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James Horner's WILLOW (1988) - NEW! 2022 2-CD Intrada Records


Jay

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4 minutes ago, Jean-Baptiste Martin said:

 

Oh, wow!  So "Airk's Army" features a bunch of unused thematic material that got replaced in the final film with that basic drum thumping.  Wow!

 

And wow!  That short cue in the movie where Willow uses his wand for the first time is part of "The Island"! That explains why that track is so long!  Wow!

 

Huh, intersting; It sounds like the first 45 seconds of that track are a wild cue for the love powder, and then Howard put it in both tavern and snow tent scene.  Fascinating!

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5 minutes ago, Jay said:

Oh, wow!  So "Airk's Army" features a bunch of unused thematic material that got replaced in the final film with that basic drum thumping.  Wow!

Yes I had fun putting the music back on the film and it works perfectly.

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Interesting placement of Willow's Theme. Usually I prefer when the concert suites are placed by the end of the program, after the end credits. But in this case, like with the OST, I think it was put there because otherwise we'd have a lot of uninterrupted action music, which could make listening to the album a bit exhausting.

 

Still, I'm going to try listen to it in both ways: with Willow's Theme in its intended place and with it after the end titles.

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Interesting read above. Just curious which score got shifted from Budapest to Germany?  I remember TOTAL RECALL was shifted from Germany to London when the orchestra couldnt handle the score but this was much later in 1989-90 period.

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12 hours ago, Jay said:

"Willow's Theme" is basically just a shortened version of the end credits, so it would be extremely redundant to program it immediately afterwards. 

 

If all the source music had been found as well as some alternates, and those were all placed after the end credits as a bonus track section, then it would make sense to end disc two with "Willow's Theme" as a grand finale. 

 

But in absence of that, the only logical place to program it is as the opening of either disc 1 or disc 2.

 

Or at the end as a bonus track, because those are usually redundant anyway and ideally skipped for "normal album listening".

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When I saw the movie in cinema, when it came out, it felt like a weird mixture of numerous other tales from Lord of the Rings, Merlin, Gulivers Travels, the Wanderings of Odysseus, Snowwhite and of course the bible. It was charming in a way, but, when I started watching it on television recently I realized, it obviously hadn't aged very well.

I guess, the score and its expansion is great for everyone who resonates with James Horner's musical themes, which is mostly not the case for me. Most of his melodies simply do not get stuck in my head or if they do, the rest of the scoring mostly does not leave an impression to me.

With Krull James Horner was one of the first filmmusic composers that I got to know and there is a handful of scores that I really like. But Willow, like most Horner scores, is out of my scope. But I wish all the fans big fun with this expansion.

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On 25/06/2022 at 10:24 AM, Andy said:

Somehow, for me, Willow is a better listening journey than its closest cousin, Krull.  Krull seems to start at level 11, and doesn't really do much narratively. You cold almost shuffle the tracks and get the same experience.  Willow does have more maturity and a bit more soul to its themes, and it does tell the story musically, rather than just accompany the action.

 

YESSSSSSSSSS!  I agree 100%!

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6 hours ago, Amer said:

Interesting read above. Just curious which score got shifted from Budapest to Germany?  I remember TOTAL RECALL was shifted from Germany to London when the orchestra couldnt handle the score but this was much later in 1989-90 period.

 

Superman IV shifted from Germany to London too. Goldsmith was recording in Budapest fairly frequently, so could be one of his from the mid to late eighties?

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Really looking forward to this one.  My #1 Horner score - and maybe the only one I really dig enough to get an expansion.  Interested to hear the stuff that wasn’t on the OST.

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13 minutes ago, Jim Ware said:

 

Superman IV shifted from Germany to London too. Goldsmith was recording in Budapest fairly frequently, so could be one of his from the mid to late eighties?

 

No, he stayed there, no recordings of his were done in Germany. Maybe Joel's Moon 44.

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31 minutes ago, publicist said:

 

No, he stayed there, no recordings of his were done in Germany. Maybe Joel's Moon 44.

Chris Young's Hellraiser 2?

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3 hours ago, Jay said:

I think my longest score before this was about 92 minutes or 88 minutes, somewhere in there. This is sort of a world record for me.

