Why is a large part of the Battle of Yavin not scored?

[Schilkeman 1,330]

2 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

From memory, Return of the Jedi is wall-to-wall.

From memory, the scene with Obi-Wan, and the speeder bike chase don’t have music, but yeah, the minute count certainly ticks up in that movie.

[Chen G. 4,620]

Right, I think it was the first to have music all throughout its climax, though.

 

None of this is a critique, on my part, on the wall-to-wall scoring in these films. Nor of the original score, which may be my favourite of the bunch.

[Tallguy 4,417]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

Nor of the original score, which may be my favourite of the bunch.

 

You show much wisdom. Or at least taste.

[enderdrag64 879]

1 hour ago, Schilkeman said:

From memory, the scene with Obi-Wan, and the speeder bike chase don’t have music, but yeah, the minute count certainly ticks up in that movie.

The former of which had music written for it

[Silly Guy 2]

On 25/05/2023 at 1:20 AM, Schilkeman said:

As much as I like the battles throughout the series, the Yavin battle sequence is the only one with genuine tension. Tension in film is made the same way it is in music, with contrast and rhythm. in this case, the contrast was to have no music to give the ears a breather in the middle of a very long action sequence. The build-up from the time of Red Leader's death to when the Death Star blows up is what makes that scene. Its impact would be less, I imagine, if it had been scored wall-to-wall.

 

Even the prequals had music-less segments, but he wallpaper scoring of todays action films would never allow for this. 

L + Ratio + Cope + They would allow for this, "to give ears a breather", you think that people's ears would bleed with this much music? Why does Anakin vs Obi Wan have music for the entire thing? and plus, I don't think it fits the rest of A New Hope

 

Maybe I would feel what you're feeling if I was normal

[Manakin Skywalker 5,296]

19 minutes ago, Silly Guy said:

Why does Anakin vs Obi Wan have music for the entire thing?

 

Because ROTS was over-scored. Plus they were going for a totally different tone.

[Holko 10,231]

The most tense part of the duel in Empire is also unscored and was never scored, when Vader jumps out and bashes away at Luke, finally done playing with him.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Star Wars is scoreds much more sparsely than the other films in the series: the wall-to-wall score tradition really started with The Empire Strikes Back, although Kershner tempered with it somewhat. From memory, Return of the Jedi is wall-to-wall.

 

The important thing is that Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

[Edmilson 8,919]

1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

The important thing is that Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

Not if you're Drax 

[Cerebral Cortex 3,358]

The entire battle is scored, it's just mixed REALLY quietly.

[Schilkeman 1,330]

On 26/5/2023 at 3:52 PM, Silly Guy said:

L + Ratio + Cope + They would allow for this

I don’t know what this means

 

On 26/5/2023 at 3:52 PM, Silly Guy said:

you think that people's ears would bleed with this much music?

Yes, that’s what I said

 

On 26/5/2023 at 3:52 PM, Silly Guy said:

Why does Anakin vs Obi Wan have music for the entire thing?

There’s too much music in that film. As much as I love it, I think it’s got too much everything. The weakest of the prequels for me.

[Tallguy 4,417]

An interesting distinction (well, interesting to me) is that the lengthy silences (by today's standards) were all planned. There isn't any music that is dialed out of Star Wars is there? As opposed to Empire where there are still silences but almost all of them were decided after the fact.

[Holko 10,231]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

There isn't any music that is dialed out of Star Wars is there?

Dianoga and the first third of Trash Compactor

[Datameister 2,279]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

An interesting distinction (well, interesting to me) is that the lengthy silences (by today's standards) were all planned. There isn't any music that is dialed out of Star Wars is there? As opposed to Empire where there are still silences but almost all of them were decided after the fact.

In addition to Holko's examples, the Jawa music was supposed to play throughout R2's canyon scene. But that removal (like that of the dianoga cue) seems to have been about drastically changing the tone of the scene, not merely removing unnecessary music. Used in full, the cue would have taken away most of the tension and made things kinda cutesy.

