DID JOHN WILLIAMS COMPOSE THE IJ DIAL OF DESTINY TRAILER MUSIC?

[Edmilson 7,392]

18 minutes ago, MrJosh said:

Same kind of sparse atmosphere with single piano notes. 

Lots of blockbuster movies have trailers beginning with sparse piano notes. It's so common that it is actually a widely mocked cliché.

 

Still, some are more effective than others, like the first Infinity War trailer:

 

 

[Score 770]

1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

I think it's a more likely scenario that the trailer music was written by the reanimated corpse of Ludwig van Beethoven than that it was written by John Williams. 

 

... "and I said to Steven: I really think you need a better composer than I am for this trailer. And he very sweetly said: I know..."  

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

32 minutes ago, HunterTech said:

Modern media is mostly subversive? I wish.

 

What do you wish to see subverted? 

[Biodome 714]

Most of the modern trailer music has become so formulaic and banal, that I wouldn't be surprised if you could repurpose one of those GPT-3 neural networks to mass-produce trailer music, and nobody would notice that anything was off. John Williams has too much decency to even think about touching that industry. And on the rare occasion that he does write trailer music, it would be clearly advertised, and you would be able to hear actual quality music in the trailer.

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

They should revert to playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons at half speed.

[Datameister 2,037]

4 minutes ago, Biodome said:

Most of the modern trailer music has become so formulaic and banal, that I wouldn't be surprised if you could repurpose one of those GPT-3 neural networks to mass-produce trailer music, and nobody would notice that anything was off. John Williams has too much decency to even think about touching that industry. And on the rare occasion that he does write trailer music, it would be clearly advertised, and you would be able to hear actual quality music in the trailer.

 

I think that's literally true. I enjoy some trailer music, but formulaic is the perfect word.

[Bryant Burnette 654]

I don't know how anyone who has listened to decades' worth of Williams's music could hear that trailer and think there's even a tiny chance he worked on its music.  End of story.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

I'm beginning to think that the OP is just frustrated that (astonishingly) JWFan hasn't telepathically attracted the composer of the trailer to reveal themselves.

[HunterTech 987]

1 hour ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

What do you wish to see subverted? 

 

Just make more media that isn't factory assembled blockbusters from the big studios. It's a word that definitely has been abused as a result of certain movies/shows driving a few up the wall, but it's more unique to actually make stories about the things some mainstream efforts advertise themselves to be than the superficial fluff it ends up actually being. You sure as hell won't see Disney do anything proper with the occasional overt progressive aesthetic as a result of wanting to appease key international territories, so it might not hurt to give it a go if some people have decided they're fully in the weeds anyway despite what the material ultimately contains. Blame the hack writers instead of the ideas themselves if that's the issue.

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

I can confirm that JW composed the trailer music.  It sounds just like him 

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

The forum goes a little wild when Jay’s on vacation

[DarthDementous 1,059]

I’ve never seen anyone try and pull a ‘don’t you know who I am?!’ over trailer music before but this is the thread that keeps on giving 

[Bellosh 3,389]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

They should revert to playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons at half speed.

 

Looks who's back 😀

[Jay 37,287]

Who? 

[DarthDementous 1,059]

I’ve never understood the logic behind making the trailer music sound completely unlike what is going to be delivered in the film.

 

You’re just setting people up with the wrong expectations and misrepresenting the musical element of your film. The point of a trailer should be to give a bite-sized representation of what your film is actually like, companies usually get lambasted if they include footage that isn’t in the actual movie - so why not for music that is not in the actual movie and also unrepresentative of anything you’ll hear in it?

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

This thread has to be a joke, right? Like, I don't think anyone could be this dense. 

[LB Makes Stuff 240]

8 hours ago, Thor said:

Shhhhh, easy does it.

 

Whoever composed the trailer music will be revealed in due time.

I have super duper extra ultra secret sources telling me the “GOAT of all time” composer Samuel Kim wrote this!  My sources are totally real and true, I can’t say my source though cause he’ll get in super big doo doo if I reveal his identity!

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

[scallenger 481]

This feels like a Twitter thread, but without the Musk!

