Score: A Film Music Documentary Page #5

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out of that theatre.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

[HOLKENBORG] Musically, yes,

it is a symphonic score.

But I mean, it's one of the greatest

scores probably ever written.

It's impossible to think of "Star

Wars" without Williams' music.

["STAR WARS"

"LUKE'S THEME" MUSIC PLAYS]

[MALTIN] The score he did

helped the audience

rediscover the classical

orchestral film score.

["STAR WARS" THEME MUSIC]

Spielberg and Lucas can

lay claim to many things,

and one of them is helping

to reintroduce audiences

to that kind of moviegoing

experience.

Star Wars turned this

sh*t upside down.

[ZIMMER] It was John

Williams that made me,

first of all, realize

that film music could be

of a quality and distinction

that is as great

as any of the classical

composers I grew up with.

There's the traditional

idea of good and bad,

and how they were

exemplified in music.

I like to always

go to "Star Wars,"

because there's those beautiful

themes, John's main theme,

and then there

is the love theme.

["STAR WARS" "LOVE THEME"

MUSIC PLAYS]

But then there's

the Darth Vader theme.

[STAR WARS

"IMPERIAL MARCH" MUSIC]

Dun, dun, dun, dun da dun

It's just so martial

and so broad

that you go, "Oh boy, there's

something not good here."

["IMPERIAL MARCH"

THEME CONTINUES]

The right score for the right

movie at the right time.

That '70s era, that is absolutely

the era of John Williams.

["SUPERMAN" THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

Without his music, Superman's powers

are greatly diminished.

[LAUGHTER]

Believe me, if you try

to fly without that theme,

you go nowhere. One step,

two steps and down.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

[BRIAN TYLER] Everyone

knows the Superman theme,

but the Krypton theme

that comes right before it

That overture, it's mysterious,

it's almost like avant-garde.

["SUPERMAN"

"KRYPTON THEME" MUSIC]

That sets up this really

tuneful double-chorus melody.

Almost makes it, to me,

10 times more the piece.

So it's his way of surrounding

pieces with other pieces.

["SUPERMAN" THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

Most of the world, if you

were to play the music

from "Jaws," or "Star Wars,"

or "Raiders of the Lost Ark,"

most folks would know

exactly what that was.

[BRIAN TYLER] "Raiders

of the Lost Ark."

If you hear the melody

without the rhythm,

you can recognize it.

[SINGS MELODY]

But if you just to the rhythm,

[SINGS RHYTHM]

With no melody you

recognize it either way.

["INDIANA JONES"

THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

Very simple

little sequence of notes.

But I spend more time on those

little bits of musical grammar

to get them just right so

that they seem inevitable.

[TYLER] There's a hooky, tuneful,

well-orchestrated theme,

but I think

that's only half of it.

There's always the bravura part

of the John Williams composition.

The first 8, 16, 32 bars. The great

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" theme.

And then comes the b part.

["INDIANA JONES" THEME MUSIC]

It's less well known, but it's so

beautifully crafted.

I always think that's the part

he writes for himself.

I think he's as brilliant

as people feel he is.

And as popular as his music is,

he's even better than that.

["E.T." THEME ON PIANO]

If it would be convenient

to go into the call.

[PIANO PLAYING]

[SINGS THEME] Yeah.

I like that. As

a matter of fact,

it seems like a very

natural transition.

- [WILLIAMS] Up or down?

- [SPIELBERG] Up.

Maybe once down.

It could go down once

and then go up.

[DEBORAH LURIE] What a score

needs to do has changed,

because of how filmmaking

has changed.

Let's take John Williams,

let's take the end of "E.T."

["E.T." "BICYCLE THEME"

MUSIC PLAYS]

Where are we going?

To the forest!

[LURIE] It is just a wide

open space for music.

Follow me!

When was the last time

that somebody left a space

that open and said, "I want

this to be a music moment"

where you just bring

that tune home."

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

I'll be right here.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

Bye.

We have this vast,

expansive music

with the taking

off of the spaceship.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

John Williams, Steven

Spielberg decide

that we're gonna go

from big music to [WHOOSH],

reminding us who is going

into that spaceship.

We could look at what is happening

in the story as being very sad,

these are farewells.

And at the very end

we hear this coda,

this fanfare that's very

triumphant.

["E.T. END FANFARE" PLAYS]

That is saying that we're looking

at this from Elliot's viewpoint.

That it's not a loss,

but it's almost like saying,

"mission accomplished.

We got E.T. Home."

["E.T." MUSIC ENDS]

[DAVID EWART] In the orchestra,

one of the things we love

is the 10-minute break.

But on tens, when you have

been inspired by the music,

there's an electricity.

["JURASSIC PARK" THEME PLAYS]

On "Jurassic Park,"

you could tell by the look

in your colleague's eyes

that you were not mistaken,

that you had just played something

that was going to almost live eternally.

[STEVE ERDODY] Almost anything

we do with John Williams is

We know it's going

to be unbelievable.

We always leave

the sessions like feeling,

"Why can't all the sessions

be like this?"

["JURASSIC PARK" THEME ENDS]

[DAVID ARNOLD] A lot of the time

you'll pick a studio

because it's appropriate to the sort

of sound that you want to make.

It used to be

a church, obviously.

It's a building that's been here

for a couple hundred years.

You know, it's a church,

and I suppose everyone

thinks that all churches

are haunted somehow.

We have had engineers who've been in here

who've just seen that happen.

You know, chairs just

start spinning around.

[CHAIR CREAKS]

It would be a great way to excuse

yourself, wouldn't it?

If you've made

a terrible mistake.

"It was the ghost that did

that." But no, you know,

all the terrible things that happen

here are always based on people.

Usually me.

I've sort of lived in this

building since about 1994.

- [ARNOLD] Morning.

- [WOMAN] Hi, David.

[ARNOLD] It was pretty derelict

when George Martin in the late '80s

sort of came upon it and decided

this would be the place

to convert into a studio.

If you've ever been in a small room

with a gang of people and shouted a lot,

it sort of chokes the room out.

You know, so you can't

really hear anything

because the sound has

got nowhere to go

so everything piles

in on itself?

That's the same

in an acoustic space.

If we have 110 people in a room,

we've got this

moveable roof panel.

You lift the roof up and it gives you

an extra second and a half of reverb

and so, you know, the sound

can sort of swim around

this gorgeous space with all these

amazing reflective surfaces.

[PLAYING "CASINO ROYALE" THEME]

We use up to 100

mics on a session.

That all gives you the choice

as to how close or how far away

you want to feel from the music.

It's a very different

acoustic to Abbey Road.

[JOE KRAEMER] 86

players total today.

So it's a good size orchestra.

We're here in Abbey

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