The Rise of Skywalker L.A. Master Chorale returns for Rise of Skywalker?

[Romão 2,274]

Didn't Superman use a choir?

[King Mark 3,625]

8 minutes ago, karelm said:

Question: what was JW's first use of choir?  Was it Empire?  If so, he might have realized how good it works for sci-fi/fantasy and opted for more frequent use in subsequent films with Empire being a very small/minor role for them.

 Family Plot?

[crumbs 14,301]

@karelm Some really interesting insight there, appreciate it. Might have contributed to JW moving away from prequel-style chorus in the sequel trilogy, costing over $30K per 3 hours, capped at 3 minutes per session. That seems absurdly expensive, especially when Disney are already forking out the cash for dozens of regular orchestral sessions across the year.

 

Just think how much it would have cost to record all the choral writing in ROTS in LA; there's what, 20-30 minutes worth in that score? @stravinsky How many sessions did you have on that score? Do you roughly recall how many minutes you averaged per session? 

[karelm 2,903]

On 12/10/2019 at 5:04 PM, crumbs said:

@karelm Some really interesting insight there, appreciate it. Goes a long way to explaining why the prequel-style excess of chorus never returned in the sequel trilogy, at over $30K for 60 singers per 3 hours, capped at 3 minutes per session. That seems absurdly expensive, especially when Disney are already forking the cash for dozens of regular orchestral sessions across the whole year. 

 

Just think how much it would cost to record all the choral writing in ROTS in LA; there's what, 20-30 minutes worth in that score? @stravinsky How many sessions did you have on that score? Do you recall how many minutes you averaged per session? 

Was any of it without the orchestra?  If so that can record faster.  Think of it this way, in a regular action cue, you might have a 5 minute cue with 30 seconds of choir.  The chorus will be there the whole time and make their own mistakes and require alot of fine tuning so very slow process for the vocal moments.  If you have a 30 second unaccompanied choral cue, you only focus on that music and can fine tune that without worrying about getting the orchestral performance fine tuned so that can go faster.  Also, in a big budget movie, this isn't that expensive.  A large 48 piece chorus (on the upper end of a film score) for an entire six hour day is only $50,000.  The entire music budget is millions so that is a very small line item to the overall fee but might amount to around 12 minutes of choral music at maximum and even that is hard to imagine in any score.  So if you imagine a huge budget action sci-fi score, you might record for 10 days.  The chorus at most might be involved for 1 day (max of 6 hours).  You would use a relatively small orchestra for 1/3 of the film, a medium orchestra for 1/3, and a large orchestra for 1/3. So roughly 3 days spent with a 60 piece orchestra, 3 days with an 80 piece orchestra, and 3 days with a 100 piece orchestra with one day usually with the 100 piece orchestra plus 48 piece chorus.  This would result in around 120 minutes of final score with around 10 minutes or so of chorus.  This isn't so much the situation with JJ Abrams Star Wars era since they seem to have infinite budget and infinite recording time where they'll have multiple sessions spread out over months but it will be more like 12 hours in a week then a month break type of thing.  They'll end with the same results but would have to double the recorded music due to various edits of the film.  So you might be looking at a final budget of 100k for chorus and 500k for orchestra spread out over a few months of sessions.  If your movie is two or three hundred million dollars as Star Wars will be, this is still a very, very small line item in the overall budget.

 

I worked with a professional JW level chorus and was surprised how slow it went.  It wasn't a reflection of the musicians but rather the infinite possibilities of the voice.  Having a solo vocalist was even slower because they were so exposed and this was literally the same singer JW used on Munich.  The director who was present wanted to micromanage the vocals and that ended up with three hours spent on a three minute cue that was ultimately rejected.    All the musicians thought she was fantastic but the director had a different idea of what he wanted and nothing she could do would fit what he wanted.  He was dictating where each vocalized inflection went so you can imagine the infinite possibilities at play with vocalists until we ran through the budget.  Sadly, I have her version of the song but no one will ever hear how wonderful it was since it was rejected.  This was my singer:

 

[crumbs 14,301]

Wow, loving all the industry anecdotes this thread has provided! Rarely is the curtain pulled back for us non-industry folk, so it's amazing to get some insight into the process. Thanks @karelm and @stravinsky

 

When you lay out the costs like that, it does put things in perspective (and you're right, as far as film budgets go, paying that much for a day with a choir isn't really expensive in the grand scheme of things). It's interesting that, on TLJ at least, the choir was recorded at the same time as the orchestra, even on particularly challenging cues like Battle of Crait. From what you've described above, it seems surprising they wouldn't record the choir in isolation (especially if they have a lot of vocalisations to record in a short period of time). I guess JW has such a mastery of the orchestra that he can accomplish such things with his eyes closed nowadays. 