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

All of the trailer music is obviously being written by Jacob Ceelasler, additional composer extraordinaire.

[LB Makes Stuff 240]

I only read two messages and sent that bit cause I was bored.  I just read it all, very confusing 🤣🤣

[TSMefford 1,509]

1 hour ago, DarthDementous said:

I’ve never understood the logic behind making the trailer music sound completely unlike what is going to be delivered in the film.

 

You’re just setting people up with the wrong expectations and misrepresenting the musical element of your film. The point of a trailer should be to give a bite-sized representation of what your film is actually like, companies usually get lambasted if they include footage that isn’t in the actual movie - so why not for music that is not in the actual movie and also unrepresentative of anything you’ll hear in it?

 

I agree completely. I think, in an ideal world, the filmmakers would be more involved in the marketing and trailers would be an extension of the film. Matching music, tone, etc.

 

In reality, it's almost like... studios want films to appeal as general as possible. Quite frankly I also think it can come across sometimes as if the studios don't have faith in the final product to stand on it's own as it is. It's an odd disconnect where the marketing seems to read as if they think the movie won't appeal to enough of the general audience, but at the same time they are allowing the filmmaker to produce the final result we end up seeing. Feels a bit like an oxymoron. They do it though, because they want as many asses in seats as they can. Though, I think it's pretty clear these days how divisive films can be, especially with passionate fanbases. Honestly they should be to an extent. If a film wants to say something and mean something, it won't necessarily apply to or appeal to everyone. But they still want to get it in front of as many people as they can - so they distill and sometimes straight up lie to appeal to other kinds of viewers.

 

Since this thread is derailed anyway, I might as well mention an insightful conversation I had on this topic with Eric Alan, who was creative director at Nickelodeon Movies in the early 2000s and was heavily involved in the campaign for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

 

I did a lot of research on that campaign and was grateful he spoke with me about it, because that campaign did a full 180 mid-way through the year and I was very eager to find out why.

 

For those that care for some detail and interesting anecdotes about film marketing in the early 2000s, I've nested this under a spoiler tag to not take up too much more space with this post by default.

Spoiler

 

Here's one of the first trailers of the film:

 

 

A pretty decent representation of the film, I think - looking back. Leaning into this "Anti-Holiday" "Don't Watch This" type of stuff which is very in line with the attitude of the film and the books.

The trend continued (with a more kid oriented vibe) in the Nickelodeon spots that Eric worked on. Note that in these spots, Eric was able to reference concept art, graphics, and even have conversations with the filmmakers about their approach. Something he found out later when he moved on to agency work was very unusual. He was even able to request lines and VO from Jude Law (playing Snicket in the film):

 

Eric discusses his unique relationship with the filmmakers:

Quote

When asked what they get to see and work with when developing campaigns, he says that usually, you get the whole film. Through a top-secret process with lots of security, you literally get versions of the film. In the case of animated film campaigns, like what he worked on for Pixar (such as Cars and Ratatouille), you'd start with something that has very crude animation as they are figuring out the story and it would get updated throughout the process. He also mentioned some of the camera test footage they used of Violet and Klaus. Because he was working at Nickelodeon and was “deemed the expert” at marketing on the channel to the huge audience of kids (which were extremely important to the film's success at the box office), they were very inclined to open the doors for him to production materials and assets and gave him access to the filmmakers. In his words, “there was not a lot of gatekeeping.” Eric emphasized how unusual that more open relationship was compared to typical situation where the studio would purposefully keep the marketer quite separate from the filmmakers.

 

Speaking more on his relationship with the filmmakers, Eric said it is so much more fun to sit down with the creators and see what they're thinking. He mentioned that he would write material and give it to Brad Silberling, who would then get it recorded for him. Producers emphasized the importance of these requests, putting them at the top of the list so to speak. This is how Eric managed to have Jude Law do the voice over for his earlier spots.

