Bill Wrobel's DVD - Film Score Rundowns

Back to Poledouris, I would recommend this dvd if only for his score
commentary. His approach was to make comments between the cues—not talking while
the music is playing. He makes comments more than Goldenthal did but finishes his
commentary at 1:41:15 with about thirty minutes left on the movie itself. For the Fednet
march he used misplaced accents to convey a sense there is something not quite right
with this probable future society. Basically he talks about the process of composing with
first taking many pages of notes with his discussion with the director. He developed
musical concepts but wanted enough free room for emotional knee-jerk responses to the
actual finished film itself. He would engage in free association at the piano (a sort of
spontaneous, creative meditation) as an embryonic stage of developing themes. When
Carmen does the test flight around 29-30 minutes into the movie, Poledouris was at first
percussive with a sense of urgency but developing into a waltz tempo to convey the
beauty and majesty of being above the earth. The fleet or “Navy” music tended to be
more 3/4 time, less grounded of course, while the mobile infantry was the “Army” music
that is grounded, more militaristic, gritty. AT 48 minutes in the dvd he talk about the
problems of the proper mix of dialog, sound effects and music. At about 55 minutes we
come to the drop into Klendathu for the first ugly battle. Here the score really takes
shape, the heart of the score because there is no Fednet parody music or propaganda. This
is reality with real devastation and gory killing. The theme was in a minor key, low
trumpets to denote a dreadful quality, etc. For another battle at 1:04:08 he simply added a
cluster of tones, high violins playing harmonics with synth voices. Basically here he let
the scene and sound effects do most of the story-telling. The Rasczak theme (Michael
Ironside) is declared at 1 hour 12 minutes, a theme Poledouris wrote first for the movie
but was rejected by the director—but the director later wanted to use it for the Ironside
character. At 1:19:56 Poledouris talks about using the octatonic scale for the bugs, that
certain series of whole and half steps from which he derived chords, lending to
interesting variations from normal diatonic harmonies. At 1 hour 40 minutes he stated he
synth the whole score first to let the director hear it and then make final decisions before
committing to the hundred piece acoustic orchestra.
-Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) *** 1/2 [music ****]
http://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-Spirits-Within-
Single/dp/B00006ADD3/ref=sr_1_8?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1293597658&sr=1-8
[ reviewed Saturday, May 28, 2011]
Now this CGI/motion capture film is a worthy project for a worthy composer
(unlike that ugly Starship Troopers 2 I reviewed yesterday). Although I object to the
faulty (and laughable!) root assumption metaphysics the movie portrayed (poltergeist
ghosts from another world causing severe mischief to our planet!), I nevertheless find this
a good, entertaining movie. Pity it did miserably at the box office! I think it was best to
have it animated (quite well at that) because that way it gives a healthy sense of distance
or removal in this fantasy than if attempted as normal live action and people mixed with
special effects CGI. Although there are “ugly” big and small phantoms in this movie, the
movie still has a “pretty” quality about it, or certainly interesting to look at.
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