Up Tempo

Pixar's Feature Films Up
#47

Again, thanks for your fascinating responses to those questions, as well as your description of how the studio recordings went, miafka. Much appreciated!

I think Pete Doctor also plays violin. In one of the extras, he’s dressed up as a Spanish trio and he plays the fiddle, if I remember correctly. Oh well, even if he didn’t, he plays violin, anyway. His parents used to drag him to classical music concerts, and to pass the time he’d doodle in the corner of notebooks, and the rest is history. Yeah, Pixar should form a band, like the Rat Band in Ratatouille. :smiley:

Oh, so that’s what that note is called: a fermata. Thanks. That’s really interesting about the click track fading out before a fermata, then you look at the conductor. I didn’t know that. If others want to get an idea for when it’s used, it would be for the final syllable of the birthday boy (or girl’s) name when playing “Happy Birthday”, at least in my sheet music, it is. So you’d look at the conductor, or as is usually the case, listen to others around you, for how long you should play that note. Or I guess, you could control how long that note is played for, and make it go on for as many beats as possible, just to be annoying. :slight_smile:

Question: have you ever played sheet music in either a studio or classical orchestra setting where you have had to play purposefully off-key, to set the tone for music that is meant to put the listener on edge? I suppose you couldn’t do this with a piano, unless the whole instrument is out of tune for that whole day, or selected keys were out of tune. But with the stringed instruments you can adjust your fingers to be out of tune specifically for one note then go back to playing in tune again. 'Cause if there ever was a whole piece of music where you had to play out of tune, I’d blitz that piece for sure.

Also, does the composer write the music for every one of the instruments for a score, for every single track, or would a composer’s assistant do that? It sounds like a funny question, but when you think about it, that sure is a lot of instruments to write for, to both figure out the notation and physically write out the music (or even if they used a computer). But I guess that’s what they get paid for, right?

EDIT: In the studio setting, or even before a classical concert, do you still use the oboe to tune to A440, or do you use electrical tuners instead, and the oboe is just for show if you’re tuning up in front of an audience?

Thanks, miafka! You’re be-awesome! (beyond awesome). =D

#48

Hi, everyone. Well, still no information on the Up Soundtrack CD on Amazon, but I’m sure it will be listed soon enough.

doesn’t it feel a bit sad when the last day is over and you’re not going to work on it anymore?

Yes, in a way. Especially with Pixar films, because unlike with most movies, the Pixar sessions tend to be spaced out (starting early), instead of occuring all at once. A normal movie will typically have all the scoring dates within a month of each other (often within a week or two). But for instance, with Wall-E, I think it went from July (first session) to April (last session), and with Up, it went from December to April.

how many were you in this orchestra?

It was a normal, regular-sized studio orchestra. Not a small one that you might have for a small, independent film, or a giant oversized one you might get for some big, blaring action blockbuster, but a nice, normal-sized group (I remember once for a session for one of the X-Men movies, there were ten french horns). That would be overboard for the type of movie Up is of course, but it was a nice, normal-sized group. I’d say probably about the same size as for Ratatouille.

So Pete Docter actually joined the orchestra for a while, as such?

Yeah, it was kind of neat. I just listened to an interview he did for a Utah public radio station (someone posted the link here on Pixar Planet; I copied it below) and in it, he mentions that both his parents are musicologists/music teachers, and that his sister is a professional cellist, now playing in the Met Opera Orchestra (in New York). It’s a great interview if you haven’t heard it yet (no spoliers):
publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/ … ID=1492250

did Pixar just contact you and say, 'hey, do you mind coming back so we can sort these little bits outs?

Well, it’s not Pixar (remember, we’re not Pixar employees) but the person in charge of getting an orchestra together for the composer (the orchestra contractor). He or his office will call to see if people are available for another session on whatever the date happens to be, and if they want to do it or not.

Is getting everyone back together to re-record certain parts quite difficult?

