Hutch,
Good luck with your piece! I'm sure we would all love to hear it.
Shot, what year was "Suddenly" out?
Good luck with your piece! I'm sure we would all love to hear it.
Shot, what year was "Suddenly" out?
COMPOSER's THREAD
- Thread starter Stephen Kaminski
- Start date
Suddenly Last Summer
Stephen, suddenly last summer was out in 1959 and was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
It's got liz taylor and katherine hepburn in it.
If you ever watch it look out for the garden scene - brilliant! fantastic set design.
It's also a compositional masterpiece in terms of picture.
Stephen, suddenly last summer was out in 1959 and was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
It's got liz taylor and katherine hepburn in it.
If you ever watch it look out for the garden scene - brilliant! fantastic set design.
It's also a compositional masterpiece in terms of picture.
Some of my favorite "war movie" scores:
Patton, The Great Escape, (& Chicken Run!) and the recent - Pearl Harbor.
Patton, The Great Escape, (& Chicken Run!) and the recent - Pearl Harbor.
Ai score?
Although it was quite a bad movie... well bad in the sense of the story had multiple endings and speilburg should really have known better!
What did people think to the score of Speilburg / Kubrick's AI?
Although it was quite a bad movie... well bad in the sense of the story had multiple endings and speilburg should really have known better!
What did people think to the score of Speilburg / Kubrick's AI?
Re: Ai score?
All awesome. I remeber the first time I heard Elmer Bernstein's (there's a great name I don't think has been mentioned) score for The Great Escape. I couldn't get it out of my head for months. The same goes for Goldsmith and Patton. When I purchased the score for Chicken Run before the film came out (remember I said I was a Gregson Williams and Powell fan) I knew the movie was gonna be great.
I was feeling good, but now you brought me down. Really? Pearl Harbor??? The movie was really, insanely bad. But I don't remeber the score that well, although I never really liked anything Hans Zimmer did with the exception of Broken Arrow and Gladiator.
I'm sorry but I loved AI, no matter what you fools say it ended fine (okay it would have been better if it ended with David and Teddy trapped under the ocean, but the sentient beings made sense as well). And you can never go wrong with John Williams. I think it's his most ecclectic and subdued work.
Poke
Stephen Kaminski said:
All awesome. I remeber the first time I heard Elmer Bernstein's (there's a great name I don't think has been mentioned) score for The Great Escape. I couldn't get it out of my head for months. The same goes for Goldsmith and Patton. When I purchased the score for Chicken Run before the film came out (remember I said I was a Gregson Williams and Powell fan) I knew the movie was gonna be great.
Stephen Kaminski said:
I was feeling good, but now you brought me down. Really? Pearl Harbor??? The movie was really, insanely bad. But I don't remeber the score that well, although I never really liked anything Hans Zimmer did with the exception of Broken Arrow and Gladiator.
Shot Renegade said:
I'm sorry but I loved AI, no matter what you fools say it ended fine (okay it would have been better if it ended with David and Teddy trapped under the ocean, but the sentient beings made sense as well). And you can never go wrong with John Williams. I think it's his most ecclectic and subdued work.
Poke
I have to agree with Baz about Jerry Goldsmith. Like John Williams, he started writing in the early 50's and is still going strong with an incredible range. My favorite score of Goldsmith's is his score for "Rudy" - especially the main theme and the piece behind the football game at the end. Nice music and truly in the style for which I most enjoy writing.
Back at FSU, when I studied film scoring, they showed us a documentary of Earle H. Hagen. Now there's a little known name although his first work is documented in 1947 and he too has been going strong every since. The reason he's little know is because he almost exclusively composed for TV series. One of my favorites of his was the theme for Mod Squad - a 1968 TV series (which, by the way, had it's theme also show up in Cable Guy.) But, everyone knows at least one of his tunes including themes from Gomer Pyle, Andy of Mayberry, Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, Mash, That Girl, and Dukes of Hazard.
Another great TV composer, who started in the late 50's, is Lalo Schifrin (born in Argentina) who is probably best known for Mission: Impossible's TV theme and the adapted movie theme - which he also did. In fact, that theme is what carried him in 1996 from TV themes to film scores - although he hasn't done anything significant since he made the break.
