That's funny, since there's not a moment in his Star Wars films - or Indiana Jones, for that matter - where the musical score doesn't dominate the action.
The Music of Discovery
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That's funny, since there's not a moment in his Star Wars films - or Indiana Jones, for that matter - where the musical score doesn't dominate the action.
Star Wars, George Lucas and John Williams is a positive example of what I meant - with John Williams, as Lucas said, you forget he is even there - the music is so in tune with your emotions that it might as well be coming from your own mind - with Michael Giachinno in the 2009 movie, this wasn't the case - I personally felt the music was very overpowering, and didn't match the scene - such as during George Kirk's death (which sounded like a flashback from Lost).
Who, living, would I say has recently composed a soundtrack that I would like to see in Star Trek?
Probably Hans Zimmer's "Interstellar" score.
P.S. I don't mean musical wallpaper.
I can't find it now, but I thought I read that the music for that promo was an audition piece by the guy they actually ended up hiring to do the music.
There's a big difference between elevating the drama and distracting the viewer. Williams manages to get noticed without distracting.
I've always considered Williams one of my favorite composers precisely because he doesn't do what you're talking about at all. Williams' scores are iconic and atmospheric and impossible to ignore. That's what I want in a movie score.
A score that actually blends into the movie - say, Hans Zimmer's Batman Begins score - bores me to tears whenever I try to listen to it without the movie there, and while it technically does support the movie the way a score needs to, it still feels noticeably 'absent', even when watching the movie.
Incidentally - I absolutely loved Interstellar's score, but it's completely the wrong tone for Star Trek and the volume alone pretty much negates any claim of it not being 'overpowering'. In fact, I would say large portions of that score are specifically designed to be overpowering (because space is overwhelming).
I fear that they're both unavailable at the moment due to previous and inescapable commitments...
Just a bit more on Williams: the two examples that sprang to mind thinking about this question are both from Star Wars. One is in the first movie, that scene where Luke goes outside and looks up at the moons. The other is the ending of Empire Strikes Back, when everybody says goodbye and then the Falcon flies away. The drama and the soaring music tug at the heart-strings every time.
Speaking seriously, I must say that the hope is that the job would be taken up by a composer who would show a little bit of character when it comes to impose a melodic style, recently hollwyood soundtracks focus a lot on the electronic and rhythmic components.
@grendelsbayne - I think people are mistaking "fits in perfectly in tone to the point you don't notice" with "musical wallpaper" - USS Einstein isn't suggesting a sedate score, or an unmemorable one. John Williams and Howard Shore are memorable as hell, to people like us, who actually pay attention to film soundtracks. But to the general cinema going auidence, they are not intrusive or notacable - when say, the Imperial March kicks in, it fits the scene perfectly - when Giachinno is blasting his bombastic score over the Starfleet symbol at the start of 'Star Trek' it is really odd to me for some reason; it seemed odd in the cinema at the time, although I have taught myself to accept it - I don't think it was simply a lack of familiar lietmotifs or whatever - because I love Horner and Eidelman, and they are hardly referring back to TOS or TMP all the time.
Maybe it just comes down to taste, and Giachinno seems quite polarising in that regard. I don't know if it's that his style is so recognisably and permenantly associated with Lost, and it's psuedo mystical plot full of heartugging revelations accompanied by his misty-eyed score. Bear McReary's work too, is a bit too closely associated with BSG and Terminator: TSCC in my mind. It's almost like their music itself is 'mystical', where Star Trek's humanism is more restrained and empirical - so like when George Kirk dies, it's almost as if Giachinno' score is trying to tell us we should be feeling some kind of mystical reverance for the moment - where Horner would have just expressed the facts; like Spock's death conveyng the feeling of loneliness and loss as Kirk loses his best friend.
But I don't like framing things in terms of negatives, and what not to do, so constructive suggestions:
Brian Reitzell from Hannibal for something avant gard. Maybe Christopher Franke from Babylon 5. Or the guy from Mass Effect? Hell, why not just get a Japanese games composer like Nobuo Uematsu to give it a go?
