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enderdrag64's Star Wars Cue by Cue


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The missing 8 bars of the original Lost R2 are more likely intended for the "Look Sir Droids!" scene, as indicated by the comic adaptation (though, It could be possible the Beru scene would have been part of it...)

20240713_142946.jpg

 

Also slightly surprised you didn't mention the Dies Irae mixture with the Jaws theme in More Little People.

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2 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:
  • It's also likely that Holsts' Mars The Bringer of War was temped into the first appearance of the Star Destroyer, as well as the part right before the Death Star blows up. (there is no specific firsthand source claiming this, but other than just the obvious similarities in sound, JW did mention Holst by name in the 1977 liner notes)

 

Also:

 

"Cruxifiction" from Franz Waxman's score to The Bride of Frankenstein, which was used in the opening of episodes of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe: Lucas remembers in 1977 that he wanted to use Flash Gordon music, and its not without a passing resemblence to the Rebel Fanfare.

 

 

Liszt's Les Preludes (another Flash Gordon favourite, mentioned specifically by Lucas) for the prison break.

 

"Peaceful Mountain Pass Road" from Masaru Sato's score to Hidden Fortress for the Jawas: Hirsch in his book remembers them TRYING a Kurosawa piece here, and its damn close to the score in that part of the film.

 

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Great write-ups & videos - as someone who loves the music but has never micro-checked it against the film, I’m learning a lot!

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Taking the information from your post for More Little People and the image of the sheet music for the original cue, I attempted a mockup of the original intro, minus the instrumentation differences:

 

 

 

It is very possible that I might've gotten something wrong in the MIDI portion of the mockup—It's only my first one, after all—so any corrections would be appreciated.

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Cantina Band 2

 

Sorry, I find this form analysis a little confusing. In jazz terms, it would be more like this:

 

32 bar head with 4 bar intro and repeated intro - (intro) AAB (intro) A
8 bar transition
Solo Chorus abv. (16 bars AA*)
Arranger Chorus abv. (16 bar AA*)
Transition (4 bars)
Arranger Chorus abv. with 2 bar intro (16 bars BB)
Head and Solo Chorus repeat
Fade out on Arranger Chorus

 

I'm sure all the abbreviated choruses and odd intro repeats and transitions were due to time sync considerations.

 

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3 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

Cantina Band 2

 

Sorry, I find this form analysis a little confusing. In jazz terms, it would be more like this:

 

32 bar head with 4 bar intro and repeated intro - (intro) AAB (intro) A
8 bar transition
Solo chorus abv. (16 bars AA*)
Arranger Chorus abv. (16 bar AA*)
transition (4 bars)
Arranger Chorus abv. with 2 bar intro (16 bars BB)
Head and solo chorus repeat
Fade out on Arranger chorus

 

I'm sure all the abbreviated choruses and odd intro repeats and transitions were due to time sync considerations.

 

Thank you! Clearly I'm not used to taking about jazz 🤣

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1 hour ago, enderdrag64 said:

This indicates that by the time the score was being written the Jabba scene was already cut.

 

But not back during the time of the spotting session, presumably?

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41 minutes ago, The Great Gonzales said:

@enderdrag64 according to the comic, Set your course for Alderaan, would have been between Luke finding Owen and Beru's dead (A Home Destroyed) and him returning to Ben (Hive of Villainy)

Yeah I believe it's that way in the shooting script as well. But I believe it was already moved to its final location by the time of the rebalancing, as with all the other imperial scene shuffling's that resulted in A Home Destroyed to be broken up

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

But not back during the time of the spotting session, presumably?

That I'm not sure about, although if he didn't include it in the unrevised cue I think it's likely that it was cut by then

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

 

But not back during the time of the spotting session, presumably?

If I remember correctly they had already removed the Jabba scene for the first cut in November 1976.

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1 hour ago, enderdrag64 said:

Yeah I believe it's that way in the shooting script as well. But I believe it was already moved to its final location by the time of the rebalancing, as with all the other imperial scene shuffling's that resulted in A Home Destroyed to be broken up

That I'm not sure about, although if he didn't include it in the unrevised cue I think it's likely that it was cut by then

The Novelization also matches.

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9 hours ago, kingpiranha said:

If I remember correctly they had already removed the Jabba scene for the first cut in November 1976.

 

That's what I heard, too. And this would have major ramifications in terms of the way Lucas conceptualised the Jabba scene, because he says he didn't want to burden the stop-motion department with his (new) creature concept, but if this is true, the scene was cut BEFORE the stop-motion department was even established.

 

The only piece of evidence for Lucas wanting to turn Jabba into an alien at this time is that he crops up as an alien (although a perfectly humanoid one) in the Marvel strip from April. But then, Lucas only showed the Marvel representatives the cut in February, so the Jabba scene SHOULD have already been cut.

 

If it was also spotted around February, however, that might change things.

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Anyway, Lucas should never have brought back the Jabba scene to A New Hope. Beside the "Greedo is too dumb to shoot someone three feet in front of him" scene this was for me the biggest worsification of Original Star Wars Trilogy in the Special Edition. Third is Jedi Rocks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

On 30/07/2024 at 10:51 PM, enderdrag64 said:

Then at 1:23 we get some intense brass build up with backing strings as Han discusses what's needed to jump to lightspeed explains why listing lazily to the left is a brilliant maneuver.

 

Fixed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fantastic work!

 

On 13/07/2024 at 7:49 PM, enderdrag64 said:

3m3 Rev The Sand Speeder (...)

 

I chose to open with the establishing shot from the final cut because it seemed obvious that that's what it was filmed for. It also has the added benefit that it makes it so that we hear Luke's theme under the first shot he's on screen.