 

Now here's where things get interesting. Towards the end of the year, they turn a sharp turn to a "family-friendly holiday movie about imagination and home" with light-hearted music and a bright blue sky in the graphics:

Another that goes full christmas:

 

Here's an excerpt of my write up with Eric discussing this change:

Quote

Recalling the screening he had mentioned, I asked Eric about the state of the film when he saw it at that time. He couldn’t really recall what state it was really in but remarked that the film didn’t test as well as the studio would’ve liked. Essentially, studios often look at the surveys they get back and start immediately beginning to wonder how they can change it. In the case of Lemony Snicket, he mentions that the film may have had some confusion about the plot. Mostly, he thought that “parents were afraid of it” due to it being marketed as a kids’ film for the holidays.

Eventually, Paramount also hired him to cross over and do advertising on the studio side. It was then that he realized how different their process was, along with their messaging. Of course, this is all based on market testing: hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of testing and research. After testing many different messages, Paramount decided they needed to “lighten it up.” It was a holiday film after all. The main gist of their marketing ended up being a story of “these kids are searching to get back home,” a marketing trope that was sure to be the kind of message that mom’s would respond to. Eric, however, says that was not his approach at all on the Nickelodeon side. His goal was to help kids understand what the story was and to represent the feel, tone, and “the throw of the story.” He wanted his pieces to feel more like the film itself, as opposed to an ad for the movie.

 

When I asked about the shift and when that might have happened, Eric says that there really wasn't much of a shift. Essentially, the studio didn't really care what Nick was doing. It was just something small that they would let them do however, reserving the big marketing budgets for what they “knew was right.”

Eric recounts a big meeting with around 50 people, a presentation of the marketing ideas for Lemony Snicket. He recalls showing his reel of materials and everyone liking them, but “it had nothing to do with what the studio was doing.” The marketing for films can be assigned to many different agencies for just one movie. He also had a feeling that Paramount possibly took his work and showed it to some of the other agencies to “make something like this.”

Eric looks back fondly on the film and the campaign and says he enjoyed being immersed in the material, as he usually is when he works on marketing for films. His perspective, he realized, was very different from the studio or even an external marketing agency. The studios, at least at that time, simply don’t do deep diving.

 

As far as footage not in the film, I asked Eric about that as well, since many of the Snicket trailers used never-before-seen footage, even outside of the DVD extras that were eventually released:

Quote

Revisiting the unreleased material featured in some of the trailers and commercials, Eric explains, when you’re working on the marketing for a film and you get your hands on good material, you just use it. Ultimately, if you use a shot in the trailer that gets removed from the final project, “no one cares.” Furthermore, as a trailer editor, you can call up the raw footage for things you might not have, like a reaction shot. He could call the studio, and the editor would pull a relevant clip. He's even had some experiences where it’s decided that they need material that isn’t in the movie to create a moment that could convince a parent that the film will be okay for kids. Lemony Snicket, he says, is a movie that is really about grief, trauma, horror, and fear. It’s a dark movie.

 

 

And all this is from 2004. I can only image with the advent of spoiler culture things are even more wild - especially since they can now spend the time to render fake VFX shots just for the trailers.

[Edmilson 7,392]

15 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

All of the trailer music is obviously being written by Jacob Ceelasler, additional composer extraordinaire.

I thought trailer music for big budget movies these days is mostly written by Lorne Balfe's protegées Heywood Japulmah Finga, I. C. Yadick and Luke Atmyass.

[Datameister 2,037]

51 minutes ago, DarthDementous said:

I’ve never understood the logic behind making the trailer music sound completely unlike what is going to be delivered in the film.

 

You’re just setting people up with the wrong expectations and misrepresenting the musical element of your film. The point of a trailer should be to give a bite-sized representation of what your film is actually like, companies usually get lambasted if they include footage that isn’t in the actual movie - so why not for music that is not in the actual movie and also unrepresentative of anything you’ll hear in it?