Maybe it just comes down to taste, and Giachinno seems quite polarising in that regard. I don't know if it's that his style is so recognisably and permenantly associated with Lost, and it's psuedo mystical plot full of heartugging revelations accompanied by his misty-eyed score. Bear McReary's work too, is a bit too closely associated with BSG and Terminator: TSCC in my mind. It's almost like their music itself is 'mystical', where Star Trek's humanism is more restrained and empirical - so like when George Kirk dies, it's almost as if Giachinno' score is trying to tell us we should be feeling some kind of mystical reverance for the moment - where Horner would have just expressed the facts; like Spock's death conveyng the feeling of loneliness and loss as Kirk loses his best friend.
But I don't like framing things in terms of negatives, and what not to do, so constructive suggestions:
Brian Reitzell from Hannibal for something avant gard. Maybe Christopher Franke from Babylon 5. Or the guy from Mass Effect? Hell, why not just get a Japanese games composer like Nobuo Uematsu to give it a go?
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@grendelsbayne - I think people are mistaking "fits in perfectly in tone to the point you don't notice" with "musical wallpaper" - USS Einstein isn't suggesting a sedate score, or an unmemorable one. John Williams and Howard Shore are memorable as hell, to people like us, who actually pay attention to film soundtracks. But to the general cinema going auidence, they are not intrusive or notacable - when say, the Imperial March kicks in, it fits the scene perfectly - when Giachinno is blasting his bombastic score over the Starfleet symbol at the start of 'Star Trek' it is really odd to me for some reason; it seemed odd in the cinema at the time, although I have taught myself to accept it - I don't think it was simply a lack of familiar lietmotifs or whatever - because I love Horner and Eidelman, and they are hardly referring back to TOS or TMP all the time.
Maybe it just comes down to taste, and Giachinno seems quite polarising in that regard. I don't know if it's that his style is so recognisably and permenantly associated with Lost, and it's psuedo mystical plot full of heartugging revelations accompanied by his misty-eyed score. Bear McReary's work too, is a bit too closely associated with BSG and Terminator: TSCC in my mind. It's almost like their music itself is 'mystical', where Star Trek's humanism is more restrained and empirical - so like when George Kirk dies, it's almost as if Giachinno' score is trying to tell us we should be feeling some kind of mystical reverance for the moment - where Horner would have just expressed the facts; like Spock's death conveyng the feeling of loneliness and loss as Kirk loses his best friend.
But I don't like framing things in terms of negatives, and what not to do, so constructive suggestions:
Brian Reitzell from Hannibal for something avant gard. Maybe Christopher Franke from Babylon 5. Or the guy from Mass Effect? Hell, why not just get a Japanese games composer like Nobuo Uematsu to give it a go?
Honestly, I do feel like there's a certain gap here in terms of describing the same things somewhat differently that unfortunately makes this conversation kind of difficult to navigate.
At the same time, though, I simply can't agree with the idea of Williams' music being in any way 'unnoticeable'. Yeah, it fits the themes perfectly, but that does not mean no one notices it. Even among the general audience, I've heard people walk out of the movies humming the music very consciously - and the Imperial March itself has basically taken on a life of its own completely separate from the movies, precisely because it is so incredibly memorable.
I used the the word noticeable for lack of a better way to describe it - but basically, it's not what I meant.
Perhaps a better way of saying it would be what SpaceLama said; Giachinno's score tries to introduce an interpretation of events above and beyond what is happening - meta - George Kirk's death having extra meaning because it is the birth of a culture hero - but that ain't what Star Trek is - it isn't a superhero movie, and Kirk isn't Clark Kent (a modern messiah figure), his dad isn't the Virgin Mary, accompanied by warbling sacrifice music - his birth has no more or less inherent meaning than another humanoid in the Federation - it's what he does later that makes him great. Where Horner or someone might have just emphasized the emotions of the moment (tension as he carries out his desperate plan); i.e. a shrill tone when Khan takes his helmet off, a lonely mournful one when Spock dies, a spiritual one as the genesis planet forms - Giachinno is saying 'this moment has significance beyond it's actual content' - perhaps that's more the idea of JJ Abrams, I dunno.