 

Then again, we don't know what conversations happened during the spotting, writing, and scoring. With a cue and scene like this, I could imagine JW saying, "I'll give you enough music to cover the whole scene, but if you change your mind and want to play it creepy until he jumps out, I'll make it easy to cut the cue down and start it there."

 

Conversely, with Empire, JW wrote some (unused) inserts that would have helped with removing music from the opening sequence, so we know he was involved in at least a few of these conversations.

[Tallguy 4,417]

It's funny as a lover of film music how many scenes I love (particularly is sci-fi type settings) that are unscored. For whatever reason the scene with R2 in the canyon is something I seem to remember very vividly in the theater in '77. It sounds fine on a home system, but even lousy shopping mall mono in 1977 had something my living room doesn't: Space.

 

(The Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is another fine unscored scene.)

[Datameister 2,279]

It's so true, @Tallguy. Film scores are my favorite genre of music, no doubt. And yet I relish an artful and effective use of no music at all.

[Doo_liss 6,423]

There is also the Sandspeeder cue that was cut short due to the deleted scene.

[Brando 2,161]

The first Cantina cue has a substantial amount of editing done to it, the second one has a little bit of editing done too, but not a whole lot I don't think.

[Gabriel Bezerra 399]

3 hours ago, Tallguy said:

(The Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is another fine unscored scene.)

(Kirk's dramatic entrance having no score, I think gives the moment a bit more punch)

[Marian Schedenig 9,042]

That's source music though. I don't know how much we know about its history, but I could imagine that it was written earlier, without a finalised scene.

 

Silence is certainly one of the most powerful devices in a film composer's toolbox - or more precisely, spotting is. Yavin is a great example, as are any number of Goldsmith scores. That said, I'd prefer to have all the music in ESB and ROTJ. Maybe if the edits were better, I would mind less, but the patchworky way the scores are presented in the films makes me sad. Also, Williams less symphonic style post-SW is perhaps also better at conveying a less busy atmosphere. For example, I don't feel that the silence during the AT-ATs' first appearance increases the tension any more than Williams's pianos would have.

 

Another score that maybe fared even worse during editing is Goldsmith's Poltergeist. For once, he scored many scenes wall to wall, but perhaps as much as half of it is dialled out in the film. To me, the film works best when I concentrate on the music and fill in the missing gaps from memory.

5 minutes ago, Gabriel Bezerra said:

3 hours ago, Tallguy said:

(The Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is another fine unscored scene.)

(Kirk's dramatic entrance having no score, I think gives the moment a bit more punch)

 

It's also a skilful hint that maybe things in the scene aren't as real as they appear. And the "deaths" of various beloved crew members have an uneasy touch of emotional emptiness for it.

[ThePenitentMan1 1,017]

On 30/05/2023 at 5:54 AM, Schilkeman said:

I don’t know what this means

 

I'm pretty sure he used "ratio" incorrectly, since that one came about on Twitter, referring to the ratio of replies to likes being a reliable indicator of how disliked the post is.

 

The post of yours he was replying to had eight likes, which on this forum is actually a pretty clear sign of success...  or at least popularity...  Either way, it's about as far from a "ratio" situation as you can get.

[Schilkeman 1,330]

On 26/05/2023 at 3:52 PM, Silly Guy said:

Maybe I would feel what you're feeling if I was normal

 

[ThePenitentMan1 1,017]

I gotta say, having grown up with the scores for Star Wars '77, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Bruce Broughton's Lost In Space, my patience for a main score program tends to fall around the 1:30-1:40 mark.  (Throw in a decent Alternates section and that'll extend that time quite a bit)

 

Anything longer tends to have more music that, even if it's well-written, feels like it's over-spotted at best, or outright filler at worst.

[Chen G. 4,620]

23 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

I don't know how much we know about its history, but I could imagine that it was written earlier, without a finalised scene.

 

Well, its what Lucas originally contacted Williams to do...