 

In any event, very glad I started a new thread just for an obscure and small detail of news about the TROS score.

[karelm 2,903]

23 hours ago, crumbs said:

Wow, loving all the industry anecdotes this thread has provided! Rarely is the curtain pulled back for us non-industry folk, so it's amazing to get some insight into the process. Thanks @karelm and @stravinsky

 

When you lay out the costs like that, it does put things in perspective (and you're right, as far as film budgets go, paying that much for a day with a choir isn't really expensive in the grand scheme of things). It's interesting that, on TLJ at least, the choir was recorded at the same time as the orchestra, even on particularly challenging cues like Battle of Crait. From what you've described above, it seems surprising they wouldn't record the choir in isolation (especially if they have a lot of vocalisations to record in a short period of time). I guess JW has such a mastery of the orchestra that he can accomplish such things with his eyes closed nowadays. 

 

In any event, very glad I started a new thread just for an obscure and small detail of news about the TROS score.

 

No, not surprising that they DIDN'T record the chorus in isolation.  Here is why.  JW is the undisputed pinnacle of the industry.  When you hire him, you are asking for perfection, not efficiency, not economy.  This is a connoisseur who is saying I only want Viennese boys choir for that one scene and a director will make that happen.  It is true that an LA chorus can simulate the Vienna boys choir, but that is a bit of a hack.  When you bring in the top level connoisseur, the precision matters.  Conrad Pope mentioned this about JW.  In the movie AI, there is a brief moment where Gigolo Joe plays a vintage 1930's era song while seducing someone.  JW composed a piece using authentic 1930's instrumentation.  The rules of that instrumentation violate modern instrumentation and JW corrected Conrad Pope in his orchestration saying that wasn't authentic and true to the style.  The point is that Conrad understood that JW had an encyclopedic knowledge of styles and how to make them authentic that an expert like Pope didn't have.  This was a very minor scene and a throw away moment but demonstrated the extent to the stylistic knowledge of random styles JW acquired that applies to ethic music too.

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5 minutes ago, karelm said:

In the movie AI, there is a brief moment where Gigolo Joe plays a vintage 1920's era song while seducing someone.  JW composed a piece using authentic 1920's instrumentation. 

 

Oh, that's Williams? I vaguely recall the moment but can't recall the music itself, other than assuming it was an existing piece. Pity there isn't a clean version on the LLL. 

[karelm 2,903]

23 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

Oh, that's Williams? I vaguely recall the moment but can't recall the music itself, other than assuming it was an existing piece. Pity there isn't a clean version on the LLL. 

Yes, that is original JW source music arranged, imitating and recorded in the 1930's style.  Conrad mentioned that JW instructed him that violas would be a duet but orchestrators understand a trio is better to be in tune.  The 1920's style is a duo and are slightly out of tune which JW informed him of.  The lack of tonality was part of the style of that era which Conrad felt educated by JW in his stylistic understanding especially when it didn't fit contemporary orchestration skills.  Conrad felt JW was an encyclopedia of orchestration style rather than a text of how music should be done.

[Jay 37,287]

Yes it's this song:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Only_Have_Eyes_for_You

 

And you can hear it right here:

 

 

 

That's the original song's vocals, with a new orchestral backing recorded by Williams. 

[Fabulin 3,510]

8 minutes ago, karelm said:

Yes, that is original JW source music arranged, intimating and recorded in the 1920's style.

I just realized that Williams listened to the 1920s music & recordings in a similar way I listened to the 1990s music as a child. He is truly ancient.

 

Edit:"I Only Have Eyes For You" is from 1934.

[Bayesian 1,359]

16 hours ago, crumbs said:

Wow, loving all the industry anecdotes this thread has provided! Rarely is the curtain pulled back for us non-industry folk, so it's amazing to get some insight into the process. Thanks @karelm and @stravinsky

 

I could listen to them talk forever. This is the best thread I've seen in quite some time.

[Edmilson 7,392]

Thread of the year, hands down!