 

Aside from the silliness of this thread, this is a somewhat interesting conversation. I think the disconnect is the idea that a trailer should give a "bite-sized representation of what your film is actually like." For the folks making the trailers, I'm sure the only goal is to make people want to see the film. (Especially, but not exclusively, people who are more likely to enjoy the film.) So that becomes sort of a game of one-upmanship—whose trailer will be the most epic? hilarious? scary? dramatic? And part of that is the music. It's an arms race for the trailer tropes that most effectively entice the largest numbers of people into the theater. (Or onto the subscription streaming service, or whatever.) Any decent film composer knows you have to hold back in a lot of places to craft a score that really supports the film; any decent trailer music composer knows you have to keep up with the Joneses to keep getting work. Or in this case, you have to help the Joneses keep up with over-the-top adventure movie trailers everyone else is making. (I don't think they were successful with this one, but the proof will be in the box office pudding.)

[TSMefford 1,509]

Just now, Datameister said:

 

Aside from the silliness of this thread, this is a somewhat interesting conversation. I think the disconnect is the idea that a trailer should give a "bite-sized representation of what your film is actually like." For the folks making the trailers, I'm sure the only goal is to make people want to see the film. (Especially, but not exclusively, people who are more likely to enjoy the film.) So that becomes sort of a game of one-upmanship—whose trailer will be the most epic? hilarious? scary? dramatic? And part of that is the music. It's an arms race for the trailer tropes that most effectively entice the largest numbers of people into the theater. (Or onto the subscription streaming service, or whatever.) Any decent film composer knows you have to hold back in a lot of places to craft a score that really supports the film; any decent trailer music composer knows you have to keep up with the Joneses to keep getting work. Or in this case, you have to help the Joneses keep up with over-the-top adventure movie trailers everyone else is making. (I don't think they were successful with this one, but the proof will be in the box office pudding.)

 

Yep. It's the unfortunate reality of it. This sort of thing is how we get trailer tropes and trends that just flood the market.

For example, when Suicide Squad did their guns blazing and bullets firing to the rhythm of "Bohemian Rhapsody", you bet we started getting tons of trailers using a popular song and having sound effects match the rhythm. Who can do the best one?! You're absolutely right.

 

The type of music cue in the Indiana Jones trailer is just another one of these kinds of trends. I'd like to hope they're running out of these to do, but I'd be wrong.

[Brando 1,856]

John Williams is my neighbor and I CAN confirm he wrote the trailer music. He played it for me at my birthday party a couple weeks ago.

[Datameister 2,037]

1 minute ago, TSMefford said:

 

Yep. It's the unfortunate reality of it. This sort of thing is how we get trailer tropes and trends that just flood the market.

For example, when Suicide Squad did their guns blazing and bullets firing to the rhythm of "Bohemian Rhapsody", you bet we started getting tons of trailers using a popular song and having sound effects match the rhythm. Who can do the best one?! You're absolutely right.

 

The type of music cue in the Indiana Jones trailer is just another one of these kinds of trends. I'd like to hope they're running out of these to do, but I'd be wrong.

It would be interesting to extrapolate forward. Given an infinite amount of time, eventually the human race would stumble upon a trailer format so irresistible that the entire population of the universe would show up. That would be peak trailer. (It would probably be unbearable, but it would work.)

[TSMefford 1,509]

Just now, Datameister said:

It would be interesting to extrapolate forward. Given an infinite amount of time, eventually the human race would stumble upon a trailer format so irresistible that the entire population of the universe would show up. That would be peak trailer. (It would probably be unbearable, but it would work.)

 

Lol. I'd love to see that.

 

I do always wonder what the next trend is going to be. I have to say I'm glad we seem to moving away from the "stutter" shots a little bit (those shots that flash several quick frames of black accenting with a glitch effect and a bass drop in the music) as I really hate those - especially on a big screen. They're also mildly annoying the do in edits as well.

[Bayesian 1,359]

Pop culture is truly plumbing new depths when the trailer music for the final installment of a decades-old, globally beloved franchise sounds absolutely no different than those silly, fan-made "updated" trailers for classic movies.

 

Seriously, listen this bilge:

 

Then listen to the IJ DOD trailer:

 

Then tell me the music for both of these wasn't thrown together in GarageBand by some 14-yr-old kid. I dare ya.

[Datameister 2,037]

Y'know, on a second listen, there might be some real instruments in there. I was wrong. JW confirmed.