Not really, though it depends on how last-second it is. There will be times where some people have already taken other work for that date (especially if it’s a last second call), but of course we try to do what we can in order to do it.

when you see the film, please tell us which is which, or it’s different from the CD and the final film.

Well, the CD may or may not have all the final fixes on it. I’ve seen it both ways, where sometimes they’ll manage to catch last minute changes and slip them in before it goes to be pressed, and other times (especially if the fixes are at the last minute), the CDs will have the older versions on them, not the stuff fixed at the last second before the movie came out. Honestly, I probably won’t remember… but for that last fix day in April, there were only two cues we re-did, and one of them I already mentioned what scene it was for in a previous post (a scene where Mr Docter joined in with us to play for a bit). I put it in spoiler tags, but it doesn’t violate my “no spoiler” policy because the scene is shown in all the trailers. (But that was one of the two cues that had last-second changes to it).

Michael as a composer is my absolute favorite and I’ve listened to his tracks over and over again

Well, if you fly from Sweden to LA the beginning of May, you could meet him.
Apparently he’s going to be doing an autograph event on May 5th at 7:00pm at Best Buy in West Hollywood, for the release of the Star Trek soundtrack. For anyone interested, the details are on Varese Sarabande’s website:
varesesarabande.com/News.asp

fermata in “Happy Birthday”

Exactly, thanks rachelcakes1985 for making that clear. That’s a great example of a fermata.

have you ever played sheet music in either a studio or classical orchestra setting where you have had to play purposefully off-key, to set the tone for music that is meant to put the listener on edge?

Oh yes, it happens often in studio music, usually to create a special sound or effect (especially in horror or suspense moments). Depending on the instrument you play, all kinds of tricks can be used. You can be asked to bend the tone, to gliss (slide), to play the highest or lowest possible notes, to play random notes in random rhythm (a great effect when the entire orchestra is doing this), to play clusters (clusters are where you pick any note in a particular range that’s indicated, and play it – either on pitch or completely off pitch if they want that effect). Lots of fun. There are also other methods used to make a particular sound. Such as flutter tonguing in the winds, or vibrato variances in the strings (vibrato is when you “shake” the pitch a little bit. Normally it sounds nice, but if you make it super-wide it becomes an effect, or if all the strings do absolutely no vibrato at all on a long held note, it can sound very cold and icy).

In the studio setting, or even before a classical concert, do you still use the oboe to tune to A440, or do you use electrical tuners instead, and the oboe is just for show if you’re tuning up in front of an audience?

In a classical concert, the oboe will tune the orchestra, and it’s for real, not for show – the orchestra will take the A from the oboe. In a studio setting, if there’s a piano in the room that’s being used (a lot of scores have piano), we’ll take the A from the piano. If there’s no piano, the orchestra will take it from the oboe. If we’re playing along or adding to something that’s already pre-recorded, and for some reason the pitch of what’s already been recorded is off (too high, too low), then sometimes we’ll listen to the track that we’re adding to and tune to that. But if not, the studio orchestra will tune to the piano or oboe.

does the composer write the music for every one of the instruments for a score, for every single track, or would a composer’s assistant do that? It sounds like a funny question, but when you think about it, that sure is a lot of instruments to write for, to both figure out the notation and physically write out the music.

The composer will write the music to a movie, but he/she normally won’t have the time or energy to write out everyone’s separate part. That’s where the orchestrator comes in. Each composer is different in how much detail they notate in their sketches and scores, but while a composer writes the music, he’ll then give what he’s written over to the orchestrator, who will then “expand” it to the full orchestra, writing out the parts for everyone, often deciding how to parcel it out, deciding whether it should be stagnant notes or moving arpeggios on the chord, what kind of percussion might sound interesting here, if a lick should be played by clarinets with oboes or bassoons by themselves, if the violins should do a weird effect here, etc. Though each composer is different, I guess you could say the composer writes the music and the orchestrator gives it to everyone and helps give the cue that “color.”