But alas, perhaps that is just part of the wider problem with the new movies, which I have forced myself to ignore, in order to just enjoy them like everyone else, as a nice piece of entertainment with no broader implications - to blank out everything that goes against Star Trek's broader themes and ideas. Let's have a look at some superheroic mystical happenstance:
- A black hole created by Spock 2387 "happens" to arrive at Kirk's precise moment of birth, out of all 12 billion years of history (and the same precise location in all space).
- It "happens" to be the vehicle by which his greatest companion just happens to be involuntarily coming to the past, as he "happened" to create it.
- He "happens" to enter Starfleet Academy despite massive changes to the timeline, so radical that they have altered technological development.
- He "happens" to meet his entire command staff and get posted to the same ship, with all of them, each happening to be in the same positions.
- He "happens" to meet Montgomery Scott, one of his closest companions, in a several mile radius, of a random planet, out of hundreds in the Federation, out of billions in the galaxy, after happening to be marooned at a random point on it's tens of thousands of square miles.
Perhaps Giachinno's score isn't so much the problem.... as JJ Abrams turning Kirk into Clark Kent/Jesus of Nazareth - he wanted/believed in/knew how to make a superhero movie full of random bible-like miracles, and rammed Star Trek into that paradigm - even sodding Paul Artreides, the sodding Muad'dib doesn't have such improbable events surrounding his life, and is an actual literal messiah.
There was far too much destiny bollocks in that movie, and Giachinno was probably just interpreting the script he got.
Anyway, Laaaaaaaaa la laaaaaaaaa, laaa la, laaaa la laaaaa.... None of that is remotely strange or unbelievable, and I will continue enjoying the new movies. *Whistles a happy tune and forgets*.
- A black hole created by Spock 2387 "happens" to arrive at Kirk's precise moment of birth, out of all 12 billion years of history (and the same precise location in all space).
- It "happens" to be the vehicle by which his greatest companion just happens to be involuntarily coming to the past, as he "happened" to create it.
- He "happens" to enter Starfleet Academy despite massive changes to the timeline, so radical that they have altered technological development.
- He "happens" to meet his entire command staff and get posted to the same ship, with all of them, each happening to be in the same positions.
- He "happens" to meet Montgomery Scott, one of his closest companions, in a several mile radius, of a random planet, out of hundreds in the Federation, out of billions in the galaxy, after happening to be marooned at a random point on it's tens of thousands of square miles.
Perhaps Giachinno's score isn't so much the problem.... as JJ Abrams turning Kirk into Clark Kent/Jesus of Nazareth - he wanted/believed in/knew how to make a superhero movie full of random bible-like miracles, and rammed Star Trek into that paradigm - even sodding Paul Artreides, the sodding Muad'dib doesn't have such improbable events surrounding his life, and is an actual literal messiah.
There was far too much destiny bollocks in that movie, and Giachinno was probably just interpreting the script he got.
Anyway, Laaaaaaaaa la laaaaaaaaa, laaa la, laaaa la laaaaa.... None of that is remotely strange or unbelievable, and I will continue enjoying the new movies. *Whistles a happy tune and forgets*.
Not sure why, but I have the impression that this Trek is going to also be stylistically similar to Stargate Universe in some ways. (Just hopefully, the pacing will be better.) So why not?
I'm not sure if you're joking, but I'm for it. But let's go in a really unexpected direction with the idea, and get Rihanna to compose an actual instrumental score for the series (she's a songwriter, not just a voice in an attractive wrapper) - and if she wants to contribute a vocal song to the soundtrack, too, that's fine, but play it during the closing, or use it at some point during an episode. Not as the main theme.
I might get blasted for this, but I wouldn't mind having a more contemporary score. Think along the lines of what McCreary did with Walking Dead or Defiance. The score is really for setting mood with the audience and not meant to be contemporary to the setting. Now, I'm not necessarily saying I want Beastie Boys. But, I don't want another TNG, Voyager, etc type sound. The music in those were really uninspiring. The only music that I can think of that added anything emotional to the scene was the flute in The Inner Light.
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