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Posted: |
Aug 23, 2021 - 5:13 AM
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By: |
TerraEpon
(Member)
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The Kickstarter having been announced on the Intrada site as well as on their FB, it could be relayed on different sites and forums in different countries. The FSM forum is undoubtedly well known and remains privileged on certain subjects, but fortunately it is not the only one (in my case, in France, Underscores.fr). I'm not too surprised by the 10% figure, although it is perhaps undervalued (I guess we are only counted if we click on the link from this forum, but in some cases the info could be found here and the connection to kickstarter established in another way). The filmmusic community, small as it is, communicates in a variety of ways.
The big thing being, simply, that a lot of people online lurk and never post on message boards. There's been a board I've spent many an hour reading for the past almost four years but have never posted a single post to.
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Posted: |
Aug 23, 2021 - 5:14 AM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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I'm not entirely sure of the outcome Bruce was hoping for with his post, but I can add some marketing context around the promotion. This message board is of course an important channel for the Kickstarter campaign, but it is probably the one that needs the least amount of effort. You guys are all in. As a channel, though, it's pretty small, with 10% of the funds raised coming from this site. Not that 10% is anything to sneeze at, but the project isn't made or broke based on the loyal, but small following here. I think we would have had the same result with or without Yavar's high level of engagement. Although I appreciate his passion. I think the heavy lifting on this campaign came from Jerry Goldsmith himself.
Color me confused how anyone knows that "10% of the funds raised coming from this site." I assume that means the FSM board members, not Lukas Kendall. If so, did the the pledge page have a question about where we heard of the project? I don't recall. Or is Roger saying the $38K is only 10% of the total needed? Or, finally, did he hire member Jurassic T. Park to crunch the numbers after seeing this post?
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=144891&forumID=1&archive=0
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I'm not entirely sure of the outcome Bruce was hoping for with his post, but I can add some marketing context around the promotion. This message board is of course an important channel for the Kickstarter campaign, but it is probably the one that needs the least amount of effort. You guys are all in. As a channel, though, it's pretty small, with 10% of the funds raised coming from this site. Not that 10% is anything to sneeze at, but the project isn't made or broke based on the loyal, but small following here. I think we would have had the same result with or without Yavar's high level of engagement. Although I appreciate his passion. I think the heavy lifting on this campaign came from Jerry Goldsmith himself.
Color me confused how anyone knows that "10% of the funds raised coming from this site." I assume that means the FSM board members, not Lukas Kendall. If so, did the the pledge page have a question about where we heard of the project? I don't recall. Or is Roger saying the $38K is only 10% of the total needed? Or, finally, did he hire member Jurassic T. Park to crunch the numbers after seeing this post?
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=144891&forumID=1&archive=0
Kickstarter tracks how people get to the campaign page. So 10% of what we've raised so far has come from people clicking through the link on this site.
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It certainly explains the reasoning behind Intrada setting up a UK distribution outlet if they receive a similarly high percentage of orders from outside the US.
I wish they would!
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I'm not entirely sure of the outcome Bruce was hoping for with his post, but I can add some marketing context around the promotion. This message board is of course an important channel for the Kickstarter campaign, but it is probably the one that needs the least amount of effort. You guys are all in. As a channel, though, it's pretty small, with 10% of the funds raised coming from this site. Not that 10% is anything to sneeze at, but the project isn't made or broke based on the loyal, but small following here. I think we would have had the same result with or without Yavar's high level of engagement. Although I appreciate his passion. I think the heavy lifting on this campaign came from Jerry Goldsmith himself.
Color me confused how anyone knows that "10% of the funds raised coming from this site." I assume that means the FSM board members, not Lukas Kendall. If so, did the the pledge page have a question about where we heard of the project? I don't recall. Or is Roger saying the $38K is only 10% of the total needed? Or, finally, did he hire member Jurassic T. Park to crunch the numbers after seeing this post?
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=144891&forumID=1&archive=0
Kickstarter tracks how people get to the campaign page. So 10% of what we've raised so far has come from people clicking through the link on this site.
I found it on your onlyfans page. How many click throughs from that? ??
MV
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I'll guess $41,130.
Really curious to see where it ends up and how the final recording turns out!
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I haven't been here in weeks, Yavar, but I wasn't off sulking over having been challenged over facts. My cat had a medical crisis, during which I didn't feel like diving into the acrimony that emerged in this thread. But now that he is safely recovered, I return with my owed reply to you.
Weeks ago I wrote:
It's not too likely that Intrada will record Goldsmith's initial feature score and not include its main title. That saloon-piano music which you dismiss is not stock source music but a Goldsmith melody. I'll be pleased to have it on disc at last.
To which Yavar asked:
What is your source that Goldsmith wrote that bit of source music? I have thought for a few months now that it might likely be him, because he did write a key piece of saloon source music (I think performed by Johnny Williams!) for his second western feature Face of a Fugitive, but I've been in communication with Leigh Phillips about his reconstructing work on this, and he wrote me back saying two important things: 1) "The documents we have state that it isn't Goldsmith (listed as anon)." and 2) that he did reconstruct the piece anyway (even though it's not in the written scores in the Herrick library, because apparently Goldsmith didn't write it) -- "It's been decided to include it as it features several times."
