand other type of music in most cases.

 

Kubrick, Malick, Taratino, Scorsese, Disney's Fantasia are some exceptions -but in those cases the music tends to be thought before or as the shooting is getting done. There's probably a reason why tracking is more difficult to do than having an original score, apart from copyright issues.

 

A recent example that comes to mind is Rango, where the tracked Elfman ended up being in the actual film, and most people didn't even notice -myself included.

 

I'd say the answer is somewhere along the lines that filmmaking is an extremly collaborative effort; you can't do it all by yourself, even if it's your vision for a film you need people to complete the product. Even more so in these big Hollywood films, where it seems to sustain a ton of people as contemporary films need more and more people to work on them.

 

And also, this is an idea that just popped, a matter of control. Directors tend to be control freaks. With pre-existing music you hardly have any control over it, but with a hired composer, you can tell him/her exactly what you want and the guy does his job. It's an interesting question though, there's more to explore in it that in seems at first.

 

If I may, I will say that it is far more challenging to work with an actual composer than use pre-existing music. That's because it is the difference between contending with yet another human ego vs none.

 

If you hire a composer worth his salt, he will for sure approach YOUR work as a director with some ideas. He will see the film a certain way, see certain deficiencies that he can fix, pacing issues and lack of drama and momentum and what not. You as the director will have to contend with that. Then you will have to discuss spotting with him. Usually (again usually) the composer might push for more music than you want. He will then go away and compose a score and bring it to you. And you will have opinions that will annoy him. He being an artist with integrity will not want his work altered again and again. Now it will be your chance to annoy the composer when you start tracking his score at different places than he intended. He will not like that. Then you will bury his score under sound effects and he will not like that either.

 

So as you see, this is clearly much more difficult. With tracking pre-existing, no such hassle, no battle of ego. Just dial in what you want and no one in the world with disagree. And you have and eat you cake.

[Will 2,215]

Well yes, @TheUlyssesian, that's what I was thinking as I read @Muad'Dib's post. 

 

It seems to me that if the director is a control freak they might actually want to use pre-existing music. 

 

Kubrick was a control freak, I've read, and I'd imagine part of the reason he liked using pre-existing music was that he didn't want to turn over control to a composer. (Although I could be wrong; I haven't actually read that.)

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

It's a highly interesting topic. More often than not directors tend to fall in love with the temp-track and the composer has to emulate that.

 

Quote

If you hire a composer worth his salt, he will for sure approach YOUR work as a director with some ideas. He will see the film a certain way, see certain deficiencies that he can fix, pacing issues and lack of drama and momentum and what not. You as the director will have to contend with that. Then you will have to discuss spotting with him. Usually (again usually) the composer might push for more music than you want. He will then go away and compose a score and bring it to you. And you will have opinions that will annoy him. He being an artist with integrity will not want his work altered again and again. Now it will be your chance to annoy the composer when you start tracking his score at different places than he intended. He will not like that. Then you will bury his score under sound effects and he will not like that either.

 

But are composers able to fight directors in contemporary filmmaking? Herrmann was a force of nature and didn't take any bullshit, but he's hardly the rule. Powell seems to have a similar no-nonsense attitude but not as open as Benny. Seems to be that the case is you do what I ask you or I'll get someone who will.

 

That's why I don't like directors who do their own music. The whole point of collaborating is bringing someone to the table that has a different idea to bring to the table. Dialectic is the key in my opinion.

[TheUlyssesian 2,478]

4 minutes ago, Will said:

Well yes, @TheUlyssesian, that's what I was thinking as I read @Muad'Dib's post. 

 

It seems to me that if the director is a control freak they might actually want to use pre-existing music. 

 

Kubrick was a control freak, I've read, and I'd imagine part of the reason he liked using pre-existing music was that he didn't want to turn over control to a composer. (Although I could be wrong; I haven't actually read that.)

 

So goes a famous story... that Kubrick hired the great legendary Alex North to score 2001: A Space Odyssey. He had previously hired North for Spartacus and that result in one the all time greatest scores ever. So North scored the entire movie. And knew it was a revolutionary movie.