For those interested, real pictures (instead of just sketches) of Michael Giacchino and the Star Trek sessions from last fall have just been put up online – 53 of them. Have a look! There’s Michael’s birthday cake, Timothy Olyphant guest-conducting, and the crew wearing Star Trek shirts (not to mention us musicians)…
The main page (with only a dozen pictures or so, but with explanations):
scoringsessions.com/news/179/

And the complete 53 pictures are here on this page:
scoringsessions.com/sessions/24544

Speaking of effects, as you’ll read in the description on the site, Michael used an erhu (Chinese two-stringed instrument) for a lot of the Star Trek score:
“An erhu was used to create the otherworldly sound of the Vulcans (namely Spock), and it was processed and distorted for their distant cousins, the Romulans.”

It’s a shame there are no Up session pictures online, but people did come in to shoot some video during the sessions, so hopefully there will be some shots of us on the Up DVD when it comes out…

#49

While we’re all waiting for Up to come out and its soundtrack to be released, I thought I’d write a couple scoring-in-general comments if anyone’s interested, since I just saw Star Trek and there’s not much to say about Up until it comes out (as always, no spoilers).

I went to a cast & crew screening of Star Trek on the Paramount lot the other day, and it was kind of interesting (especially because in general, musicians don’t get invited to such screenings). It was kind of surreal walking onto the Paramount lot though, for about two years ago Paramount decided to close their scoring stage and tear down the building – so it’d been a few years since any of us had been there. Arriving a bit early, I wandered up to where Stage M (the old scoring stage) used to be, and sure enough, the old building is gone, and in its place are the girders of what will soon be a Technicolor Post Production facility. It was kind of sad to see it gone, as literally scores of movies (couldn’t resist the pun) have been recorded there throughout the years. Now, only three of the five large scoring stages remain (Sony/MGM, Fox, Warner Bros), with both Todd-AO and Paramount’s having been torn down within the last two years. By the way, such screenings are the only times where no one gets up to leave until the last name has finished rolling up the screen (with people applauding as they see their names).

A friend of mine recently asked what it’s like to sit back and watch a movie that I’ve worked on (as opposed to one I haven’t), and basically, only half of my brain can immerse itself in the movie (the other half, whether I want to or not, is listening to the score, remembering the various cues, and hearing how things came out). For most movies (including Up), the picture is normally projected in the room as we work, so if we want, we can see the visuals during playbacks and such. But Star Trek was an exception, in that the projector was shut off due to secrecy concerns, so it was a case of playing the music without seeing any of the visuals.

I mentioned in the Up Soundtrack thread that I had once listened to a soundtrack CD of a foreign movie before seeing the actual movie, and couldn’t help but imagine what might be happening onscreen during certain cues… but what actually happened when I finally saw the movie was of course totally different than what I had imagined. Well, there was a little moment like this for me while finally seeing Star Trek. There’s a great cue that, after the main theme, continues on with the french horns wailing triumphantly, as the strings and trumpets answer them a measure later. While recording this I remember thinking “this part’s great…” and was really curious to see what kind of neat action would be happening on the screen at that point. Well, I was kind of surprised to see that when this soaring part of the cue came, the music was turned way down in the mix and almost covered up – not by sound FX or noise, but with dialogue! Ahhh! It reappears again (a bit differently) elsewhere, but I was a bit disappointed. At least it’s on the CD in full volume (Track #5, Enterprising Young Men, the theme first plays at 0:37, but the part I’m talking about with the french horns is at 1:57, and especially when the strings/trumpets answer them starting at 2:10). So this is an example of if I hadn’t worked on it, I’d never be thinking about these things, but as soon as I heard that music begin, I began paying attention to how the music ties with the visuals. Thus you come back to the sad rule that yes, in the end, it’s the music’s job to support the movie, not the other way around :confused:

There are some great erhu (Chinese instrument) solos in Star Trek, but for some reason the erhu player didn’t get her name listed in the CD pamphlet.