[WampaRat 1,105]

Every trailer trope of the last 10 years was wonderfully combined in this Auralnauts video. Funny how the industry doesn’t realize it’s parodying itself now.

 

 

[Bayesian 1,359]

51 minutes ago, WampaRat said:

Every trailer trope of the last 10 years was wonderfully combined in this Auralnauts video. Funny how the industry doesn’t realize it’s parodying itself now.

 

 

This is priceless. Bless you for bringing it to my attention. 🤗. (I wonder if anyone else visualized Zack Synder’s godforsaken DCEU movies while this was playing…)

[WampaRat 1,105]

One more:

 

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

So my friend is doing the music for the second trailer coming out next month, and it's going to be about the Nazis from the first trailer, so they used the Nazi motif from TLC. He sent me a short preview of it:

 

 

[Datameister 2,037]

1 hour ago, WampaRat said:

Every trailer trope of the last 10 years was wonderfully combined in this Auralnauts video. Funny how the industry doesn’t realize it’s parodying itself now.

 

 

 

I love that video. I'll quibble a bit—I'm sure anyone involved in making these is very aware of the cliches. There are probably in-house terms for all of them. No one producing this stuff can possibly think they're trailblazing auteurs. (It's cool, I'm not a trailblazing auteur either.)

[artguy360 1,843]

This is a joke thread, right?

[ThePenitentMan1 742]

11 minutes ago, artguy360 said:

This is a joke thread, right?

 

By now it 100% is.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

Trailers were about showing the potential audience to expect and experience something new. Now, they are a guarantee to the audience that all is well-known that they're about to be confronted with.

[Score 770]

7 hours ago, Datameister said:

It would be interesting to extrapolate forward. Given an infinite amount of time, eventually the human race would stumble upon a trailer format so irresistible that the entire population of the universe would show up. That would be peak trailer. (It would probably be unbearable, but it would work.)

 

This sentence definitely gives me "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" vibes!

[Marian Schedenig 8,173]

9 hours ago, Datameister said:

For the folks making the trailers, I'm sure the only goal is to make people want to see the film. (Especially, but not exclusively, people who are more likely to enjoy the film.)

 

I'm not so sure of that even. Producers pay money for trailers, and the *only* point of them (since there's clearly no artistic point to most of them these days) is to increase the income generated by the film. The natural conclusion would be that trailers are made primarily not for those who are going to see the film anyway, but those who might not and could be convinced by the trailer. At worst, that means a trailer completely mis-representing its film to draw people who will pay to see it even though they won't like it.

[Edmilson 7,392]

5 hours ago, ThePenitentMan1 said:

 

By now it 100% is.

It didn't started as one. OP was deadly serious when he theorized that JW wrote the trailer music.

[WampaRat 1,105]

8 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

So my friend is doing the music for the second trailer coming out next month, and it's going to be about the Nazis from the first trailer, so they used the Nazi motif from TLC. He sent me a short preview of it:

 

 

Woah. For real?

[ThePenitentMan1 742]

 

1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

It didn't started as one. OP was deadly serious when he theorized that JW wrote the trailer music.

 

I know.  Hence the "By now" in my post.

[Tom 4,639]

40 minutes ago, WampaRat said:

Woah. For real?

They're real, and they're spectacular!   

[Jay 37,287]

43 minutes ago, WampaRat said:

Woah. For real?

 

We need a head slap reaction

 

[Brando 1,856]

4 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

We need a head slap reaction

 

I think that’s the only reaction we’re missing 

[Gabriel Bezerra 300]

Pemberton commented on it and a few trailer composers shared their thoughts as well:

 

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

3 minutes ago, Gabriel Bezerra said:

Pemberton commented on it and a few trailer composers shared their thoughts as well:

 

Yeah, at this point I don't think anyone actually likes composing that kind of music.  Just marketing people who are terrified of deviating from the same tried and true formula

[WampaRat 1,105]

1 hour ago, Jay said:

 

We need a head slap reaction

 

Dammit. Can’t believe I fell for that 

[Bilbo 3,709]

This thread is a hoot 😅

 

I assume op is someone’s alter ego on the wind up?