Yavar
Well Yavar, I had no source for my claim. It was just an old assumption -- about which I was wrong. One could think I had learned from having been similarly wrong before... twice in 1973 alone, in fact.
That year I rented two separate Goldsmith titles to screen in my college 16mm film series (with only some of my friends knowing why those pictures were really being inflicted on the student body: my personal film-music interests!). The delayed opening credits of JUSTINE play in the movie over footage of a female belly dancer performing onstage in an Egyptian night club. From the elaborate and compelling rhythms of that cue, I remember being impressed by Goldsmith's apparent ability to evoke that Middle Eastern flavor so convincingly. (Note that this was before either QBVII or THE WIND AND THE LION.) But not until Varese released the actual JUSTINE score through their CD Club did I learn that its main title that I had found so impressively authentic was, in fact, source music and not included.
Then when I rented THE MEPHISTO WALTZ for my campus based on a friend's raving over its effective and sinister score, I had never heard the titular Franz Liszt piece -- so I also mistook that main title for being original Goldsmith, creepily incorporating snatches of "Dies Irae." At least there I figured it out when a pianist performs the Liszt later in the film; but until then I had considered it a brilliant "Jerry" melody.
So when I finally saw BLACK PATCH on TV in 1979, I was impressed by the leap from the dark opening intro cue for the presumed villain -- intense and clad in black -- to an equally intense town marshal, striding purposefully across a boardwalk under the opening titles, backed by a slightly mournful tune heard from the saloon to which the marshal is heading. Yeah, I took it for original, novelty underscore disguised as source music for the composer's very first feature. Instead, I now see I should have considered that insert shots of the saloon's player-piano source might have been the literal source -- as a working prop. That's that!
But since unlike many fans here I have become familiar with BLACK PATCH the film, the Intrada album would be unsatisfying to me without that source music (and its odd beat) appearing in film sequence between the first two cues of the score proper. At least I'm happy to know it will be included, wherever they sequence it.
Finally, Yavar, Lukas wrote me nothing at the time about FIRECREEK; and I was so disappointed over reading that PATCH couldn't happen that I didn't think to ask him further about the Newman score. I had hoped that the pairing would have been commercially stronger than either score individually, along with blending two Western stories from a common studio about separate, small-town lawmen in crisis. Alfred Newman today is my favorite composer after Goldsmith; but in 1968, Goldsmith still came after Morricone for me and I was still four years off from discovering Newman's virtues.
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Steven, thanks so much for the belated reply! I didn't mean to call you out or shame you for disinformation; I honestly was asking if you perhaps had some knowledge that Leigh didn't. After all, stuff can fall through the cracks and that Main Title source cue isn't anything that sounded familiar to me so I'd kinda always thought it *might* be Goldsmith too until Leigh told me the film's cue sheet says "anon" for it.
Just a few days ago I had another lengthy exchange with Leigh -- at that point he had only one cue left to work on, and then he was moving on to reconstructing that source music piece by ear (and dreading it, haha -- like Basil and I, he's not a fan). No word yet on where it'll be sequenced but I guess either way the disappointed party/parties will be able to fix it in iTunes, just like how in the past I moved Craig Huxley's Genesis Project cue after the Horner score in my library. (Cool to see that LLL has opted to do the same with their new issue of that score, not wanting to break up the flow of the main composer's score.)
Here's an interesting further detail which Leigh shared with me in that recent conversation, and it would seem to bolster the accuracy of the Main Title (and all instances of that player piano music in the film) *not* being a Goldsmith composition: on the film's cue sheet (the same one which identifies the composer of the player piano stuff as "anon"), all of the villain's diegetic harpsichord noodling throughout is in fact identified as being Goldsmith! That really shocked me, as it's less distinctive than the Main Title!
I had written to him of the Main Title, "Oh it's horrible. Hate all the harpsichord noodling too! (But Jerry's score is wonderful.)" And he replied, "Which, shockingly, is Jerry's...but literally sounds like he's just doing improv to fill time."
I answered, "So you know for a fact that the harpsichord source was done by Jerry, while all the player pianoish stuff was not?" and he confirmed: "Yes - the cue sheet lists him as composer".
Thankfully, THIS Goldsmith completist draws the line at wanting Jerry's meandering harpsichord source music on this new album...and it sounds like it won't be, thank goodness... but very interesting to learn about!
Leigh further speculated along similar lines to what you observed above: "I do wonder if they literally had a player piano, and piano roll, and just recorded the instrument...I mean the main title visuals match exactly with the audio (as in the notes you "see" the piano playing are correct)"
Yavar
P.S. If anyone's wondering I did ask Leigh's permission to share aspects of our private conversation here in case they might be interesting to folks.
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Well, I for one am relieved to know that these interesting disclosures didn't violate confidences for you! And by the way, I never felt "called out." I can admit to being wrong... and if anything, it bothered me the longer I went without acknowledging my mistaken claim publicly.
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Kickstarter tracks how people get to the campaign page. So 10% of what we've raised so far has come from people clicking through the link on this site.
