The Film Score Thread

some Schifrin











somebody had "Ray of Light" from Sudden Impact up but it was taken down, can't find it anywhere. Schifrin has a nice, unique sound even to his pieces that suit Dirty Harry in particular though I mentioned Kelly's Heroes.

and this won't me popular but

What did some of you folks like about the score for "The Social Network"?

I thought it was pretty generic.

I'm a big fan of Reznor's other work, but I thought it was pretty damn disappointing compared compared to what he can do at his best. It worked for the film, but I wouldn't buy the album. I wouldn't buy the film either.

Mr. Brown wrote:

What did some of you folks like about the score for "The Social Network"?

Loved it. Thought it was the best of the year.

FourDot wrote:

Mr. Brown wrote:

What did some of you folks like about the score for "The Social Network"?

Loved it. Thought it was the best of the year.

Same.

I liked it because it totally drew me into the movie and managed to capture succinctly the emotional tone of the moments and feelings of the characters throughout the film. It also has a solid handful of great standalone tracks, which is always a sign of a good score.

Mr. Brown wrote:

What did some of you folks like about the score for "The Social Network"?

I thought it was pretty generic.

Works for the film. Is nicely non-Oscar-y, so I was happy to see it win on that front. But it's not something I wanna listen to on my own. I hate to say it, but as far as 2010's more electronically flavored scores go, I'll take TRON: LEGACY over THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

The Blue Max is one of Jerry Goldsmith's greatest scores. There's more grandeur and melody packed into these six minutes than David Arnold's produced in his entire career.

STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE DAY were basically Arnold's amateurish attempts at trying to compete with Goldsmith.

Some of my favourite Goldsmith scores are his earliest, including THE BLUE MAX.

THE SAND PEBBLES (1966)



TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970)



The medieval serpent has to be one of the most awkward, grotesque-sounding instruments ever crafted. Also heard in Goldsmith's ALIEN, where it's often told to fluttertongue (rolling one's Rs while playing), making the thing sound like a lost cousin of Chewbacca.

FREUD (1962)



A PATCH OF BLUE (1965)



SECONDS (1966)



OUR MAN FLINT (1966)



LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)



SEBASTIAN (1968)



And of course...

PLANET OF THE APES (1968)



Both using similar tape echo effects.

Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes was very percussive and quite radical. Whereas some of his later work, such as Basic Instinct, which channels Herrmann, has a solemn beauty. He was an exceptionally versatile composer.



Incidentally, I saw Goldsmith conduct in London around 2001. All the audience wanted to hear was Star Trek. :(

ambler wrote:

Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes was very percussive and quite radical.

Very radical, on many levels. Few film had so extensively used serialism (I think Leonard Rosenman THE COBWEB was the earliest) from practically the first reel reel to the last. Even more consonant 'tonal-sounding' passages are essentially serial in construction. And there's the orchestration, which is bizarre. Muted horns with mouth pieces reversed, anklungs, boo bams, bass slide whistle, cuica, resin drums, ram's horn, plunger and harmon mutes, prepared piano, metal sheets etc... the list is endless.

The closest antecedents in the world of 20th century classical I can think of,l would be Edgar Varése and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Not to mention of course the use of tape echo, which was used at the same time by Lalo Schiffrin (BULLITT) and Henry Mancini (ARABESQUE), and later for the trumpet triplet motif on Goldsmith's PATTON.

Another forgotten avant garde score at that time is Henry Mancini's WAIT UNTIL DARK. He used 2 pianos, tuned a 1/4 tone apart, and numerous prepared piano effects such as paper and staples between the strings, or wire brushes and plectrums glissandoing on them.
His main theme was a very obvious main influence (along with Herrmann's PSYCHO) for John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN.

Quote :

IWhereas some of his later work, such as Basic Instinct, which channels Herrmann, has a solemn beauty. He was an exceptionally versatile composer.

Probably THE finest de facto tribute to Herrmann, yet still very much a Goldsmith score. Good use of digital synths too, and a few EWIs.