When there’s a large chorus as well as an orchestra, the chorus will always be recorded separately (both for mixing purposes, as well as logisitcal ones – you couldn’t fit both the chorus and orchestra in the same room). If it’s just one singer, sometimes they’re recorded separately, but other times they’ll be recorded together with the orchestra at the same time (usually in an isolated booth for mixing purposes), as was the case with a song in Up.

Well, hopefully very soon we’ll have Up’s soundtrack out… after all, the movie’s coming out in only about three weeks!

#50

latimes.com/entertainment/ne … 5358.story

miafka, this article seems to explain to me the change made at last minute for the music, the additional recording session you told us about.

I think the mood of the final music for the scene apparently differs from the original “big and dramatic” music. That is the pivotal scene of the whole movie and I’d really love to hear your thoughts of the change.

#51

Very interesting article. Thanks, JD, for posting the link. I read it the next day in hard copy as well, and it made the front page of the LA Times Sunday Calendar section.

For those who didn’t read it (it’s worth reading the whole thing), the section JD was talking about in particular is this:

Yes, the article is accurate (interesting to read about such things in the paper). Going back to record a revised version of a cue happens all the time in studio recording, and we usually don’t give it a second thought, but it was interesting to find out the reason why for that scene (thanks, LA Times!) The original version of the cue was nice and big, but on that last fix-day at the end, we went back and recorded a revised version of it. As I remember it, the revised version was still somewhat similar to the original in that it contained the same basic themes and such… but it was more the way it was presented (much more sublte instead of grand and big).

I’d really love to hear your thoughts of the change.

Well first of all, I haven’t seen the completed movie yet, and seeing it complete (with its pacing and how it fits in with everything) is critical before making such a decision. Seeing the scene only by itself, I thought both versions worked… it was just two ways of doing it, and both were good. Not having seen the completed movie yet, I’ll trust the decision to go with the revised version. For example: Ratatoulle didn’t originally end with the “Le Festin” song. Instead, the movie originally ended with just the orchestra playing the movie’s second, kind of jazzy theme over the last shot (before the credits). At the time, I thought it worked great… but then there was a fix day, and on it, we recorded a full orchestral accompaniment to a song (“Le Festin”) that had just been recorded – and the song was then used to finish out the movie. At the time, I wondered if it was better or not… but watching the movie now, I can’t imagine it ending any other way. Changes of all types occur during the scoring process (remember, no one hears the music played live until just minutes before recording it forever) and the creative process is still going on. The fact that Pixar strives so much for perfection (where others might just let something pass that works well enough) shows why they are who they are. So I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. They know what they’re doing. :slight_smile:

Absolutely unrelated to Up or Pixar (though perhaps applicable to some other movies I’ve worked on in the past), there’s a humorous cartoon posted on the bulletin board at the Fox Scoring Stage that I always get a laugh out of, so I thought I’d post it here. Basically, a couple of studio big-shots have just seen a rough cut of a movie, and the caption reads: “Frankly Seth, the movie is an hour too long, the performances stink, and the story falls apart five minutes after the opening credits. So we have no choice. We have to redo the music.”

#52

Though the soundtrack isn’t out yet, there’s now a great little “Making of Up” featurette on IESB.net where you can hear a lot of the music from the movie:
Pt 1: iesb.net/index.php?option=co … nk&id=1988
Pt 2: iesb.net/index.php?option=co … nk&id=1989
Pt 3: iesb.net/index.php?option=co … nk&id=1990

The links were posted in their own thread here on Pixar Planet:

But since my comments concern just the score, I figured I’d post them here in the Up Tempo thread.

Note that the featurette contains some minor spoilers (shots from the film, music from the soundtrack, etc).

Throughout all 3 parts you can hear lots of music cues from the movie out of your left speaker, while the right speaker is audio of what’s being shown (the creators, actors, artists, etc). The music throughout the three parts is a bunch of different cues from the movie, but for the most part, they have no relation to what’s being shown on-screen (for most of it, they just dumped a bunch of the music on top of various shots of everyone making the movie).

