Given that INTRADA RAMBO II miss some few seconds from the THE MAP and don't seem to have all of the film-mix included, And THE TERMINATOR Milan that does not seem to have all score either, it got me wondered about the following....
When the labels are releasing music what happens to the music on the tapes - is it going back to the vault or don't they (labels, studio, rights-holder, etc) have digital files of the music (transfered from the tapes from an earliere issue of the score)
Seldom does a film contain the music as originally written and intended by the composer. It's rare that a score ends up in the film untouched. The director or producers often make changes on the dub stage. Cues are re-edited, parts of other cues are inserted into existing cues - even temp cues from other films are kept because they are preferred over the newly composed cue (and are licensed for re-use). The soundtrack release will likely have the cues as originally written and won't necessarily match what's in the film, which would be my preference as a collector. Older films are most likely stored in the studio vaults as 35mm mag or very old films on nitrate film. Some studios have transferred their library of nitrate to 35mm mag or tape over the years and some now are digitizing their library. But who pays for that? It's an expensive time-consuming process that the studios have to pay for themselves. You'd think they would want to protect their assets by digitizing but instead most still maintain their original assets in climate controlled warehouse vaults or at Iron Mountain vaults. They will digitize on an individual need - if a title is going to undergo a restoration perhaps.