Quote :

Incidentally, I saw Goldsmith conduct in London around 2001. All the audience wanted to hear was Star Trek. :(

It reminds me of something Brown said in another thread, about how kids (mostly) are only really familiar with these composers' later blockbuster or franchise scores, using John Williams as an example.

4 of my favourite lesser known 70s scores from him, are IMAGES (1972), THE EIGER SANCTION (1976) BLACK SUNDAY (1977) and THE FURY (1978).

Frankenheimer's BLACK SUNDAY was also the very last project Williams worked on before he went on to score you-know-what. The end of an era, literally.



One of the most haunting end titles ever written.



I can't get enough of this.

I think Williams has suffered the composer's equivalent of being typecasted, thanks to STAR WARS. He's still done many fine score since, but few as daring as his 70s work.

RE: STAR TREK - Even in this score, Jerry Goldsmith was still at the cutting edge. Here's a rundown of the score by Bill Wrobel:

(Page 6 +)

http://www.filmscorerundowns.net/goldsmith/startrek.pdf

Fucking mind blowing.

I'd say Goblin not Mancini was the main inspiration for Halloween:

Well, both. Though I hear more in common with the HALLOWEEN 2 theme there. More Gothic/camp if you will.



For the Mancini influence, I was thinking of this cue.

Here's a concert work from 1970 by Jerry Goldsmith, simply titled 'Music for Orchestra.'

Quote :

Music for Orchestra dates from 1970 and was a commission from Leonard Slatkin for a short piece for the St. Louis SO. As Goldsmith notes, "While I was thrilled with the commission, the year was not a good one for me. I was going through a divorce and my mother was seriously ill with cancer. All my personal turmoil - pain, anger and sorrow - went into writing Music for Orchestra." A 12-tone work, Goldsmith continues: "I do think the style is almost anachronistic. But for me thirty years ago, it was a liberating way to express my deepest feelings." The eight-minute piece is certainly stark and violent, though to a follower of the composer's film music it evokes nothing so much as a condensation of the sensibilities which drove his brilliant score for Planet of the Apes (1968). As such, while not likely to have been heard before by most people who will buy this disc, the music is hardly unfamiliar.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/Apr02/Jerry_GOLDSMITH.htm

Sharky wrote:

Quote :

Incidentally, I saw Goldsmith conduct in London around 2001. All the audience wanted to hear was Star Trek. :(

It reminds me of something Brown said in another thread, about how kids (mostly) are only really familiar with these composers' later blockbuster or franchise scores, using John Williams as an example.

I think Williams has suffered the composer's equivalent of being typecasted, thanks to STAR WARS. He's still done many fine score since, but few as daring as his 70s work.

Same thing happens at Williams' concerts, or at least the ones I've been to. Everyone wants to hear Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones, or Harry Potter, as if that's all Williams has ever done.

Frankly, I think his Harry Potter music was just shit he put together in order to make a quick buck.

from what I heard of his Potter score (the first one) it had tracks quite similar to Empire Strikes Back.

I have a liking for some of his early work: Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno...Paper Chase etc Though Empire is one of my most played soundtracks.

Sharky wrote:

Frankenheimer's BLACK SUNDAY was also the very last project Williams worked on before he went on to score you-know-what. The end of an era, literally.

As a rule, I find early Williams more interesting than mid-to-late Williams, but his score for BLACK SUNDAY bores me.

Sharky wrote:

I think Williams has suffered the composer's equivalent of being typecasted, thanks to STAR WARS.

I dunno. It's not like he hasn't done a wide variety of projects since.

Arkadin wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Frankenheimer's BLACK SUNDAY was also the very last project Williams worked on before he went on to score you-know-what. The end of an era, literally.

As a rule, I find early Williams more interesting than mid-to-late Williams, but his score for BLACK SUNDAY bores me.

For me it's one of his finest. Brooding, haunting, and very disturbing. Relentless ostinato, booming ARP 2600, and weeping strings.

Though I can also understand why someone might not like it. It has a tendency to be monotonous in its economy of material, and it's not exactly uplifting listening. It's also rather understated, compared to say JAWS.