Can't leave this note without mentioning one other TV composer. I started noticing his name back in 1975 because he had the same name as a very good friend of mine - Mark Snow. Also, I noticed him because his first TV theme was Starsky and (should I say it?) Hutch... He has worked consistently for the last 29 years with close to 200 TV themes to his credit - probably best known for X Files.
Regards,
Hutch
Back at FSU, when I studied film scoring, they showed us a documentary of Earle H. Hagen. Now there's a little known name although his first work is documented in 1947 and he too has been going strong every since. The reason he's little know is because he almost exclusively composed for TV series. One of my favorites of his was the theme for Mod Squad - a 1968 TV series (which, by the way, had it's theme also show up in Cable Guy.) But, everyone knows at least one of his tunes including themes from Gomer Pyle, Andy of Mayberry, Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, Mash, That Girl, and Dukes of Hazard.
Another great TV composer, who started in the late 50's, is Lalo Schifrin (born in Argentina) who is probably best known for Mission: Impossible's TV theme and the adapted movie theme - which he also did. In fact, that theme is what carried him in 1996 from TV themes to film scores - although he hasn't done anything significant since he made the break.
Can't leave this note without mentioning one other TV composer. I started noticing his name back in 1975 because he had the same name as a very good friend of mine - Mark Snow. Also, I noticed him because his first TV theme was Starsky and (should I say it?) Hutch... He has worked consistently for the last 29 years with close to 200 TV themes to his credit - probably best known for X Files.
Regards,
Hutch
[I never really liked anything Hans Zimmer did with the exception of Broken Arrow and Gladiator.
]
I don't remember the Broken Arrow score, but I'm so Gladiator! (OK, I'll wait for the chuckle...)
I liked the Gladiator score on it's own merrits, but I thought the main theme had NOTHING to do with the time and place of the story. Why have an Indian singer singing chants in a Roman setting? It didn't make sense to me. I thought it was great music, but misplaced in the film. Beautiful, but wrong.
]
I don't remember the Broken Arrow score, but I'm so Gladiator! (OK, I'll wait for the chuckle...)
I liked the Gladiator score on it's own merrits, but I thought the main theme had NOTHING to do with the time and place of the story. Why have an Indian singer singing chants in a Roman setting? It didn't make sense to me. I thought it was great music, but misplaced in the film. Beautiful, but wrong.
And how do you get the quote to come up in that white little box on these posts?
TV composers do sometimes get left on the side unfortunately. Mark snow is one of my favorites as well. One of John Williams' first TV gigs was "Lost In Space". Great theme.
Stephen Kaminski said:
Stephen,
To make it simple, go to a post where they are not quoting anyone. In the upper right corner, click on the quote button. Now their entire message will be one single quote on your note. Just click preview at that point to see the effect. Back in the editor for your note, You will notice a a quote tag at the beginning and a slash quote tag at the end. Everything inside will appear in the quote box. If you don't want to quote the entire post, remove what you don't want down to just what you want to quote.
Also, you can type in something, highlight it, and click the quote button in the editor and it will put whatever you highlighted in quotes too. In fact, you can just type in the bracket, quote, bracket yourself if you want to and then at the end of the quote type in the bracket slash quote bracket.
Hope that all makes sense. Happy quoting, but don't quote me on it.
Just kidding...
Regards,
Hutch
Hutch wrote:
OK, I think I got it now. Thanks Hutch.
OK, I think I got it now. Thanks Hutch.
Page 7! We are rollin'!
One other recent composer not named yet is Don Davis. (Matrix, Jurassic Park III...) John Williams hand-picked Davis to do Jurassic Park III as a sort of successor. I met Don while he was recording the original Matrix score in LA. What a talented nice guy. Here is someone who can come in with an original approach but still have that "conformist" sound. He came up in the ranks as an orchestrator.
By the way, we were speaking about Goldsmith's score of Planet of the Apes. His mentor who played the virtuoso piano that I could not remember was Jacob Gimpel. Did you know Goldsmith used upside down stainless steel mixing bowls with mallets as part of the percussion? This might come in handy at your next Trivial Pursuit game night.
8)
By the way, we were speaking about Goldsmith's score of Planet of the Apes. His mentor who played the virtuoso piano that I could not remember was Jacob Gimpel. Did you know Goldsmith used upside down stainless steel mixing bowls with mallets as part of the percussion? This might come in handy at your next Trivial Pursuit game night.