 

Krull is 93ish minutes I think, but comparing it back to back with Willow shows how much he refined his style in the intervening five years.

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The most interesting thing in that interview is that he says they recorded 117 minutes of score for Willow.  The 108 minutes on the Intrada CD plus the remaining 6 1/2 minutes of music heard in the film that isn't on it means there still remains 2 1/2 minutes that cannot be heard anywhere (if the 117 minute number is accurate).  It's most likely just full versions of the tavern source music that isn't heard in full in the final film, but you never know!

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"PLEASE NOTE - as expected we are experiencing a high volume of orders for Willow. If you are just placing your order now, be aware that the earliest it will ship is likely between July 5 - 7. Also be aware that emailing Intrada to check on the status of your order will not make your order go out any faster - the only thing it will do is slow us down. Please have mercy!"

 

https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.12619/.f

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15 hours ago, Jay said:

The most interesting thing in that interview is that he says they recorded 117 minutes of score for Willow.  The 108 minutes on the Intrada CD plus the remaining 6 1/2 minutes of music heard in the film that isn't on it means there still remains 2 1/2 minutes that cannot be heard anywhere (if the 117 minute number is accurate).  It's most likely just full versions of the tavern source music that isn't heard in full in the final film, but you never know!

So are these 6 1/2 minutes just source music plus missing 20 seconds?

 

13 hours ago, Jay said:

"PLEASE NOTE - as expected we are experiencing a high volume of orders for Willow. If you are just placing your order now, be aware that the earliest it will ship is likely between July 5 - 7. Also be aware that emailing Intrada to check on the status of your order will not make your order go out any faster - the only thing it will do is slow us down. Please have mercy!"

 

https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.12619/.f

On the bright side, I am glad the sales are going great. 

 

Karol

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So, ignoring the source music, it's 2:40 minutes of alternates and half a minute of actual score missing. Not a whole lot. I can live with that. :)

 

Thanks for the timestamps. I shall check those out on Disney+ tonight.

 

Karol

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The revised ending of 3M1 is very similar to the familiar album ending.  You can hear it at 3:38-4:06 in this video

 

 

 

The revised opening of 4M1 is just a simple repeated drum hit.  You can hear it at 2:55-5:08 in this video

 

 

 

 

Bavmorda Slaps Kael is 7:08-7:40 of this video

 

 

 

As you can tell these are the least interesting bits of score in the whole movie

 

Though obviously they would have made nice bonus tracks had the elements survived

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26 minutes ago, Jay said:

The revised ending of 3M1 is very similar to the familiar album ending.  You can hear it at 3:38-4:06 in this video

 

 

If it's similar to the album ending, then what about the ending was changed?

 

Penitent, who has only just recently seen this film and is eager to learn as much about this score as possible.

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11 minutes ago, ThePenitentMan1 said:

 

If it's similar to the album ending, then what about the ending was changed?

 

I mean, just listen to the album (2:06-2:42 of track 3) and then listen to this - they are slightly different.


Why? I have no idea.  Ron Howard asked Horner to re-write it, but he liked his original version better so put that on the album?  Who knows!

 

The Omni book also matches the album, so is clearly how Horner originally envisioned the cue to end.

 

The film ending is so similar, it could actually be a weird tracking/edit job and not an actual later-recorded pickup ending - hard to tell, to be honest.

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55 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I mean, just listen to the album (2:06-2:42 of track 3) and then listen to this - they are slightly different.


Why? I have no idea.  Ron Howard asked Horner to re-write it, but he liked his original version better so put that on the album?  Who knows!

 

I just compared the two directly and all I came up with was this:

 

image.png

 

There's also what seems to be a small edit in the film, shortly before the baby vomit shot.  I suppose it could just as easily have been the revised insert, I suppose.

 

Album version I used here was this video.

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So what are you saying?  The film ending just edits out a bit of the cue but doesn't contain anything that isn't heard on the album?

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23 minutes ago, Jay said:

So what are you saying?  The film ending just edits out a bit of the cue but doesn't contain anything that isn't heard on the album?