Sharky wrote:

I think Williams has suffered the composer's equivalent of being typecasted, thanks to STAR WARS.

I dunno. It's not like he hasn't done a wide variety of projects since.[/quote]

With the exception of Spielberg and Stone, he hasn't worked with many interesting filmmakers since. Before he scored films by Don Siegal, John Frankenheimer, Robert Altman, Brian De Palma, Arthur Penn etc...

Sharky wrote:

For me it's one of his finest. Brooding, haunting, and very disturbing. Relentless ostinato, booming ARP 2600, and weeping strings.

I think there are much, much better scores in this vein (not to mention works of classical composition, in general, that go for a similar approach). I hate to say it, but Williams' work on BLACK SUNDAY strikes me as pretty generic, run-of-the-mill stuff. And I don't know why you find it so haunting and/or disturbing; it's certainly dark, but there's nothing there to send shivers down my spine.

Sharky wrote:

With the exception of Spielberg and Stone, he hasn't worked with many interesting filmmakers since.

Granted, but the filmmaker shouldn't the only thing shaping the direction of the score. And I have to say that Williams' concert work is pretty boring. I suspect Williams shares as much of the blame for the lack of experimentation in his scores as do the creative individuals he's worked with.

Arkadin wrote:

Sharky wrote:

For me it's one of his finest. Brooding, haunting, and very disturbing. Relentless ostinato, booming ARP 2600, and weeping strings.

I think there are much, much better scores in this vein (not to mention works of classical composition, in general, that go for a similar approach). I hate to say it, but Williams' work on BLACK SUNDAY strikes me as pretty generic, run-of-the-mill stuff. And I don't know why you find it so haunting and/or disturbing; it's certainly dark, but there's nothing there to send shivers down my spine.

As for it being generic, I disagree, but it is probably Williams's most Goldsmithian score, though it's still full of his DNA, and even foreshadowing some of his later works (JURASSIC PARK and even NIXON). But that said, Goldsmith's 70s thriller sound was hardly generic in itself.

As for why, or what, the cues Commandos Arrive, Moshevsky's Dead, The Test, and The End hit a chord with me. It's hard to put into words, but it sort of sums up what the film's about at its heart - the seemingly ever ending cycle of terrorism and retribution in the 20th century and beyond, and the hopelessness of it all.

Now where's my razor blade?

Arkadin wrote:

Sharky wrote:

With the exception of Spielberg and Stone, he hasn't worked with many interesting filmmakers since.

Granted, but the filmmaker shouldn't the only thing shaping the direction of the score. And I have to say that Williams' concert work is pretty boring. I suspect Williams shares as much of the blame for the lack of experimentation in his scores as do the creative individuals he's worked with.

Muses and general inspiration means a lot to a composer, I can tell you that. And you've already stated that you think Williams's concert work is pretty boring earlier in this thread, Harms. We know. ;)

While they can also be challenging to work with, auteurs tend to have more of an interest in the musical side of the stage, and thus the composer instinctively has to step up the plate. They tend to push you to one's musical limits.

The truth is, his career was limited by his franchise work, the interesting directors stopped calling in, he's trying prove himself anymore, and he's old. He also ain't Herrmann.

Williams may be old, but bear in mind Herrmann did two of his finest scores in the last years of his life. (Obsession & Taxi Driver.)

Brown and I have discussed Williams a few times and we both rate The Fury highly.

I wrote:

He also ain't Herrmann.

:king:

Nearly all of the great composers petered off the toward the end of their careers, though I do rate Micklos Rosza's DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID quite highly.

But yeah, THE FURY'S a wonderful score.

"As elegant and delicately varied a score as any horror film has ever had" - Pauline Kael.

Williams was on a high at that time, with THE FURY, RAIDERS, BLACK SUNDAY, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, SUPERMAN, STAR WARS, DRACULA, 1941, EMPIRE, ET, etc...