Of course, everything is additive. I first heard about the campaign here, but I'm pretty sure I clicked the link on the Intrada site to make my pledge.
I could've waited and clicked on the email Intrada sent me, but by then I was already signed up.
The key is to be everywhere there might be interest in what you are doing.
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I think I posted links above for Leigh’s two shares of his reconstruction mock-ups for The Man. Now here are two he’s shared on his professional Facebook page for Black Patch. First up is a fragment of the score’s main action cue:
https://fb.watch/7J3oLcBarV/
And here is his share of the Finale cue, which is a great showcase of Goldsmith’s central theme (and you can really hear his compositional voice in this IMO):
https://fb.watch/7J3BSxefZc/
Can’t wait to hear these performed by an orchestra!
Yavar
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BTW Has anyone mentioned both these scores will probably have a bigger orchestra for these two films than the originals. BLACK PATCH was a pretty low budget independent film picked up by WB and THE MAN was made as a TV movie when those budgets were limited.
That does seem possible, if not likely, doesn't it. Leigh beefed up the Thriller scores where appropriate, and their success probably wouldn't discourage any method used in their undertaking.
It now looks like this may happen to some degree, with "those budgets were limited" being a part of the equation.
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Yeah, what David is referring to is some further conversation I had with Leigh yesterday. Here is the relevant info I’m sure he’s fine with me sharing publicly. The exchange starts with me referencing the action cue fragment posted above, since I seemed to notice a missing element that was in the film recording:
“YAVAR: To my ears it sounded like there was some thunderous percussion missing at the beginning of the clip you posted for that, but maybe it’s just because it’s difficult to capture with mere samples. I’m just comparing with a film rip of course.
LEIGH: No - the percussion is simply more evenly balanced in the samples.
Y: Ah, so it’s due to the original performance/recording.
L: More like the original recording - JG is actually very careful with his perc levels. He ALWAYS marks them beneath the rest of the orch in this score, in every cue. There are some interesting features like this throughout the score as a whole - tiered dynamics. None of this is reflected in the recording. The score is pretty subtle in its dynamic shaping - a lot of this seems to have been lost in the audio.
Y: So this is stuff you would have completely missed if you didn’t have the dots.
L: Yes - to some extent the subtly might have been lost - but as a matter of course I always use tiered levels in my scores - so some of it would have been close by default… but I would have likely had percs slam the shit out of things - which is not his intention (supposedly).
Y: I’ll admit I adore the percussion to the fore in that moment and will miss it if it’s mixed down… but then I’m more familiar with the film recording than most. It’s thrilling.
L: No idea how it will pan out - but the whole orch is tiny (maybe 30 players?) Ours will have that in the string section alone! So it will be a different animal — a very different animal!
Y: Oh so you are expanding the orchestra after all! I thought you’d said you weren’t.
L: We aren’t - the score is as it is - but it makes no sense to limit the string section so heavily. The only reason Jerry did it is due to budget. I suggested they use somewhere between a classical and romantic set up for the strings. So not a huge section, as that will make balances weird with the reduced wind/brass. So it’s a compromise. It’s a sweeping score in places - it warrants the weight. But for the real quiet stuff, I’ve actually written it down for like single players to get that super intimate sound you hear on the picture.
Y: Oh neat! But essentially this is being treated similar to Thriller then, with the string sections expanded in places.
L: Exactly that — Doug was on board with the idea from the outset.
Yeah, I’ve been careful to turn it on when it needs it and to turn it down when appropriate.
Y: Since it’s just single winds as you said (and I assume they are not being doubled), it’s understandable that you’d worry about overpowering them with a larger string section.
L: That’s why I suggested a certain ratio
Y: Fascinating.
L: Winds will carry over the full house, but we want them to be a little more present - hence the not quite classical/not quite romantic sizing. Plus it easy to drive things in the mix these days - but I prefer things to balance on the stage, so the engineer doesn’t have to touch the faders. If the faders remain level, then I know I’ve done my job.”
I figured to share this info the whole context was necessary, to see Leigh’s distinction between “expanding the orchestra” and what they’re doing, because it’s kinda confusing. I’m on board though because I trust Leigh’s musical judgement (and Doug’s, and Bill Stromberg’s).
Yavar
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Will they be employing Union Crickets?
Hah...it will be kinda weird hearing that great sequence sans any crickets now. I've gotten so used to them because it's been the only way to hear that gorgeous music.
Update on the Kickstarter campaign:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/129145902/black-patch-the-man-jerry-goldsmith-new-recording
In the past couple of days it quietly passed the $40,000 mark. With no stretch goals (which could prompt those with deep pockets to increase their pledges), I think that's pretty decent still...$2,000 more after meeting goal during the (often dead) middle weeks of a Kickstarter isn't bad. Dial M went for a pretty lengthy stretch of time (maybe a whole week?) with no new pledges at all. But then it managed to hit goal two days from the end of its deadline, and during those two days it even added on an additional $4,313!
I wonder how many Goldsmith fans are waiting until the last minute on this one, and how the last couple days will compare...
Yavar
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