For Part 1:
The music in the background from 0:00 to 0:50 is the same melody you’ll hear later on in the movie’s song (which you can hear part of in Part 3 of the featurette).

For Part 2:
At the end (from 4:11 to 4:52) you can see us recording the music. However, note the goatee “continuity error” :slight_smile: – the shot of the music score at 4:11 shows it’s the December 8th session (when Michael still had his goatee, seen at 4:24). But the shot at the very end (4:47) is obviously from the later sessions, because his goatee has now suddenly disappeared! From about 4:31 to 4:38, there are some good shots of the Warner Bros scoring stage. If you look closely at the screen behind us, you’ll see two green numbers that constantly change (such as “36 1”, “36 2”, etc). The first number (36) is the measure number we’re at in the music, and the 2nd number is the beat of that measure (so “34 3” would be “measure 34, beat 3”). The numbers are synced with the click-track.

For Part 3:
(Continuing right where Part 2 left off): now at the later sessions, this is from the last normal scoring day (before the final fix day), March 18th, because this is when we recorded the song, which you can now hear right here! (starting at 0:02). Instead of playing to a pre-recorded track, the singer actually sang along with us live as we played it (though he was in an isolated booth for mixing purposes). I won’t reveal the name of it, but if you listen closely to the lyrics, you can probably guess its title. And that’s the wonderful Tim Simonec (Michael’s main orchestrator and conductor) conducting us (at 0:25).

#53

Thanks miafka! I’ll have to find time to watch those behind-the-scenes scoring sessions. I’ll also get back to you with everything else you’ve written here, too.

lol! 8D I think he shaved it off sometime before the Oscars. Maybe in addition to the “Andrew Stanton’s Beard” thread, we should also start up a “Michael Giacchino’s Goatee” thread. :slight_smile:

#54

Thank you, miafka, for your updates.

I’m really curious about the score for Up. It seems like in this one day we’ve been exposed to a lot more of Up’s score. I even put the clips on repeat just to listen to the score all day. Most of the scores that we’ve heard so far seem to be variations of the same cue, what other parts of the score are yet to be revealed?

#55

The cues I have heard all sound amazing. But I should probably stop listening to even bits of the score now, as I have a tendency to recognize motives which actually, if you can believe it, told me part of the ending of WALL•E, through only 30 second clips…

From what I have heard though, I really like the classic feel of the score, as well as for the song. I can’t wait until I can get my hands on the soundtrack and some sheet music from this movie.

  • C-3PO
#56

Thanks for those behind-the-scenes links, miafka. They were pretty high quality, only the DVD features could top that and you’re right, they do play a lot of the score in the background there. What I’ve heard from it sounds similar to The Incredibles. I think Ratatouille was too Frenchy-Frenchy to be similar to Up. The Warner Bros. stage looks nicer than the Sony scoring stage. I really can’t wait to see the footage of the Up sessions. They did show the orchestra playing for a bit, but I couldn’t see much because the video size was small. Woah, I just realised something:Tim Simonec and Randy Newman, separated at birth?

That’s interesting about the explanation behind the fix day. It’s probably a good thing that they went and changed the music. Sometimes subtle works best.

You know, I’ve always thought that a gliss going from a low to a high note is meant to give the feeling of someone’s back going up or hairs standing up, and from a high to a low note, is meant to represent the feeling of your stomach dropping, like you’re going to be physically sick (I’ll use an example we both know: like when Colette spots the rats in the kitchen in Ratatouille). At least that’s what it makes me feel when I hear those effects used on strings.

The orchestrator really seems like one of the unsung heroes of the recording world, because they’re the ones that expand upon the music and assign parts for certain instruments. I suppose you’d be in luck if you worked on a project where that project’s orchestrator had a fondess for your specific instrument.