 

I mean, I trust you know this score better than I do, so if you have evidence to the contrary (The Omni book, for instance), I'd love to see it.

 

I just want to know what is going on with this cue/track.

 

I take it that gigantic missing chunk on the album track is the start of the cue 3m2 Bavmorda & Kael?

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16 minutes ago, ThePenitentMan1 said:

I mean, I trust you know this score better than I do, so if you have evidence to the contrary (The Omni book, for instance), I'd love to see it.

 

I don't understand what you are saying here.  Like I already said above, the Omni book matches the OST track.  The film sounds different.  I already said I don't know why.  It's either a pick-up ending Horner recorded later, or it's a edit/tracking job by the music editors.  I think you are trying to tell us that it is the latter via your screenshot, but I don't know because you only posted the screenshot - you didn't explain it, and crucially, it doesn't have timestamps showing, so I don't have a clue what I'm looking at.

 

16 minutes ago, ThePenitentMan1 said:

I just want to know what is going on with this cue/track.

 

I take it that gigantic missing chunk on the album track is the start of the cue 3m2 Bavmorda & Kael?

 

I don't understand what you are saying here.

 

OST track 3 "Willow's Journey Begins" is comprised of

  • 0:00-2:42 = 3M1 Willow's Farewell ("Saying Goodbye" in the Omni book)
  • 2:42-end = 3M3 Willow's Journey Begins ("Search / Travel Montage" in the Omni book)

 

3M2 Bavmorda's Castle ("Bavmorda & Kael" in the Omni book) was not on the OST album.  It debuts on the Intrada CD as "Bavmorda's Castle".

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11 minutes ago, Jay said:

Wait, what? I thought you were telling me what was going on?  I'm asking you, what are you trying to show us with that screen shot?  You provided the screenshot, but didn't explain it.

 

I thought you were going to tell me what I was missing!

 

At any rate, my biggest point of confusion was that chunk missing in the middle of the track (which I'd assumed was a long 5+ minute cue)...  And I also happened upon the microedit to 3m1.  Then I had the brilliant idea to go back and edit my post:

 

Quote

There's also what seems to be a small edit in the film, shortly before the baby vomit shot.  I suppose it could just as easily have been the revised insert, I suppose.

 

Quote

OST track 3 "Willow's Journey Begins" is comprised of

  • 0:00-2:42 = 3M1 Willow's Farewell
  • 2:42-end = 3M3 Willow's Journey Begins

 

3M2 is on the Intrada CD as disc 1, track 6, "Bavmorda's Castle"

 

That answers my biggest point of confusion; I thought that might've been what you were referring to this whole time, except it wasn't.  Sorry about the confusion! :(

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

The film ending is so similar, it could actually be a weird tracking/edit job and not an actual later-recorded pickup ending - hard to tell, to be honest.

 

I think it's tracked from Elora Danan (from 7:34)

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2 minutes ago, Bounty95 said:

 

I think it's tracked from Elora Danan (from 7:34)

 

OOOOH!  You're right!  That's it!

That settles that - there is no revised ending of 3M1, just some tracking in the final cut.

 

Mystery solved!

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I still wonder if Bavmorda Slaps Kael isn't tracked from somewhere too. I mean, it's so short, it was the *only* score cue not present on Intrada's source, *and* I think Omni said they had to do a takedown from the film itself because it wasn't a part of the written score materials they had. (Am I remembering it correctly?)

 

So yeah maybe it was somehow done at a pickup session, but would they really do a whole pickup session for one 20-second cue? I'll bet it's tracked from something else.

 

Yavar

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2 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

I still wonder if Bavmorda Slaps Kael isn't tracked from somewhere too. I mean, it's so short, it was the *only* score cue not present on Intrada's source,

 

Yes, and it's not in GEMA either!

 

2 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

*and* I think Omni said they had to do a takedown from the film itself because it wasn't a part of the written score materials they had. (Am I remembering it correctly?)

 

You are in fact remembering incorrectly.  Here is what he said (it was the source music-esque piece that opens the end credits in the final film that he had to transcribe himself)

 

2 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 I'll bet it's tracked from something else.

 

It absolutely could be!

