Don Davis interview about Reloaded and Williams

[Luke Skywalker 1,796]

The article is old but is just saw it.

Interesting things he says about Williams Legacy

http://www.soundtrack.net/features/article/?id=107

[Morn 8]

So after all of this, do you think you'll be all "Matrixed" out?

You know, its funny, on the first Matrix they wanted me to be as creative as I could be, doing something absolutely new, different, big and huge and all this kind of stuff.

So John Adams emulation is as creative as he can be? :?

[Adam 1]

Sounds like Davis is another dreaded JW "fanboy".

- Adam

[Hlao-roo 389]

Clearly, though, Davis's admiration of Williams goes only so far -- his score for Jurassic Park III implicitly frowns on some of instrumentation Williams used in The Lost World, and in another interview with SoundtrackNet, he expresses his peeve explicitly:

Joe [Johnston] wanted a pounding sound for the Spinosaurus, so I had a pair of timpani - two timpani players that each had eight drums.  That was pretty raucous really!  <laughs>  Other than that, it was standard percussion - nothing exotic.  Sometimes that sort of thing is warranted and called for, but more often than not it seems like a gimmick to me.  Some whoopdie-doo rattle drum from the island of Burma to get your point across.... I don't really subscribe to that.

[Magnus 0]

I sure hope the pop-industry won't take over the film music business completely I'd love to write scores one day...

[Adam 1]

Clearly, though, Davis's admiration of Williams goes only so far -- his score for Jurassic Park III implicitly frowns on some of instrumentation Williams used in The Lost World, and in another interview with SoundtrackNet, he expresses his peeve explicitly:

Joe [Johnston] wanted a pounding sound for the Spinosaurus, so I had a pair of timpani - two timpani players that each had eight drums.  That was pretty raucous really!  <laughs>  Other than that, it was standard percussion - nothing exotic.  Sometimes that sort of thing is warranted and called for, but more often than not it seems like a gimmick to me.  Some whoopdie-doo rattle drum from the island of Burma to get your point across.... I don't really subscribe to that.

If I were going to quibble (which I generally like to do) I would say that, technically, he could be including Lost World under the category of "Sometimes that sort of thing is warranted and called for...", and his referance to "Some whoopdie-doo rattle drum" wouldn't really describe anything remotely like The Lost World which employs a full Latin rythem section of some kind, giving the scenes a certain ethnic, dark jungle character but also also pace and tension (in other words, a very non-gimmicky way, I think.) And, if JW had done the 3rd Jurassic Park I think he also would have frowned on the instrumentation of The Lost World and given us something closer to the first film because of the look and approach was closer to that one.

Having said that, I really don't know, and suspect your interpretation is right.

- Adam