Hmm, here to me personally this Luke's Theme seems to scream "cut to adventurous POV and wide without dialogue", would be a bit too much under the dialogue as you placed it.

 

 

On 13/07/2024 at 7:49 PM, enderdrag64 said:

3m4-4m1 The Sandman Attacks (...) by 0:28 the music quiets down. Curiously it seems the music quiets about a second before the picture changes, I'm not sure if this was intentional or if a sync point was missed,

We know from one of the docus (probably Empire of Dreams) that the Tusken in this shot originally just raised his stick in the air and they looped it back and forth in editing to make him appear to shake it victoriously, maybe that came after the scoring?

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10 hours ago, Holko said:

We know from one of the docus (probably Empire of Dreams) that the Tusken in this shot originally just raised his stick in the air and they looped it back and forth in editing to make him appear to shake it victoriously, maybe that came after the scoring?

Oh yeah great point that's probably exactly what happened

 

10 hours ago, Holko said:

Hmm, here to me personally this Luke's Theme seems to scream "cut to adventurous POV and wide without dialogue", would be a bit too much under the dialogue as you placed it

I thought that might've scored the POV shot but I couldn't get the sync before or after it to make sense that way

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32 minutes ago, The Great Gonzales said:

My restores thread has my take on restoring that scene and cue.

Those links have never worked for me unfortunately, they always just say "you need access"

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1 hour ago, The Great Gonzales said:

My restores thread has my take on restoring that scene and cue.

 

That's pretty good!

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First off, while I'm thinking of it, @enderdrag64 thank you. This is becoming my favorite thread.

 

Second, what is a re-balancing?

 

On 13/07/2024 at 1:49 PM, enderdrag64 said:

Curiously enough, I discovered that all three albums with the film mix actually have the same wrong take. The take used in the film (heard in the video above) is completely unreleased.

 

So where did this come from?

 

I realized today that I've been following every subsequent post but I have not gone through all of the massive first post. I'll try to catch up this week.

 

 

 

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42 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Second, what is a re-balancing?

It's just the term used when a cue number is changed. I think I've heard @Jay use it before a few times, he could probably elaborate better on why it's called that as opposed to renumbering.

 

43 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

So where did this come from?

It came from the film ;)

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25 minutes ago, Jay said:

Anyway, back in the day, when the movie is first being edited, its broken up into reels, and then when the director sits down with the composer to spot the film, the cue numbers are assigned everyone its decided that original score should go.  But then when the composer goes off to write the music, the director might be continuing to edit the film, and now the old reel/part numbers assigned to the music might not make as much sense.  So the term "rebalanced" is used when they sit down and change the reel/part numbers of cues to fit where the scenes are in a newer cut of the film.  I couldn't possibly tell you who came up with that term or if they had other specific reasons for using that term.

 

You know there are movies where I can still "see" the reel change. Star Wars probably isn't one of them. But The Rocketeer and The Abyss are.

 

Anyway, so no change in music, just a change in the numbering?

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oh yea there's plenty of times you can see the cigarette burns on home video versions, and fan-made scans of prints too.

 

I don't understand what you're asking with your last question

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12 minutes ago, Jay said:

oh yea there's plenty of times you can see the cigarette burns on home video versions, and fan-made scans of prints too.

I meant that my brain still registers the reel change even though there is no evidence on the screen. Usually movies I saw a lot of times in the theater.

 

13 minutes ago, Jay said:

I don't understand what you're asking with your last question

 

For example:

On 04/08/2024 at 7:44 PM, enderdrag64 said:

I believe 6m5 New is labelled as "New" in order to indicate that it was rebalanced. Just like last week's cue was originally 6m1 and got rebalanced to 6m4, this week's cue was originally 6m2 and got rebalanced to 6m5.

 

 

Just the numbers change. But he didn't change any music.

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13 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

I meant that my brain still registers the reel change even though there is no evidence on the screen. Usually movies I saw a lot of times in the theater.

 

Oooh, I know exactly what you mean!

 

13 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Just the numbers change. But he didn't change any music.

 

Rebalancing means the cues got renumbered.  The music could also have to change as a result of changing edits, but that can happen whether or not cues are rebalanced.

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Here's the edit I made that approximates the original version of the cue:

 

 

 

When I made it, it seemed to me like the revised opening didn't have any other changes aside from that, and looking at it again, it still seems like there's no significant change to those opening bars.  (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that!)

 

Still, it's nice to have one of the Death Star action cues in the extended alternates section. :)

 

I was also surprised by what the revision was for next week's cue as well...  but now that I know, it totally makes sense!

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30 minutes ago, enderdrag64 said:

 

I'd be curious to hear everyone's thoughts about whether the filmmakers were right to cut this music in the comments.

Yeah, totally agree with you that it was right to leave it out. And I definitely remember 10 year old me being confused as hell why the Mos Eisley entry music was put in the middle of the music for the Death Star scenes on the 97 release!

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On 14/09/2024 at 9:25 AM, enderdrag64 said:

The original cue has just piano and celeste here, where the revised cue adds a triangle, xylophone and tamtam. I believe this percussion was later altered at the podium during the sessions because some of these instruments (especially the tamtam) cannot be heard at all in the final recording.


Ah!  I never noticed until now that the original actually also had an accent for that!  I'd just assumed that there was no accent at all until the revision.

This edit is what I'd been using for that bit up until now:

 

So now knowing the truth about what's on the sheets, here's my new mockup of the original:

Treble Clef:

Transposed to match final recording:

 

 

 

And the revised version with a tam tam hit added:

 

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