A very telling Jerry Goldsmith interview I found, on the direction of modern film scores:

Quote :

Q: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT FILM COMPOSING TODAY?

JG: I think a great deal of the two Newman brothers, David and Tommy. Also, I think another composer, Cliff Edelman, is a great talent with amazing potential. Elliot Goldenthal seems very interesting to me as well. Then there are the old standbys--John Barry, John Williams and Elmer Bernstein. The newer ones I get a little scared about.

I'm not exactly thrilled about the direction we're going in. I think the commercialism and the avariciousness of certain people has crept in and taken over for the art. I'm frightened with this new assembly line way of doing music.
It's faceless, characterless, skilless, and sounds like the whole orchestra or somebody's playing between C above middle C and C below middle C. They're all playing at once, and the horns are always playing at the top register. That's the way it seems to go on for an hour and ninety minutes, and with that music it doesn't seem to make any sense either.

They're just loud movies. It just gets so discouraging. People are trying to become very efficient and this type of film music is not cheap.

*Q: HOW HAS FILM SCORING CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

JG: It's amazing today how many dual composers there are. I never saw so many shared credits for composing before. How many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?

On a couple of occasions, I've had someone to share the burden with me. It was quite apparent why: the scoring schedule was impossible. I'm not ever going to do it again--doing it twice was quite enough. I've had enough flack for that and was never happy with it.

There are certain people now where it's a factory--a couple of factories grinding out music, and I think it's despicable and ruining the art of film scoring. The music sounds the same. It's a formula that becomes repetitious and is not made with a lot of skill.

Here's a craft, an art that's been developed over years and years that's being demeaned for commercial purposes now. Fortunately, not all filmmakers go for it. I also think schedules have changed--they are very short now. Orchestras and budgets are larger for music now.

That's nice, but it can also be abused and taken advantage of.

There are times we want 85 or 90 musicians, but sometimes forty will do. Sometimes, composers' egos take over and it's a big track to stand up there in front of 90 musicians playing the music. Serving the film is our first consideration and the responsibility of all film composers.

Q: HOW ELABORATE ARE YOUR ELECTRONIC MOCK UPS?

JG: There's a danger with these mock ups. I think they're wonderful, but there are many orchestral things and musical devices you can't do on a computer ... It can become very dangerous when you limit your creative ability to what you can accomplish personally on a computer. I'm concerned with staying away from this.

I'll just write it out on paper like I've been doing for 50 or more years and be done with it. You have to balance this all out.

That's why I find it's better to demonstrate the thematic ideas and the general overall approach with these mock ups, rather than try to demonstrate every single thing. When the composing process is very slow and laborious, they're (electronic mock ups) very thorough.

If I've written twenty bars and after this I hit a wall, I'll go back and start putting it into the sequencer. Sometimes I've written a whole cue out (on paper) and haven't even mocked it up, which is usually by the time I'm half-way through the picture and I don't do anymore because it takes too much time.

If it's a situation where the director can't be at the recording, then I will mock up the whole picture. Normally I only do about half of the film because it takes too much time.

As I continue to do more down the line they get less elaborate to the point where there are no mock ups at all. There's a danger with these mock ups.

I think they're wonderful, but there are many orchestral things and musical devices you can't do on a computer.

You can find yourself saying, "I'll do something else because I can make it work on a computer."

From here: http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/forum/displayquestion.php?topicid=7508

I had to edit the format of the sentences a bit, since in the original source (probably transcribed by ear from a recorded interview), the poster seemed a little trigger happy with the 'return' key...

Goldsmith also repeats himself toward the end, which is unusual.

Sharky wrote:

Nearly all of the great composers petered off the toward the end of their careers

True enough. Herrmann seems to have been the exception to the rule, but then he was an exceptional composer. John Barry's music had an altogether more ponderous quality after his operation. Very beautiful, but somehow too slow for film anymore. I don't think Enigma works particularly well in the context of the film.

As for the Goldsmith's points, they're well made. Maybe many composers became such hacks because large royalties from soundtracks became uncommon? I wonder how many scores have been big sellers in the last 30 years?