 

Also: this might explain why there's less and less scores using choir these days, right? Specially for big Hollywood movies.

 

For example, for the top 20 movies of 2019 at the worldwide BO (and excluding some awful chinese movies), only The Lion King, The Hidden World, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Godzilla II, as well as presumably TROS, used voices in some capacity. Last year there was only Black Panther, Aquaman, Fallen Kingdom and Crimes of Grindelwald.

 

I guess Infinity War and Endgame had some choir for Gamora's death scene and for 2014 Thanos arriving on 2023's Avengers' base and destroying it with missiles (I Was Made for This on the OST), respectively.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

On 12/9/2019 at 5:30 PM, SilverTrumpet said:

I've heard of people not liking the Attack of the Clones score before, but I think this if the first time I've heard someone say Revenge of the Sith was subpar. 

 

I still think the second half of that film's score was Williams hitting some next level writing I've never heard from him before.

It is very poor. It best bits are from Star Wars. Battle of the Heroes is such a poor title. Dreadful as C3PO would say.

[stravinsky 203]

We never recorded in isolation for any of the Prequel music. I remember we had about 9 or 10 sessions for ROTS but only 2 for AOTC. That was it. I remember going to the Cast & Crew preview for AOTC at the Empire Leicester Square and Rick McCallum was on stage looking really happy with himself. I was appalled. The movie was utter dreck. The only thing important to me now is the music. 

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It's a miracle Williams was able to compose a score as good as he did for such an atrocious movie. I get the feeling he ignored George's execution of the films and scored his own idea of the story being told. 

[Taikomochi 1,136]

What in the hell?  How did this thread get so awesome?  I feel like I am reading a great book as I scroll through the comments of @stravinsky and @karelm.  Thank you both for your insight!  Incredible!

[stravinsky 203]

Cheers guys. It's funny because I joined this great forum 16 years ago. But I've posted hardly anything. 

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2 minutes ago, stravinsky said:

Cheers guys. It's funny because I joined this great forum 16 years ago. But I've posted hardly anything. 

 

Well you picked a great time to come back, because the forum will probably never again be as active as it is now. 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

55 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Well you picked a great time to come back, because the forum will probably never again be as active as it is now. 

 

Ahem.  Except for the sad day we all know is coming eventually......

[stravinsky 203]

Ach I was only in the chorus lads but thanks. Then again how was I to know as an astonished 8 year old bunking off school one Friday afternoon in late January 1978 (and being taken to see Star Wars with my Uncle Jack... he wasn't really my Uncle just one of my Ma's drinking pals...but every adult was either your Uncle or your Auntie in those days) how could I have known I'd end up being a miniscule minion of the Star Wars religion?

      I'd first heard of Star Wars when my Ma and I were briefly living in Blackpool in England (went went down there from Glasgow because she was forever trying to run away...from herself) and she used to work in a hotel at the seafront. I used to sit in the kitchens in the bowels of the place waiting for her to finish whilst I was being fussed over by the head waiter and his wife who was the cook.

       There was a small portable telly that I would watch whilst munching cake and on came an old game show one evening called "The Krypton Factor". There were only three channels to choose from in those days but conversely the telly was a damn sight better than it is now. Anyway The Krypton Factor (!) had pretentions of being a high brow intellectual show and one of the tasks the contestants had to achieve was to study a short clip of a newly released film then answer detailed questions about it. 

          Well on came Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi in the Cantina and of course I had no idea what this was. What transfixed me though was the presence of this big hairy thing sitting alongside them.

Anyway that was that. I had been whisked to another universe for all of two minutes. But what an impression it had on me. This would've been late October/early November 1977 just about a week after my 8th birthday.

       By the end of November we were back up in Glasgow living in cheap bedsits again and by December that year there were centre page spreads about this new thing called Star Wars that would soon arrive in Scotland. It was then I remembered the big hairy thing again because his image was plastered all over the newspapers. 

      Seeing the photo of "Lord Darth" as my Ma referred to him was enough to send me stratospheric. So the day came that Friday afternoon when I was let off school to go and see this phenomenon with Uncle Jack. I got sweeties and he bought a few cans and we sat there and witnessed the whole thing. It changed my life. Me and all the millions.

        We left the Odeon Cinema on Renfield Street and on the way home bumped into my father who had been separated from my Ma for the past two years. I begged him to take me to see it again. "But you've already seen it!" he exclaimed. "But I want you to see it Da" came my reply. Ah the nuance of pester power...