 

So on premiere night he's pretty pumped. Goes into the theater and waits for his music to wash over him with Kubrick's mind boggling images. And he hears not a note of his music but Richard Staruss and so on and on. And he was absolutely devastated. Imagine something like this happening to John Williams. North is of that stature and importance to film music.

 

North was absolutely outraged and beside himself and decided never to work with Kubrick again.

 

 

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

Yeah but North approached it like a 50's space movie, which wasn't what the movie needed at all. Granted Kubrick probably didn't know how to communicate his ideas to North -that's usually the problem in these cases- so North followed his own instincts. Mind you, I absolutely love what North did for 2001, it's absolutely brilliant music on its own. But it doesn't fit the movie at all.

[Will 2,215]

Tickets bought for Saturday afternoon! 

 

I'll be seeing it in 3D and Atmos!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

1 hour ago, Muad'Dib said:

Yeah but North approached it like a 50's space movie, which wasn't what the movie needed at all. Granted Kubrick probably didn't know how to communicate his ideas to North -that's usually the problem in these cases- so North followed his own instincts. Mind you, I absolutely love what North did for 2001, it's absolutely brilliant music on its own. But it doesn't fit the movie at all.

 

However Kubrick didn't have the professional decency to inform North that his score wasn't working and he would opt for his temp track instead.

 

Visionary artist or not, I don't care. You don't treat people like that.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Trump would!

[artguy360 1,843]

I'm seeing this on Thursday and my ears will be tuned to listen to the music. I always pay attention to scores while watching a film anyways but I think this film's score will draw even more attention from me. Despite my caution with Gia's music in general, I'm really looking forward to this. The end credits in particular will be great/telling to listen to. I thought Dr. Strange was a hugely uninspired effort that sounded like a psychedelic remix of the BBC Sherlock theme. But the clips and sneak peak music featurette have me pretty excited. I think Gia is going to do a good job because his whole career has been building to this moment. 

[Bilbo 3,709]

14:50 on Thursday for me.

 

From what I've read and been told I will love the film but not the music. 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

Seeing it tomorrow morning.

 

Everything's going to be fine... Everything's going to be fine...

[Bilbo 3,709]

I think it's only the music we have to worry about it.

[Giftheck 916]

You're lucky enough to get into an early showing, Bloodboal? I have a friend going to one tomorrow in London and he tried to get me a ticket but Disney said he couldn't have the additional ticket. I'm seeing it Friday though.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

29 minutes ago, Gistech said:

You're lucky enough to get into an early showing, Bloodboal?

 

No, I'm just lucky enough to live in a place where the movie is released on the 14th.

 

The term "luck" will only be appropriate if the film is good, though!

[Incanus 5,715]

Looking hesistantly forward to seeing this film on Thursday. No special expectations for the score though. IIRC I have not listened to any new Gia score in the past two years more than once or thrice on album.

[publicist 4,643]

First reactions from german Soundtrackboard users that saw it, google-translated for your entertainment:

 

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So first - the soundtrack works great in the movie. Giacchino tries it in the Williams style, but his style always shines through again and again. Basically, I noticed above all two new themes, the mentioned of Jyn and a new imperial theme, which also seems slightly march-like. Jyn's theme is not as great as I hoped in the movie, it's catchy, fits in the universe, but is definitely no new Rey theme or Leia theme. Partially, it has a few approaches from Across the Stars. The imperial theme is more beautiful, especially it combines with a few other well-known things really well, but let yourself be surprised. Particularly successful are the percussion tracks, which are really great in the film and are nice to listen to. There might have been more. The battles have been written much with brass in the Williams manner, worked super in the film , I'm curious as to whether it comes with only music just as well. The Giacchino string-ostinati are of course there (in one place they have me also massively annoyed), but are now not so often in the fore as feared. Partially the score sounds hastily put together, in other places very elaborately worked out. 
Especially the sound, no idea what happened differently, but the score of Giacchino sounds much better than that of Episode VII - it looks denser, fuller, better. Just like the old episodes.

 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

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the score of Giacchino sounds much better than that of Episode VII - it looks denser, fuller, better.

 

Here we go again...