Yes, you rarely see that in today's films. Many directors today want more obscure, minimalistic theming, and like soundscapes over strong motivic material.
This is one of my favorite John Williams pieces ever, especially for Star Wars. Every theme bobs in and out seamlessly and the intensity is high. Great analysis!
I have listened to this score sometime last week and really wanted to see someone do an analysis of it. Thank you so much! This made me very happy seeing a new video. Thank you so much for your hard work!
Thank you for posting this I cannot stand this film but always like to hear Williams use the Tie fighter Attack cue from STAR WARS Still a most amazing track 45 years later.
I love these breakdowns; John Williams shows genius even when it’s not obvious to the ear. I’d love to see some analyses of John Powell’s action music in Solo - particularly Train Heist/Marauders Arrive, Mine Mission, and Into The Maw!!
This is an amazing transcription of what is probably one of my favorite tracks in all of the saga. I'm curious, was it done all by ear, or did you manage to get ahold of the sheets somehow?
This kind of storytelling through music, to my sadness, is something many of today's directors do NOT want in their films. The leaning trend for Hollywood scores to create much more obscure sounds than themes to avoid saying who's the hero, who's the villain, etc. Williams is an old-school kind of a composer that stands out, especially now, because his type of scoring and orchestration choices are rare. An especially rare choice for orchestration is his use of woodwinds. Many films today, for some reason, rely so much more on electronics and synthesizers (are we in the 1980s again?) over acoustical instruments, especially the woodwinds.
With more recent scores his action cue scoring has been a lot more focused, you don't get quite as many elements being layered - compare this to something from ROTJ for example. I wonder if its a concious decision in a cinematic world now dominated by SFX.
Great job! Curious 4:58 about measure 20 of 8M76 "To the Target". The film has measure 20 modulating to F-sharp with the melody on high strings and woodwinds. The album omits this measure entirely. Your version has measure 19 repeated into 20 and has the audio for measure 19 looped instead of using the FYC recording. What exactly is the "real" version?
This would be a score reduction of the original "real" score, the fully orchestrated one. Multiple times a measure in this video wasn't in the film, obviously David McCaulley didn't just make it up, they were changed, either during recording or in post. I'd say most of these changes were probably made during the actual recording session since I don't hear any signs of the audio being altered, but they definitely worked with the exact same sheet music this video was made from.
