Category Star Wars

New Blood

What an exciting time! Michael Giacchino, one of my favorite composers, gets to score a new Star Wars film. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but this marks the first time someone other than John Williams scores a live action, feature-length Star Wars film. And given that the Star Wars saga will likely outlive (all of us, including) John Williams, it is great to hear other composers take a shot at scoring a Star Wars film.

Ever since Rogue One was announced, I had been wondering who would score it. Michael Giacchino was my first guess, but I was happy to hear that Alexandre Desplat had been announced given a. the high quality of his work and b. the fact that he had already scored some of the Harry Potter films (which is also a pre-existing saga previously scored by John Willia...

At last! More Star Wars!!

I had waited for that moment for so long. Like most Star Wars fans who watched the original trilogy during childhood – well, in my case, the Special Editions – I always wondered what would happen after the destruction of the Death Star and the death of the emperor. Sure, good times celebrating with the Ewoks sounded fair enough for a child, but as I grew older (and hopefully wiser) I couldn’t help but to wonder how the galaxy would reorganize – outside, you know, the uninteresting stuff that Coruscant’s C-Span would cover…

By the time The Phantom Menace was released, Industrial Light and Magic was allegedly still working on special effects good enough to make it seem like representatives showed up to congress sessions at least in a galaxy far away…

There w...

Last year I had the privilege of being taught by the renowned composer and producer David Hentschel – yeah, the David Hentschel – when in one of his quizzes I answered that a music composer could in fact alter the pace of a film. Not to my surprise, my answer was marked to be incorrect, stating that while the director, film editor, and music editor – all of whom I had included in my answer – have this ability, the music composer does not. Most if not all technical literature reaffirms this, and the expected answer makes sense: The film composer can nurture the film with different emotions, but the pace is ultimately already there, as set by the director and editors.

Embarrassed that I had “missed” such a simple question, I decided to quickly put together a video to send Mr...