[oierem 180]

On 30/05/2023 at 4:34 PM, Datameister said:

In addition to Holko's examples, the Jawa music was supposed to play throughout R2's canyon scene. But that removal (like that of the dianoga cue) seems to have been about drastically changing the tone of the scene, not merely removing unnecessary music. Used in full, the cue would have taken away most of the tension and made things kinda cutesy.

 

Then again, we don't know what conversations happened during the spotting, writing, and scoring. With a cue and scene like this, I could imagine JW saying, "I'll give you enough music to cover the whole scene, but if you change your mind and want to play it creepy until he jumps out, I'll make it easy to cut the cue down and start it there."

The beginning of the R2/jawas scene was one of the sequences that was completed during the Death Valley pick-ups, in early 1977. Therefore, Williams most probably didn't have a complete scene to score. I assume he wrote the beginning of the cue without actually knowing how long the final scene would be, or if the music would be needed or not.

 

The only cues that were edited down correspond to the scenes that  were completed in pick-ups: Death Valley shots (including the sandspeeder, the jawas and the sand people) and the cantina. 

 

[Chen G. 4,620]

12 minutes ago, oierem said:

The only cues that were edited down correspond to the scenes that  were completed in pick-ups: Death Valley shots (including the sandspeeder, the jawas and the sand people) and the cantina. 

 

I think if you added up the shots, easily 40% of the desert footage on that movie ended-up being shot not in Tunisia but in Death Valley and spliced into the Tunisian footage.

[Garrett 158]

On 4/4/2019 at 12:24 PM, Score said:

The score for the Battle of Yavin, from Star Wars, is made of three cues, titled 1) "Launch from the Fourth Moon", 2) "X-Wings Draw Fire", and 3) "Use the Force" in the 1997 RCA release. The second cue immediately follows the first one. The third cue starts approximately 3 minutes and 50 seconds after the end of the second cue, leaving a rather extended part of the battle not scored.

 

The "music hole" goes from around 5:50 to 9:40 in this video:

 

 

I have always found this strange. Strange that the music suddenly stops in the middle of the climatic final battle, and for such a long time (I am not aware of other analogous cases). Strange that the duration of the break (3:50) corresponds to the average duration of a typical cue, although there is no notice that something was ever recorded for that moment. Strange that the second cue ends in a way that, at least to my mind, seems to call for an overlap with another cue (this might be my imagination, of course). And above all, I don't think it makes any sense to have a break in the music there.

 

Does anyone know what happened there? Was it ever discussed?

 

 

 

On 4/4/2019 at 12:24 PM, Score said:

 

On 4/4/2019 at 12:24 PM, Score said:

 

6 hours ago, Garrett said:

 

Let’s get the guys from the Potter Scoring Project to do the unscored 4 minutes. Finish the job that Williams left incomplete.

 

While they’re at it, they could also give Williams’ original score to the scene a much needed update.

 

For example, when the Millennium Falcon shows up to save the day, we should hear “The Adventures of Han.” The fact that John did not include it in his original score represents a disappointing lack of foresight on his part.

 

Also, when the force ghost of Ben speaks to Luke, why do we hear the force theme? We should hear the Obi-Wan theme instead. Another failure by Williams.

 

And would it have been too much trouble for John to include a reference to “Scherzo for X-Wings”?

 

The entire scene needs to be redone from scratch.

[Tom 5,137]

I know that you are being sarcastic, but I was hoping that Williams would work Han's theme in IX.  

[Chen G. 4,620]

On 02/06/2023 at 3:48 AM, Tom said:

I was hoping that Williams would work Han's theme in IX.  

 

I had that thought, too.

 

Naturally, you'd assume the ninth episode of a series would be the culmination of ALL its musical material. Ultimately, The Rise of Skywalker is not that, although it does contain the apotheoseis of the musical material of Kylo and Rey.

[Brónach 1,306]

On 02/06/2023 at 12:48 AM, Tom said:

I know that you are being sarcastic, but I was hoping that Williams would work Han's theme in IX.  

 

imagine quoting Powell's Chewie theme (gets kicked out of the thread)