Listen to the clip above and see if it sounds familiar to music on the OST album!

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17 minutes ago, Jay said:

You are in fact remembering incorrectly.  Here is what they said (it was the source music-esque piece that opens the end credits in the final film that he had to transcribe himself)

 

Here's what's weird though -- Tim/Omni says Bavmorda Slaps Kael is "6m0" -- I'm pretty sure that's not how reel/part numbers work! There shouldn't ever be a "0" after an "m" -- the "1" means "1st piece of music on this reel" and there's no such thing as a zeroth piece of music in a reel. Right? Same thing with 7m0...just weird, IMO.

 

Yavar

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1 hour ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

Here's what's weird though -- Tim/Omni says Bavmorda Slaps Kael is "6m0" -- I'm pretty sure that's not how reel/part numbers work! There shouldn't ever be a "0" after an "m" -- the "1" means "1st piece of music on this reel" and there's no such thing as a zeroth piece of music in a reel. Right? Same thing with 7m0...just weird, IMO.

 

Yavar

 

Not weird in the slightest.  Plenty of films have m0 cues.  There's two things that may cause it

 

1) Is when they later want to add music to a scene that they originally didn't think needed score, and the scene is early in a reel before the first cue had been assigned (IE, they already assigned a scene to get cue 6M1, but now a scene a few minutes early needs score, so that's a 6M0)

 

2) is when the film gets rebalanced, and a scene that was near the end of one reel ends up early in another (IE, the scene was originally near the end of reel 5, but but moved to be the start of reel 6, which had its own 6m1, so it becomes 6M0)


Happens all the time

 

 

Some examples

 

Jaws 5M2/6M0 Ben Gardner's Boat

Jaws 8M3/9M0 A Tug On The Line

Jaws 9M1/10M0 Man Against Beast

Star Trek II 2M3/3M0 Khan's Pets
Star Trek II 4M2/5M0 Spock
Star Trek II 5M2/6M0 Surprise Attack
Star Trek II 7M5/8M0 Captain Terrell's Death

Back To The Future 12M0 Clocktower / Part IA

Back To The Future 13M0 Helicopter

Back To The Future 14M0 4x4

Star Trek IV 1M0 Logo

Star Trek IV 2M0 Ten Seconds of Tension

Predator 9M3/10M0 Off To Battle

Masters of the Universe 1M7/2M0 Quick Escape

The Abyss 1M0 Opening Title
The Abyss 7M0 SEALs Return

Homeward Bound the Incredible Journey 5M0 Fording The Stream

Hunt For Red October 4M0 The Anthem Of The Soviet Union

Hunt For Red October 10M0 Necessary Force

Backdraft 1M0 Chicago 1971

Falling Down 7M0 Little Girl
Falling Down 8M0 Pre-Moon

Wyatt Earp 1M0 Pre Main Title

Independence Day 2M0 Mysto Bridge

Independence Day 5M4/6M0 Evacuation

Independence Day 13M3/14M0 Jolly Roger

Star Trek VI 1M3/2M0 Spacedock

Scream 1M0 Dimension Logo

Superman Returns 1M0 Warner Bros. Logo

Ratatouille 1M0 Pixar Logo

The Village 4M0 The Kiss

Avatar 2M0 The Link Room

Inception 1M0 Logos

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol 1M0 Logos / Cold Open

Lady In The Water 2M0 First Scrunt

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang 4M0 Damn Feet

The Green Hornet 4M0 Drug Dealer

The Green Hornet 6M0 Kato Laptop

The Green Lantern 1M0 Prologue

The Amazing Spider-man 1M5R/2M0 Inside OSCORP

The Hunger Games 1M0 The Scroll
The Hunger Games 2M0 Katniss Says Goodbye

The Hunger Games 4M0 They're Flying

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I didn't want to go to bed without posting this first:

 

 

2:11-2:30 was cut in the film; that's what I'd found in the screenshot I posted above.  I realize now that the screenshot didn't have enough contextual information to be useful; it's late for me and I haven't gone to bed yet.  Really not the time for me to try to figure out a new film score.

 

Again, I'm sorry for the confusion. :(

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