“Happy Birthday, Captain Michael”, he he. That was nice of the recording crew. =) Those Star Trek t-shirts look cool. Sorry, if you’ve already covered this, but how did Timothy Olyphant go with conducting the orchestra? I’ll keep an eye out for the Star Trek cue you mentioned and make sure to listen to it on the soundtrack, too.

Thanks for your updates and fascinating posts, miafka. I hope you get called up to work on the Toy Story 3 score. :slight_smile:

#57

Well, with the film now out in North America, and having had a chance to see it a couple times, I can state absolutely that I think it was the right decision to re-do the cue where Carl’s house lifts up off the ground (as mentioned in the LA Times). The first version was grand and large, but in watching the movie, the lyrical version is indeed better. It’s too early in the film to “go big,” and the final, more subtle version also better matches the idea of someone floating his house away with balloons. You can hear only very tiny snippets of the original version in one of the later trailers for the movie (in the same scene, as the house is beginning its flight), but honestly, while the other way still would have worked, the final version matches the film much better.

TheIncredible: By now of course the film is out (in North America) as is the soundtrack (for download only). As I stated in the Up Soundtrack thread, I was quite disappointed to see no physical CD for this. There are mentions in the press (just today, in an LA Times article) that Michael will probably get nominated again for this score… yet no one can buy a CD of it – they can only download it.

C-3PO: Yes, it has a very classic feel. Michael really did a great job on this one. One thing to note: for the song (“Spirit of Adventure”), though it’s made to sound “old” in the mix, when you hear it in the movie (at the end of the closing credits), they also add the sound of [spoil]a needle/old scratchy record at the end[/spoil], which was a nice touch (and not heard on the soundtrack). Having seen the movie twice now, I couldn’t find any mention in the end credits as to the singer’s name, or who wrote the lyrics… but according to today’s LA Times article on Giacchino (link in the Up Soundtrack thread), Michael wrote the lyrics as well.

rachelcakes1985: The inside of Sony looks like a meat locker (it looks terrible) but they’ve left it as-is because the sound is so good. Both Fox and Warners had their stages re-done within the last 20 years, but I don’t know the last time anything was done to Sony. In the end though, it’s the sound that matters, and thankfully all three of these large stages have really good sound. By the way, the Sony stage (still sometimes referred to as “MGM”, as that’s what it was for years) is officially the “Streisand Scoring Stage.” Fox is the “Newman Scoring Stage” and Warner Bros is the “Eastwood Scoring Stage.” Tim Simonec and Randy Newman separated at birth? Well, they both can have a wicked sense of humor!

Well, now that the movie and soundtrack has come out, that’ll probably wrap up this thread (though of course if you have any questions, feel free to post them here). Between this Up Tempo thread and last year’s posts on what it was like to work on the “Wall-E” score,
pixarplanet.com/forums/viewt … ght=#65816
I hope I’ve given those interested some insight into what it’s been like to record the scores for these great projects. I work on films other than Pixar’s of course, but it’s always special to work on their films. I haven’t done them all (I don’t think anyone has), but was there for the original Toy Story (one of my first jobs!) and have seen the studio prosper while giving us all so much enjoyment. Now it’s time to sit back, relax, and see the movie. For those of you living where the movie hasn’t come out yet… just be patient. It’s worth the wait. :slight_smile:

#58

I don’t know whether this has been asked for, but are any of the background music from the trailers (especially that upbeat-sounding song in the teaser after the part where Carl yells 'So long, boys!" and raspberries) in the soundtrack? I really want those tracks! :smiley:

#59

Oh, also I have one question. You said that the music in the trailer is from the soundtrack, but I never heard the entire thing after “This Summer” in the soundtrack. Was it written for the trailer, or is it just trailer music?

