This is an excerpt featuring what amounts to about 2.5 years of work. Not on this one scene, no. Just overall. Hope it's enjoyed.
Outstanding work here (and I won't dare ask how you all got access to the elements used to make this video). Horner's score seems to be the only good thing going on and its a shame it was jettisoned. I never could get into the replacement score.
I haven't seen the movie but here I was appalled at how poor the acting from the leads was. Granted, I find Romeo and Juliet to be among Shakespeare's lesser works (give me Julius Caesar or Twelfth Night any day). But the acting here is almost appallingly bad and the hackneyed delivery of the dialogue just comes off like a middle school production of the play. I'm guessing that's why Horner was jettisoned. I know there's stories out there about the producers commissioning Korzeniowski and overruling the director who loved Horner's score. I'm guessing everyone with power got cold feet. But it sure isn't the music's fault. But, if history has taught us anything, the music is the first thing to be changed when the ship is sinking.
I love the Korzeniowski score, but apart from that the real highlight of the film is Paul Giamatti as Friar Lawrence. He’s just amazing, as might be expected. I think Hailee Steinfeld is a wonderful and talented actress… but yeah maybe Shakespeare just isn’t for her, or she was given poor direction (didn’t anyone bother to tell her what “wherefore art thou Romeo” actually means?)
Hope the Horner score does get officially released some day.
Outstanding work here (and I won't dare ask how you all got access to the elements used to make this video).
My friend and I joked that it's a 35 hour YouTube Documentary all in itself to tell that one.
It is indeed a long story filled with extreme excitement, apprehension, a lost iPhone, a lot of trial and error, electrical issues, and a dude who clearly didn't pay his debts.
If that sounds vague and a bit stupid, it is....but it's also entirely true!
Hope the Horner score does get officially released some day.
Yavar
For the time being that's as likely as dogs and cats actually being eaten in Springfield. Like for real.
Although....
For years here in Canada there was a buffet franchise called Mandarin that was rife with those kinds of rumors.....
This is an excerpt featuring what amounts to about 2.5 years of work. Not on this one scene, no. Just overall. Hope it's enjoyed.
Excellent work Avatarted! Love it. So nice to see the footage of Horner conducting.
Would love to see your work on THE WEDDING CEREMONY/TYBALT'S JEALOUSY, ROMEO and TYBALT DUEL, THE FAMILIES GRIEVE and EMBRACE at the end which goes right into ROMEO & JULIET'S FUNERAL FINALE. That would be awesome if you could post those. BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO! I know Horner always wanted to do ROMEO & JULIET. Such a shame what happened. You do him honor with this restoration. I can see him smiling. Thank you so very much for your amazing and appreciated work! It is a wonderful tribute to the Maestro!
For the Finale/Funeral we can get the idea here with Horner's music over it, but your work with the superb excellent mixing of Music AND Dialogue, it truly would be so great to see. Thanks again Avatarted! Looking forward to seeing much more of your great R&J James Horner restorations.
For me the Horner Score is one of the most beautiful he has ever written. Some years ago I had arranged and played myself a piano cover of his song „Our love is like the Wind“. I hope you enjoy it:
For me the Horner Score is one of the most beautiful he has ever written. Some years ago I had arranged and played myself a piano cover of his song „Our love is like the Wind“. I hope you enjoy it:
Excellent work Avatarted! Love it. So nice to see the footage of Horner conducting.
Would love to see your work on THE WEDDING CEREMONY/TYBALT'S JEALOUSY, ROMEO and TYBALT DUEL, THE FAMILIES GRIEVE and EMBRACE at the end which goes right into ROMEO & JULIET'S FUNERAL FINALE. That would be awesome if you could post those. BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO! I know Horner always wanted to do ROMEO & JULIET. Such a shame what happened. You do him honor with this restoration. I can see him smiling. Thank you so very much for your amazing and appreciated work! It is a wonderful tribute to the Maestro!
Wedding / Tybalt / duel are all one sequence, one cue. That's the cue where preview audiences heard the Sneakers / Pelican Brief-style suspense music.
The thing about this was as we described in the opening of the video, this was done using the actual film and music stems. This was not an AI approximation or anything of the sort.
It was a great collaboration, where I did the score restoration and sync of James Horner's print take version of the cue (hence the cut-up nature of his conducting, the final cue being made of fragments of multiple takes which makes for a seamless sound, but a very choppy video), while my colleague did the piano reduction of the orchestral score to scroll on screen and took both video sequences (score restoration and JH) and blended them all together in ways I have no talent for.
It was a truly collaborative effort right down to the thumbnail!
For the Finale/Funeral we can get the idea here with Horner's music over it, but your work with the superb excellent mixing of Music AND Dialogue, it truly would be so great to see. Thanks again Avatarted! Looking forward to seeing much more of your great R&J James Horner restorations.