8)
Road to perdition
Who did the music to 'Road to Perdition' and what did people think?
Who did the music to 'Road to Perdition' and what did people think?
Stephen Kaminski said:
I liked Davis's work on the original Matrix, but I found the score for the other two to be mere rehashes. I did like the score for JPIII, even though it (again) was a rehash of the original theme.
Shot Renegade said:
Thomas Newman. He also did the score for American Beauty by Mendes. But his best score is by far for Finding Nemo.
Poke
Thomas Newman! I knew that damn it! - hang on a sec... wasn't one of the cast 'paul newman?' :? heheee...
Without going too much off topic: I was shocked by Mendes' attempt at Road to Perdition. Especially after American Beauty - er... what happened mr mendes?!!!?
Without going too much off topic: I was shocked by Mendes' attempt at Road to Perdition. Especially after American Beauty - er... what happened mr mendes?!!!?
Shot Renegade said:
What happened is that he made a damn good movie.
Poke
Star Trek, the original movie, was on last night. What great music. It's a case where the music is a significant part of the experience - not subtle, but bold (kind of like Star Wars, Superman, etc...)
I really took time to pay attention to the music since I've seen the movie more than once. The cues he had to write for the score were difficult to say the least - especially in terms of timing.
It reminds me of an interview I heard with John Williams about two years ago. Apparently he was pedaling his first (non film related) album of original works. He stated that it was wonderful to be able to write something where he didn't have to write 8.5 seconds of suspense, followed by 11 seconds of crescendo up to a 2 second climax followed by 7 seconds of peace leading into... you get the idea... (I paraphrased his comments.) Man can I relate! When possible it's a wonderful relief when the editor can cut to the music.
I really took time to pay attention to the music since I've seen the movie more than once. The cues he had to write for the score were difficult to say the least - especially in terms of timing.
It reminds me of an interview I heard with John Williams about two years ago. Apparently he was pedaling his first (non film related) album of original works. He stated that it was wonderful to be able to write something where he didn't have to write 8.5 seconds of suspense, followed by 11 seconds of crescendo up to a 2 second climax followed by 7 seconds of peace leading into... you get the idea... (I paraphrased his comments.) Man can I relate! When possible it's a wonderful relief when the editor can cut to the music.
OK, that brings up a whole other can 'o worms...
I CAN'T STAND when a filmmaker wants music BEFORE I see a scene. They will attempt to describe the scene and say, "I need the music ahead of time to help me edit the film/scene." - No, no, no, no! I've done this a few times, under much duress. If this comes up now I tell them to pick some existing music (bach, mozart, newman, williams, etc...) that fits the mood of the movie and use this as a TEMP track. (Temp tracks can be both good and bad, but that's another discussion.) I feel that the scene tells me the tempo, the key, the emotion, etc. and that the music written for that scene will be "married" to it and non other. Editing the other way, film to music, comes out looking like a corporate training video.
But that's just my opinion.
I CAN'T STAND when a filmmaker wants music BEFORE I see a scene. They will attempt to describe the scene and say, "I need the music ahead of time to help me edit the film/scene." - No, no, no, no! I've done this a few times, under much duress. If this comes up now I tell them to pick some existing music (bach, mozart, newman, williams, etc...) that fits the mood of the movie and use this as a TEMP track. (Temp tracks can be both good and bad, but that's another discussion.) I feel that the scene tells me the tempo, the key, the emotion, etc. and that the music written for that scene will be "married" to it and non other. Editing the other way, film to music, comes out looking like a corporate training video.
But that's just my opinion.
Just visualizing how I will be approaching my composers, I have to agree that I could never demand a score based off of what I visualize the scene to be. Maybe a generic loop or something like that, but if its gonna be scored, the composer needs to have the timecode burned scene in front of them most definitely. But Steven you also have to keep in mind a filmmaker may want those sample loops or whatever to play over the rough edits for the studio or investors. I have seen a good number of screeners or rough edits that only have the beginning of a song laid over a scene just to set the mood - a temp track - but it would still be best to get those quickies from the composer rather than pre-existing music... it might screw up the creativity of the composer to have to follow in the line of a Mozart or a Williams.
Besides that I would use Horner's Rocketeer theme for every scene so that wouldn't do you much good
Besides that I would use Horner's Rocketeer theme for every scene so that wouldn't do you much good