        By the time Jedi was released I was 13 so therefore old enough to go on my own. I wept bitterly at the end of the film which may have been a reflection of the truly intolerable conditions I was by then enduring at home. By this time we were squatting in a ramshackle house and my Ma's drinking had reached fever pitch. All alone in the house with her I escaped...into music via the tapes of Star Wars and Empire I had pestered my Ma to buy me for Christmas 1980.

    The minute Jedi was released I knew I HAD TO GET THE MUSIC. So within a week I begged, borrowed and stole and went on as many errands as I could to gather the money for the tape. Within a few days the prize was mine. 

        I had a small mono tape recorder then and I would play those three tapes to death. I still have them. I even bought a Baton (!) from Biggars music shop on Glasgow's famous SauchieHall Street. Biggars was one block away from "Casa Cassettes" (now long gone) which was a great music store where I bought my very first tapes. I would listen to the three Star Wars tapes over and over whilst conducting an imaginary orchestra with my baton. 

       The great Carrie Fisher had this to say about the phenomena of long ago in a galaxy far far away. And I agree with her... 

 

“Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie (Star Wars) misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.” Via The Princess Diarist

 

And I think this is what the whole world has been trying to do. Trying to relive and recapture the first time we saw Star Wars as kids but failing to realise that with each new movie we got older and each film got further and further away from that feeling of childlike wonder. 

      What doesn't change though is the quality of the one element that saved me through the most desperate times of my life as a kid (and adult). The music. And here I am at 50 years old listening to the latest and very last incarnation from the pen of a master.  I wish time machines were real. I would hop into that escape pod and go back to that freezing Friday in 1978 and relive it just one more time. A golden little day I'll never forget. 

 

May the Force be with you all friends and music lovers! 

[mrbellamy 6,272]

19 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Ahem.  Except for the sad day we all know is coming eventually......

 

When David Koepp’s Indiana Jones 5 screenplay is produced?

[karelm 2,903]

 

@stravinsky, what the hell man? You're stealing my style.  Was five when SW '77 came out and had my mind blown by the experience.  My older brothers and sister got to see it before me because my mom thought I would be too scared of it.  Apparently I was a softy.  They couldn't stop talking about it.  When they saw it for the second time, my mom let go with them and I'll never forget that first B flat major stab.  It blew me away!!! I eventually became a bass trombonist and composer and I think this was my earliest and most formative musical memory.  Empire was an even more powerful experience.  By that time I was already a tremendous JW fan and maybe 8 years old.  It was all anyone was talking about on the playground.  It was like Star Wars + Elvis + Beatles + Michael Jackson + Star Trek + Lord of the Rings all combined.  I wasn't at all a musician but was clearly very musically informed/obsessed already.  Note that in those days, with no internet, once a film left the theater you had NO WAY to see it again in any way.  It was only in our memories and imaginations.  From time to time a picture would be released in baseball cards or a magazine of the upcoming movies and our imaginations again ran wild.  So any time there was a release or opportunity to re-watch these films was a major thrill. 

 

Flash forward, I'm studying music and completely obsessed with JW.  I eventually even got to work on a Star Wars project or two and meet my idol.  I've even had my music performed in concerts with JW's Star Wars which is always a special thrill!  I not only met him, but watch him at work for a whole week.  I even performed next to Jim Self who played tuba on Close Encounters, E.T. Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, Jurassic Park, SW TLJ and millions of other JW scores.  We played Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition with the Pacific Symphony. Sadly, I've lost two of my older brothers since SW '77 came out and I never can see a SW film without remembering the precious memories I had as a kid with those I've since lost.  I am happy that JW family knows how important this was to me and my family and how JW was my childhood and ultimately my livelihood.

 

Me with JW at USC.

 

Performing with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

 

My music behind JW's autograph to Star Wars sits in my studio. 

[Fabulin 3,510]

.

[crumbs 14,301]

I am John Williams! 

[AzOutcast 122]

Wow. Thanks for all the insight, guys! Truly a wonderful read.

 

While I wouldn't call myself "active" on these forums, I've always returned to them - come to read everyone's thoughts on the latest scores (especially of the maestro). While there's few people I personally know who respect Williams (let alone film music), it's always comforting to come here and read up on everyone's thoughts and stories.