#60

Well, that’s another Pixar project done. Thanks for much for keeping us updated, miafka. Your threads are one of the best at Pixar Planet, we should seriously have a Hall of Fame for threads here… Anyway, good luck with your future projects! :slight_smile:

Not to answer for miafka, but I think the first part of one of the trailers is from Carmen (when Carl is coming down the stairs in the chair-lift). Someone said that it wasn’t, but I recalled they used another part of Carmen somewhere else in the film, or at least in one of the promotional videos. Sometimes in order to get around paying the licensing fees for using a piece of music, a very similar piece of music is composed and scored, so perhaps that’s what happened there with the Carmen-like music. Here’s a page from the soundtrack.net website, but it says that the music from the trailer(s) was original music composed by Michael Giacchino. I think it is pretty accurate because the list for the WALL-E trailer music is quite detailed and lists other various sources other than Thomas Newman. Whilst that may be true for some of the music, I think some of the other music was taken from a stock trailer music archive for Up. Such as the very beginning of the first Up teaser trailer when they go over all the previous Pixar films, I believe that was also used for another trailer for a different film, but I forget which. Or maybe it was all composed by Mikey G., who knows? I guess that doesn’t so much answer your question with 100% certainty, thedriveintheatre and Bryko614, but I would too like to know which is stock trailer music and which is original for Up.

Just one last question, then I’ll quit, I swear, but about the Star Trek screening. Did Ben Burtt attend that screening at all? Or Michael Giacchino or J.J. Abrams?

#61

That would be Coraline. :wink:

Yup, I use Soundtrack.net to look for a song if I don’t recognise it from the trailer. They’re pretty reliable, but since they rely on user contributions, they can be quite slow in updating. I came here hoping someone who has purchased the soundtrack can confirm whether this “Original Trailer Music” track is on the film soundtrack or available through other (legal) means. Has anyone who has listened to the entire soundtrack can confirm this? :frowning:

But thanks for the reply, Rachel! :slight_smile:

And thanks miafka for your detailed account of the production of the soundtrack. I didn’t read all of it (I’ll wait till the release of Up here before I go over it in detail), but I’m sure the rest would appreciate your effort in sharing with us the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the music of Pixar’s newest masterpiece. :slight_smile:

#62

OK, here’s the story on movie trailers. Most trailers are made way before the film is finished (which is why, more than occasionally, you’ll see scenes in a movie’s trailer that are later cut or never included in the actual movie). And when it comes to music in trailers, the problem is that there’s usually none available from the actual movie to use when the trailers need to be made. This is because music is one of the last things added to a movie (usually less than a month before a movie comes out) – and that’s way too late to use for trailers, which need to be made very early in the process, way before the film is finished. So let’s say you’re making a movie… what do you do for trailer music? Here are your choices:

(1) Hire an orchestra to record music specifically for your movie’s trailer, even though the movie is usually still being worked on, and none of the score has yet been written or recorded. This happens every once in a while if they have the budget for it. Sometimes the trailer music will be written by the composer attached to the film (we recorded a very early Star Trek trailer that Michael wrote to air during the Super Bowl almost a year before the score was recorded). But often when doing new music for trailers, the composer for the trailer is not the composer attached to the film, but usually either someone up-and-coming, or someone who specializes in writing music for movie trailers. A typical trailer session is a 1-hour call for the musicians (normal movie sessions will either be a 3-hour or 6-hour call per day with multiple days).

(2) Forget using new or unique music, and find some music already recorded to use on your trailer. This can be pop songs (like one of the initial Wall-E trailers), or more often than not, to use bits and pieces from previous movie scores. The trick here is to pick pieces of older movie scores that convey the emotions you want, and perhaps make it just a little familiar… but you don’t want people to recognize where it’s actually from. In other words, you don’t want to use “Star Wars” or “ET” because anyone listening would immediately think “Oh, that’s the Star Wars music…” and stop paying attention to the trailer. It should be a little familiar, but never recognizable. For instance, Randy Edelman’s “Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story” and especially Marc Shaiman’s “The American President” are two scores that I’ve heard lifted from for trailer music. Soundtrack fans out there will know many examples.