For me the Horner Score is one of the most beautiful he has ever written. Some years ago I had arranged and played myself a piano cover of his song „Our love is like the Wind“. I hope you enjoy it:
For me the Horner Score is one of the most beautiful he has ever written. Some years ago I had arranged and played myself a piano cover of his song „Our love is like the Wind“. I hope you enjoy it:
Wow wee, two and-a-half years of work. Good to hear it in context of the film. I guess it services the film well, enough, but it feels like it just kind of sound the same and never does anything different for the scene, skipping one minute to the next, like you're still musically at the same point. I haven't seen the film, so I can't comment on how Abel handled the scene.
YouTube's got you covered, Justin... 45 seconds into this the Korzeniowski cue starts:
I personally prefer the Korzeniowski score which is one of my favorite scores of the 21st century (for this scene I think it has more direction/development, and also a more memorable theme), but I'm also a fan of the Horner score (it's still quite lovely, even if derivative).
I find the Korzeniowski cue to be way too big, as if it's a massive piece of music that was just turned down in volume. It makes sense that the music isn't subtle - this is Romeo and Juliet after all - but it's such a huge contrast to the Horner score, which is far more restrained and gentler in its sound. Horner's approach is simple, takes its time, while Abel's is (beginning aside) big and grand but overly so.
That is actually a major factor in why Horner's music wasn't working for the producers:
They wanted "Legends of the Fall" Horner, but instead hired "House of Sand and Fog" Horner.
Of course I'm biased, I spent two and a half years working on this thing off and on - I'd take months-long breaks just to clear my head and find new ways to achieve better results in the film editing which is a long story in itself, but basically I'm a rank amateur who sought out to make something as professional as I could with my limitations, with professional assets at my disposal. It's kind of crazy and I say that no hyperbole intended.
I did the entire movie - the theatrical version of it - and then went back and spent the majority of those 2.5 years on restoring the original intent of the film, which admittedly isn't very different. The biggest difference in the theatrical cut versus the intent, was the first 20 minutes or so were shuffled into different order to introduce characters faster, and the pace of the film was trimmed to make it more brisk. The impression I got was they wanted to make it 'faster, more intense' for short attention spans. The restoration of this longer cut is about 18 minutes longer, but changes absolutely nothing in terms of the basic plot. It's just allowed to breathe a bit more.
I wish we could screen it for the masses, but alas that's not something we're allowed to do. We can't do so and claim Fair Use on such a thing. Videos like what we're planning are more transformative and will be in-depth with insight into the film and score.
My friend was absolutely invaluable not only for providing the material, but going over it all with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that this whole project covers all the bases from start to finish. Absolutely the best collaboration I've ever had in my life! (If he wants his name out there, that's his choice, I won't make it for him)
Add in replacing the replacement score (such a curious thing to say), and that was actually one of the easier parts of this whole endeavor. Most of it was right there plain - just put it where it belonged. The rest (revisions, rescore, etc) were more of an educated guess that worked wonderfully well.
I feel like I love the movie not because it's good (it isn't) but because my friend and I spent so much time on it that we grew to love it warts and all.
Hailee Steinfeld is great...in other roles. Edge of Seventeen, even Hawkeye. just not in this movie. She was reading lines with little to no understanding of them.
Douglas Booth was a bit too monotone, but at least I believed him when he spoke. He brought his A-game to the scene with Friar when he's breaking down after being banished. I liked the bloke.
Christian Cooke as Mercutio and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Benvolio were better than their leads with the roles they had.
Ed Westwick as Tybalt...well. He was the villain. (he's the reason why the Sneakers / Pelican Brief piano riffs are in the score.) Was Gossip Girl still on TV when he did this? I can't recall.
As Yavar said, Paul Giamatti was definitely the MVP of the cast. Lesley Manville as Nurse was completely committed, standing rightfully alongside him.
It's been very educational. I learned new ways of thinking about how music and the visual can work together (or against each other), and the line that can blur or even break between artistic intent and commercial intent. Sacrificing integrity for audience scores, personal vision being taken over by studio meddling. Nothing groundbreaking, just very eye opening.
My friend and I can confidently say we are the world's foremost authority on Carlo Carlei's Romeo & Juliet (2013) which is both kind of neat to say and a bit cringe at the same time. There are worse things to be an authority on...but everyone's got something!
Yes, I probably talked about it earlier in this massive thread, but I prefer the Korzeniowski over the Horner too. I felt Horner was a bit too "obvious" and on-the-nose, while Korzeniowski was more restrained, adding his more European rather than Hollywood take on the story.
That being said, I think the Horner is absolutely fine, and it's a shame it won't get a commercial release in the foreseeable future. The project Avatarded talks about -- i.e. putting the Horner back in -- sounds insane, but kudos to him and his associates for having the stamina and interest to do so.
The project Avatarded talks about -- i.e. putting the Horner back in -- sounds insane, but kudos to him and his associates for having the stamina and interest to do so.
Oh it is insane. Maddeningly frustratingly insane at times, but we felt was absolutely worth it for how much we learned about how the sausage is made in addition to what we also felt was righting a wrong....and that has absolutely nothing to do with Abel Korzeniowski or his music.
