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Oh wow. D_A_R_T_H posted a cue list on JWFan.net:
CUR603 Main Titles DE
CUR609 Ghost House Theme Part 1 DE
CUR610 Ghost House Theme Part 2 DE
CUR611 Is It Him? DE
CUR612 Pills DE
CUR613 Gallery Source DE
CUR614 Plane Crash DE
CUR616 Janitor Awakens DE
CUR617 Boo DE
CUR618 Mother Daughter Talk DE
CUR619 Going To BJ’s DE
CUR621 BJ’s Office DE
CUR622 Waiting Room #1 (More Of A Dog Person) DE
CUR623 Crime Scene DE
CUR624 Ghost That Matters DE
CUR625 Ex Wife’s Back DE
CUR626 Delores Looks For BJ DE
CUR627 Stapled Sicko DE
CUR628 Little Higher Boys DE
CUR629 Obituary DE
CUR630 The Attic DE
CUR632 Grave Concern DE
CUR634 Therapy Session Sting 1 DE,CB
CUR636 Therapy Session Sting 2 DE,CB
CUR637 Therapy Session Sting 3 DE,CB
CUR638 Driving To Jeremy’s DE
CUR639 You’re A Ghost DE
CUR640 Ghost Story DE
CUR641 Waiting Room #2 (Merry Christmas) DE
CUR643 Cemetery Snake Ceremony DE
CUR644 BJ Returns DE
CUR645 You Never Saw Us DE
CUR646 Shrinkers Escape DE
CUR647 Ghoul Squad DE
CUR648 Waiting Room #3 (Delia) DE
CUR649 You Agreed To Swap Lives DE,CB
CUR650 You Agreed To Swap Lives End Tag DE,CB
CUR651 Saturn DE
CUR652 Out Of Luck Part 1 DE
CUR653 Interrogation DE
CUR654 Waiting Room #4 (You’re Dead OK?) DE
CUR655 Delia Calls BJ DE
CUR656 Out Of Luck Part 2 DE
CUR657 Ladies Escape DE
CUR658 Drug Therapy DE
CUR659 Selfies Gone Wrong DE
CUR660 Delores Interrupts DE
CUR661 Beetlejuice Balloons DE
CUR662 Delia Departs DE
CUR663 What Is That? DE
CUR664 What Is That? (Alt End Tag) DE
CUR665 End Credits Suite Part 1 DE
CUR667 End Credits Suite Part 2 DE
CUR668 End Credits Suite Part 3 DEDE…Danny Elfman
CB…Chris BaconI posted this on FSM earlier, but I’ll post it here too:
—————–
I listened to the score album yesterday, and again today.
Although I understand the disappointment that some have with it — and I share it on some level — there are a several stand-out cues for me (“Ex-Wife’s Back”, “The Attic”, “You Agreed To Swap Lives” and especially the last two minutes of “End Titles” with those awesome Wurlitzer solos… and I love all the source music stuff at the end too). Overall, I’d rather have this score album than not have it, and I’ll certainly listen to it again.
Really, though, Elfman could only score the movie that was in front of him, and I don’t think the movie gave him a ton of opportunity to really shine, which is maybe what many of us are picking up on.
The Elfman parts have a lot of horror stings and things… his assignment seemed to be to make Beetlejuice kind of threatening and scary, and to add momentum and tension to the movie in the back-half when they’re all running around the underworld… which the score certainly DOES, starting with “Ghost Story” (which is the sequence where Lydia races to get to Astrid before Jeremy tricks her).
A lot of the whimsy comes from the song choices, which Elfman had to write around… “Tragedy”, “MacArthur Park” and “Soul Train Theme (Scat Version)” (which isn’t on even the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXMqsy_l8Tk ). Many of the Astrid scenes are covered by songs. She DOES have a theme, and it’s on the score album a couple times, but there’s almost no space for it in the movie, and I didn’t even realize she had one until I heard this release.
I actually think this is a rare case where you could advocate for the songs and the score being checker-boarded, in sequence, on a theoretical album that would have included both (sort of like what the OST for the first movie did). “What’s That?” (score album) is designed to be big shock in the film after we hear Pino Donaggio’s gentle “Main Title From CARRIE” (song album). The cues in the church at the end are designed work around “MacArthur Park”. “Soul Train Theme (Scat Version)” adds a lot of energy to that part of the and sort of plays like score, even though it really isn’t… and so on…
So I don’t know… there’s stuff on here I really like, and I’m generally happy to have this.
There ARE some fake covers on his site – “The Woman In The Window” cover for sure – but this looks semi official? Maaaaaaybe?
I hope it happens, of course. Maybe it will be timed with the stream-at-home release? Or maybe a label like LLL will do a limited run for Black Friday? Since it recorded in London AND LA, perhaps it’s an expensive score to put out, which is why it hasn’t happened yet? If LLL had to charge 35 bucks a disc in order to make the economics of doing this work, I might grumble slightly about it, but you KNOW that I’d get it immediately.
I am a TV editor myself. There’s always so much to do that composers almost never argue for “more music.” If Elfman was in the spotting session, and they said, “we like this song here.” He probably would have said, “Great!” And they would have gone on to the next scene.
Here’s an interview with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice A.D. 2024 editor Jay Prychidny, where the use of songs is discussed a little. Elfman is never mentioned otherwise.
https://borisfx.com/blog/aotc/art-of-the-cut-beetlejuice-beetlejuice/
Prychidny: The bike ride has this nice song that’s playing and then during the whole action sequence, the music just keeps going. I guess my thought was to just not try to make it seem like such a big action moment. That was just something that instinctually felt right. Tim never questioned it, but it was something that some people questioned.
The other example is in the Soul Train sequence. After Lydia rescues Astrid off of the train, then they’re pursued by cops and the guards, the Soul Train music just keeps playing. I guess the natural impulse is maybe, “Well we should switch to action music here.”
That didn’t seem right to me. It seemed like it should just be continuing the song that’s playing and edit the song, ’cause it’s not like the song ignores the action on screen. The song is edited to fit to the scene changing and becoming an action sequence, but it’s still just the song. There isn’t score support there.
Hullfisch: I love the fact that the Soul train music kept going. Did you ever consider switching to score?
Prychidny: I never tried it because Tim didn’t have a problem with it. I’m sure if I brought it up to Tim, he wouldn’t have wanted to do that. I never tried it ’cause it just felt like the obvious thing to do, and because I just love how that music kicks in, in the Soul Train sequence when the guards and everyone are coming onto them and it kicks into this higher gear fast-paced moment and it just feels fresh to me. It just feels fresh.
I didn’t even want to try cutting to action music. I felt like I would’ve become so bored by it, so I didn’t even want to try.
Also, I put this on FSM, but I snapped a picture of the music credits in the end roll, and here they are:
Music Editors BILL ABBOTT • CECILE TOURNESAC
Assistant Music Editor DENISE OKIMOTO
Score Produced by DANNY ELFMAN
Additional Music Arrangements by CHRIS BACONScore Recorded by
PETER COBBIN • KIRSTY WHALLEY • NOAH SNYDER • ANDREW DUDMANScore Mixed by PETER COBBIN • KIRSTY WHALLEY
Orchestrations by
STEVE BARTEK • DAVE SLONAKER • ED TRYBEK
JONATHAN BEARD • HENRI WILKINSON • JULIAN KERSHAWOrchestra Conducted by RICK WENTWORTH • PETE ANTHONY
Orchestra Leaders THOMAS BOWES • BRUCE DUKOV
Featured Soprano
GRACE DAVIDSONChoir VOCALS UNLIMITED • CAPITAL VOICES
Choirmasters TOM PEARCE • ANNIE SKATES
Music Preparation by
DAVE HAGE • JOSEF ZIMMERMAN • MATTHEW SLATERGREGORY JAMROK • ABRAHAM LIBBOS • MARC MANN
Score Programmer DAVID GLEN RUSSELL
Technical Score Engineer MATTHEW THOMAS
Score Coordinator MELISA McGREGOR
Pro Tools Operators MATT JONES • KEITH UKRISNA
Score Recorded at ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, LONDON • FOXSTUDIOS, LOS ANGELES
BANDRIKA STUDIOS, LOS ANGELESScore Mixed at SUCH SWEET THUNDER STUDIOS, LONDON
I’ve been interacting with Ryan and ddddeeee about this on FSM, but I thought I’d come back here and post too.
I saw the movie (I liked it!), and I thought there was a LOT of score in the movie. I didn’t know about the “35 starts” thing until I saw the post above, but I can believe it. And I DO believe that most of that made it into the movie. I don’t hear a lot of signs of score tampering here… not like in Hellboy II, for example, where you could hear that some cues were faded out, or that there was that big statement of Danny’s Hellboy theme that was pasted into the movie at a few awkward spots (and it wasn’t even on the original album!).
I think there’s plenty here to make a score album out of, and if the film continues to pull in big money, I believe that WB will do one.
I’m convinced that the BeeGees song when Dolores staples herself back together was planned. The music kind of works around it. I think the modern pop songs when Astrid rides her bike through town and meets Jeremy were totally deliberate too and were NOT replacing score cues. The movie needs you to see that as a Young Adult love story moment, and putting ANY score in those sequences would have highlighted that there’s something else going on there. Clearly the Soul Train music and the big MacArthur Park moments were all planned as well. I don’t think any of those songs replaced score that Danny had written.
I agree with those above who said that the score was reminiscent of Dark Shadows. It sounded like a modern Elfman score. There were 3 or 4 cues that used themes from the first score (when we first see Beetlejuice at his desk job, and when we first see the model, etc), which are great. But much of it was original, and I really do think Elfman did most of it. He’s been generous about crediting co-composers before, and I don’t know why he would do so this time.
Anyway, I liked the movie and I like the score. I might have benefited here from not seeing it until the second week, and hearing everyone complain about both for the last seven days!
Thanks! I was mostly curious about where the score was recording. It’s interesting (to me) that he did it all in NYC. I remember the tweet from a few months ago that indicated that he was recording there, but I sort of assumed that it was a few soloists, not the whole thing!
Can anyone tell me where THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN was recorded? And what the album credits are? I bought the 24 bit version from 7Digital, and it doesn’t contain any of that info. I assume there was a small string section that was recorded at some point? Those can’t be all synths.
Huh, interesting. They were just recording GOOSEBUMPS at Sony in the first week of May (the 4th-8th, to be specific). It seems a little quick for him to be recording a score for a different movie already, but of course it is possible. Another guess I would have is that he’s recording choir for GOOSEBUMPS in London right now, but an argument against that theory is that their final day at Sony was a choir day and I’m not sure why they’d do it in both places.
I’m working on the Sony Lot presently, and also saw that they are indeed on the scoring stage now. The schedule says that they will be there all week, through Friday May 8th.
The name of this movie has been changed to EPIC… comes out May 2013.
OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is due out in March 2013… hope he’s able to stay on both!
Woah, some of those synths are crazy!
The clips are a lot darker and more sinister than I would have guessed them to be, based on the trailer.
No, I still do think it was scheduling conflicts.
It sounds like the HUNGER GAMES sessions happened a little late… around the time that Elfman would have had to have been deep into getting everything ready for the DARK SHADOWS sessions. My guess is that as the schedules grew tighter for both movies (and who knows how MIB3 figured in), Elfman realized that he just couldn’t do all three and had to make a change. It makes sense that HUNGER would be the one that he’d bail on… he’s not going to risk damaging his relationships with either Tim Burton or Sony Pictures (which paid him a King’s Ransom, I’m sure, for returning to score MIB3, much as they did for MIB2). HUNGER GAMES was already expected to do well, which of course it has, and potentially might have kept Danny aboard for the sequels, but often times keeping up established relationships are more important than these things.
Then again, maybe scheduling had nothing to do with it, and he simply wasn’t coming up with material that Ross liked. He did leave the picture only a few months before it was released, and JNH said in an interview that he only had about 4 weeks to write the 80 some minutes that he recorded. As usual, only those involved know for sure…
Yes, but composers can only do what the director/producers will let them get away with.
Randy Newman scored Gary Ross’s two previous films… on the first, PLEASANTVILLE, Ross insisted that Newman model one cue after a segment of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (which Newman did, while trying to avoid copying it wholesale). On the second, SEABISCUIT, Ross insisted that Newman basically copy cues from his cousin Thomas’s THE HORSE WHISPERER, which Newman ultimately refused to do, and left the project. William Ross (no relation) came in and did the HORSE WHISPERER sound-alikes after Newman left.
I’m not bringing this up to prove any point other than that Ross has a history of being very heavy handed with composers (which is totally his right: he’s the director!). As such, he probably got exactly the score he wanted out of JNH.
I’m not sure, but I think I remember hearing cues that were a lot like “Men at Work” and “Doomed” in the mix of the first movie… meaning unreleased cues that weren’t on the CD.
I’m 1000% convinced that whatever they do will be either a reworking of an existing piece for the show or a flat out reuse from the show.
Hey Ryan,
I’m sorry to be so late to chime in…
I think the main event on this site is the forum, and I’d be excited if that can continue in some form. I think the WordPress idea is a good one…
Maybe the Elfman forum can become its own entity somewhere, and many of the MFADP feature articles that have amassed over the years can be archived either here or at Cinemusic.net?
In any case, thanks for the effort over the years… this site has been a huge part of my online life, but I understand that as we all get older, buy homes, possibly lease our fourth VW in a row, have children, etc., finding time to obsess over this subject like we used to has gotten harder and harder.
There’s a pre-show “turn-off-your-phone-and-no-pictures” song that he does indeed sing. That’s the only part where you hear his voice, however (as least as far as I could tell).
According to this website(http://soundtrack-movie.com/real-steel/), this is the tracklist:
1. Fastlane – Bad Meets Evil (Edited)
2. Here’s A Little Something For Ya – Beastie Boys (Edited)
3. Miss The Misery – Foo Fighters
4. The Enforcer – 50 Cent (Unreleased)
5. Make Some Noise – The Crystal Method Featuring Yelawolf
6. Till I Collapse – Eminem (Edited)
7. One Man Army – Prodigy & Tom Morello
8. Give It A Go – Timbaland Featuring Veronica
9. The Midas Touch – Tom Morello
10. Why Try – Limp Bizkit (Edited)
11. Torture – Rival Sons
12. All My Days – Alexi Murdoch
13. Kenton – Danny ElfmanOnly one score track, unfortunately.
In 1993, Burton and Elfman had been working together for eight years. Neither Burton or Elfman have really gone into detail over what happened… I think the credit thing is assumption, more than anything.
And they split up well before ED WOOD was ready to be scored. Burton wanted Henry Mancini once it was clear that things wouldn’t be worked out with Elfman, and it was Mancini who suggested that he hire Shore instead.
I finally saw the movie tonight, and I’ll retract my “crap” rating on the score. I thought Jackman actually did a pretty good job once I heard it in the picture, and I was pleased that he brought back some of Kamen music from X-MEN 1 when the scene from the beginning of that same movie was replayed at the head of this one. Classy.
His theme for Magneto seems to share some similarities with John Ottman’s Magneto theme from X2, but it would take a person more musically inclined than me to say how, exactly!
I thought Ottman’s X2: X-MEN UNITED score was really good at the time, but later… the more aware I became of the other scores he blatantly ripped off (Mancini’s LIFEFORCE in particular), the more I realized I was mistaken. I can’t even listen to it now.
The best score the series has had is John Powell’s X-MEN III: THE LAST STAND by a mile. No question about it. I like Michael Kamen’s score for the first movie, but like the film itself, it kind of felt a little awkward and the scale of it wasn’t quite what it should have been.
Harry Gregson-Williams’ WOLVERINE was crap, and apart from the first track of FIRST CLASS, I would say that Henry Jackman’s effort is too.
Also, I suspect they only hired Kamen for part 2 because of the K-Men = X-Men thing. I think there similar reasoning behind hiring Henry Jackman (because of the shared last name with Hugh Jackman) for this new one.