(3) Go to a company that specializes in providing music for trailers (but not written for any specific movie). This differs from #1 because #1 is creating new music specifically for your movie. But there are companies that write all kinds of stock (generic) trailer music that they will sell to anyone who wants to use it in their trailer. From what I understand, this is what Up did for the earlier trailers (someone put a link up somewhere to the company that provided the music). This music is never for sale to the general public (you won’t be able to buy it on a CD), it’s for sale only to film companies for them to use in trailers. They’ll have a vast library of music, and the filmmakers can pick and choose what music from a pre-existing library they think will work for their trailer.

So those are pretty much your choices. As far as Up goes, as far as I can remember, we never had any special trailer sessions. Initially for the early trailers (as someone else pointed out, I don’t have any firsthand knowledge) the music came from one of these trailer houses. For the later trailers, we had already recorded some of the music, so some of the trailer scenes used music from the movie’s earlier sessions (Pixar movies are unusual in that most of the time a few sessions are done early on, instead of everything at the last minute… so at least there was some music from the movie ready to go if they wanted to use it). So one of the late trailers that shows the house lifting up has some snippets of the original version of this cue (when it was “big”)… and if I remember right, was kind of a mix of stuff from the film and stuff not from the film. But the early trailers didn’t have anything from the film, and, as someone else pointed out, came from a trailer music house.

Yes, that’s Carmen, by Georges Bizet (actually, the Habanera from Carmen), and it’s used in the actual film (the scene where [spoil]Carl is slowly going down the stairs in his motorized chair-lift[/spoil]). Michael arranged it, but it’s basically Carmen’s Habanera. rachelcakes1985 is right that at times, composers will slightly alter a piece of music to “homage” it and avoid copyright problems while still making it recognizable to the audience… but in this case, there’s no copyright worry because Carmen was composed over 100 years ago.

about the Star Trek screening. Did Ben Burtt attend that screening at all? Or Michael Giacchino or J.J. Abrams?

Don’t know if Ben Burtt was there. Michael wasn’t, because he was probably busy working on Land of the Lost, but at one of the LotL sessions, mentioned he saw it at a midnight screening. JJ Abrams wasn’t there either, but videotaped a message that was projected before the movie began, saying he’s sorry he couldn’t make it, and thanking everyone involved in the making of the movie they’re about to see.

whether this “Original Trailer Music” track is on the film soundtrack

Generally, unless music used in a trailer is also used in a film, there’s no chance you’ll hear the trailer music on the film’s soundtrack CD. Sometimes a film’s DVD release might have one of the film’s trailers as an extra, so if you’re lucky, occasionally you might be able to hear it that way…

#63

Thats really amaizing miafka! I’ve always wanted to compose or play the score for a pixar film when I grow up, since music is practically my life.

Out of any Pixar film the score for Up has to be my favorite. I loved how the movie’s main theme was encorporated in a lot of the movie and how all of the music went perfectly with the characters emotions.

:smiley:

#64

Thanks for explanation behind trailer music, miafka. =)

thedriveintheatre - I’m not sure if this is one of the tracks you were wanting, but on the Aussie version of the Up website they have one of the tracks from the earlier trailers played as background music on the site. I’m pretty sure it’s stock trailer music (probably in existence before the Up recording sessions even began) and not written by Michael Giacchino, but if you wanted to record the music through your soundcard, or wanted a copy of that music from me, the best version of the track is on the ‘downloads’ page, with doesn’t have any sound effects, as long as you don’t scroll your mouse over anything.

#65

Didn’t know where to ask this, so I thought this thread would be the best.

Who sings “The Spirit of Adventure”? From the soundtrack?

Thanks in advance :smiley:

#66

Hi, Simon-Simon! Turns out his name is Craig Copeland. (It was a big mystery to a lot of us!) Check out the thread linked below.

[url]The Spirit Of Adventure song.]

That thread also has a link to another thread about the Soundtrack, with more interesting info. There is also a link to some behind-the-scenes video of the recording session. I love the song! :smiley: