SPECTRE's reuse of the SKYFALL cues: The Good, the Bad, and the Inexplicable.

Murdock

I found the quote in question.

Lee Smith (Editor) on the music...

In the case of “Spectre” I got a music editor on very early on and we took apart the existing score from “Skyfall” and strung that out and rebuilt cues to suit the new film, just to give us the temp score. We needed it to be in Bond’s world. I saw no reason to pull temp score from other films. We did use other existing score in moments where we clearly couldn’t build it from Skyfall, but it was great because we were doing a really polished version of a score underneath the editor’s cut and it worked and whenever we played it for producers or Sam I think there was only once or twice where he said we missed the point with the music, but for 90% of the time we were on the money and I think when we started working with Thomas Newman and he was re-writing it, he knew mode and placement or the temp score was pushing all the right emotional buttons. I know that would have been hard for him, because it’s already his score and I know how tough that is, but I kept saying to him, “But it’s so good!” I can’t put other composers scores on this movie! (laughs) He was great and incredibly collaborative.

CraigMooreOHMSS

Murdock wrote: »

I found the quote in question.

Lee Smith (Editor) on the music...

In the case of “Spectre” I got a music editor on very early on and we took apart the existing score from “Skyfall” and strung that out and rebuilt cues to suit the new film, just to give us the temp score. We needed it to be in Bond’s world. I saw no reason to pull temp score from other films. We did use other existing score in moments where we clearly couldn’t build it from Skyfall, but it was great because we were doing a really polished version of a score underneath the editor’s cut and it worked and whenever we played it for producers or Sam I think there was only once or twice where he said we missed the point with the music, but for 90% of the time we were on the money and I think when we started working with Thomas Newman and he was re-writing it, he knew mode and placement or the temp score was pushing all the right emotional buttons. I know that would have been hard for him, because it’s already his score and I know how tough that is, but I kept saying to him, “But it’s so good!” I can’t put other composers scores on this movie! (laughs) He was great and incredibly collaborative.

This is it, essentially. They weren't simply copying and pasting cues from the Skyfall album. They were breaking down the mixed cues from the previous film and using them to "create" temp music.

It's an interesting way of doing it, but I'd imagine it's not all the more or less infuriating than simply just using other scores for temp music.

MakeshiftPython

Thanks for sharing Murdock, that makes a lot of sense now regarding why certain reused cues sounded different.

I can give points to Lee for some of his placements of the SF cues like “Mother” as I think it works thematically, but take away points for insisting on sticking certain cues that did not really need to be brought back like “Someone Usually Dies”.

I suppose Lee’s comments also explains why the Nolan Batman sequels reused cues as they worked as temps before it was decided they’d make it to final cut.

GoldenGun

Regardless of my personal opinion on the recurring cues of SF’s score in SP, I think it’s safe to say both scores are very similar. I’d say they are so similar it’s difficult to tell them apart and that’s where the real problem lies. If we look at the history of the Bond films the score to each film is very distinctive for that particular film. Obviously one-time composers made very different works than the regular ones, but I could easily distinguish the Barry scores from one another. For Arnold’s scores it might be less obvious, though I bet most fans can tell which cue belongs to which film. Not so much in the case of the Newman scores.

SaintMark

I find both scores for SF & SP so similar and bland, most of the time it could be a score of any movie not just an 007 movie.

MakeshiftPython

GoldenGun wrote: »

Regardless of my personal opinion on the recurring cues of SF’s score in SP, I think it’s safe to say both scores are very similar. I’d say they are so similar it’s difficult to tell them apart and that’s where the real problem lies. If we look at the history of the Bond films the score to each film is very distinctive for that particular film. Obviously one-time composers made very different works than the regular ones, but I could easily distinguish the Barry scores from one another. For Arnold’s scores it might be less obvious, though I bet most fans can tell which cue belongs to which film. Not so much in the case of the Newman scores.

Personally speaking, I can tell which cue is from SF and SP, as much as I can from any Barry or Arnold score.

DarthDimi

MakeshiftPython wrote: »

GoldenGun wrote: »

Regardless of my personal opinion on the recurring cues of SF’s score in SP, I think it’s safe to say both scores are very similar. I’d say they are so similar it’s difficult to tell them apart and that’s where the real problem lies. If we look at the history of the Bond films the score to each film is very distinctive for that particular film. Obviously one-time composers made very different works than the regular ones, but I could easily distinguish the Barry scores from one another. For Arnold’s scores it might be less obvious, though I bet most fans can tell which cue belongs to which film. Not so much in the case of the Newman scores.

Personally speaking, I can tell which cue is from SF and SP, as much as I can from any Barry or Arnold score.

So can I. I'm clearly in a minority here but I prefer the SP score over the SF score many times; I listen to the latter much more and I'm quite confident I can tell the difference between both scores with ease.