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Post by R. on Jan 3, 2021 11:00:52 GMT -5
I love VFD. Whenever I hear it, I imagine Lemony and Beatrice in their masquerade ball costumes dancing in an abandoned ballroom long after both were presumed dead.
(I mean I love the piece of music, not the organisation.)
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jan 6, 2021 1:53:58 GMT -5
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jan 6, 2021 1:57:11 GMT -5
Perhaps this is off-topic, but what is everyone’s favorite tracks from this soundtrack? Mine are “The Bad Beginning”, “Justice Strauss”, both versions of “An Unpleasant Incident Involving a Train”, “Lousy Lane”, “Cold as Ike”, “Climbing the Tower”, and “Nothing in the World Can Keep the Count From His Beloved Bride”. (Of course, I love “The Baudelaire Orphans”, “The Letter That Never Came”, and “Drive Away” as well, but those go without saying.) I think my personal favourite is probably either the film version of "Verisimilitude" or "A Sanctuary".
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Amber Rivers
Reptile Researcher

An AU where Violet Baudelaire grew up and became Huntress. Hear me out.
Posts: 25
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Post by Amber Rivers on Mar 12, 2021 19:36:54 GMT -5
Taken By Surpreeze always fills me with anticipation and excitement.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Mar 12, 2021 22:10:29 GMT -5
Taken By Surpreeze always fills me with anticipation and excitement. Same here. Though there's something almost intentionally ironic about how upbeat it is, since it was originally meant to be followed up with the "real" ending, and Olaf's escape.
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Post by tsmefford on May 12, 2021 13:44:32 GMT -5
Hello everyone. New here, but I'd love to share additional information I have about the 2004 film, starting with Thomas Newman's wonderful score. I have done quite extensive research into it and have been fortunate to uncover some buried articles about it's creation and I've even been able to directly speak with one of the musicians who played on the score! I would love to have a label like La La Land expand this in it's full glory some day (I actually hear that they've got two titles from Sony Music pending currently...and Snicket's soundtrack is licensed through Sony Classical. Fingers crossed!) As far as my first piece of information. It's quite interesting. I discovered a cue sheet from GEMA of the film that details the titles of the complete score as presented in the finished film. I have put together a comprehensive list along with info from BMI that has additional cue titles: LOVERLY SPRING (THE BAD BEGINNING (PART 1)) BAD BEGINNING PART 2 THE BAUDELAIRE ORPHANS JUSTICE STRAUSS CHEZ OLAF IN LOCO PARENTIS CHORES PUTTANESCA RESILIENCE AN UNPLEASANT INCIDENT INVOLVING A TRAIN 2M6A TRAIN TAG LOVERLY SPRING REPRISE 1 TAKE THEM MR. POE THE REPTILE ROOM SANCTUARY AUTOHARP SOURCE MEET STEPHANO SNAKY MESSAGE CURIOUS FEELING OF FALLING REGARDING THE INCREDIBLY DEADLY VIPER LOVERLY SPRING ELF REPRISE 2 LACHRYMOSE FERRY CONCERNING AUNT JOSEPHINE VFD THE WIDE WINDOW IKE'S ROOM CAPTAIN SHAM WHITE FACE WOMEN COLD AS IKE 4M8 HURRICANE HERMAN CURDLED CAVE THE REGRETTABLE EPISODE OF THE LEECHES JO'S DEMISE OUR NEW PLAY MARVELOUS MARRIAGE 5M4 VERISIMILITUDE (OLAF SCHEME PT 1) OLAF SCHEME PT 2 NOTHING IN THE WORLD WHAT WOULD VIOLET DO A WOEFUL WEDDING ATTACK OF THE HOOK-HANDED MAN TAKEN BY SURPREEZE PART 1 TAKEN BY SURPREEZE PART 2 ONE LAST LOOK THE LETTER THAT NEVER CAME DRIVE AWAY THE REPTILE ROOM CONCERNING AUNT JOSEPHINE VERISIMILITUDE LOVERLY SPRING Next, quotes from an article from Variety posted on Dec 7, 2004 that chronicles some more details from the scoring sessions not present in the Bonus Feature on the score: NOTE: 4M8 and 5M4, for those who don't know, are slate numbers as a way to organize where the music fits in the film. Reel 4, Music Cue 8 = 4M8. In the article 4M8 refers to "Hurricane Herman" and 5M4 refers to "Verisimilitude (Olaf Scheme Pt 1)" I've added this info to the above cue list as well.
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Post by tsmefford on May 12, 2021 13:49:17 GMT -5
And now some words from the musicians! Here's a post from Tuba master, Jim Self, discussing how the pit band cues were recorded in "LEMONY SNICKET MEMOIR": And finally, an excerpt from a brief conversation I had with "Fretless Flute" player Steve Kujala back in 2012 about his experience with Thomas Newman and the score for Snicket: I hope everyone finds these little snippets as fascinating as I did! My main takeaway is that there is likely quite a bit of score we have never heard!
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on May 12, 2021 14:07:05 GMT -5
And now some words from the musicians! Here's a post from Tuba master, Jim Self, discussing how the pit band cues were recorded in "LEMONY SNICKET MEMOIR": And finally, an excerpt from a brief conversation I had with "Fretless Flute" player Steve Kujala back in 2012 about his experience with Thomas Newman and the score for Snicket: I hope everyone finds these little snippets as fascinating as I did! My main takeaway is that there is likely quite a bit of score we have never heard! This is all so fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing what you've uncovered. Your research skills are impeccable.
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Post by tsmefford on May 12, 2021 14:12:09 GMT -5
Almost forgot to share another piece of information! More of a fun fact from the production and early test screenings. At the end of "The Unsound Sound Designer" Bonus Feature on the DVD/Blu-Ray they show footage of an early test screening for the film. Brad Silberling is talking over it, but faintly you can hear a snippet of the demo version of "Loverly Spring" produced with a synth orchestra. There are also segments from the final scenes in the film with a notably different tune than what we hear in the final film. Well, I was able to cancel out Brad's vocals from that section and identify the music that was used as the Temp Score before "The Letter That Never Came" was recorded. Plus, since I had the music...I figured I would go ahead and recreate the temp version of the scene in much better quality. Enjoy below! vimeo.com/548554812The track, by the way, is "Walkaway" from an earlier Thomas Newman score for the film "Meet Joe Black"
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Post by Lemona on May 12, 2021 14:20:31 GMT -5
Wow thats amazing stuf
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Post by urban-letter-opener on May 12, 2021 14:24:14 GMT -5
Is there any chance you could embed the video in the post? I've clicked the link and pasted it into a search bar and it tells me that "nothing was found".
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Post by tsmefford on May 12, 2021 14:34:00 GMT -5
Is there any chance you could embed the video in the post? I've clicked the link and pasted it into a search bar and it tells me that "nothing was found". I could try, but I didn't seem to work when I did the embed. Let me me fiddle with that link and get it working. I am seeing what you're talking when I open it on a page where I'm not logged in... Try that link again. It may prompt for a password now. If so, just enter: 667dark I tried the embed again in this post here but it doesn't seem to be working right. I must be doing something wrong.
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Post by urban-letter-opener on May 12, 2021 15:46:55 GMT -5
Hey, it works! Thanks. It's very interesting that they used pieces from Thomas Newman's previous work in the test screenings... from what gothicarchiesfan's work has shown, Newman composed some temporary music for the early screenings (seen on a promotional DVD given out by Papa John's, I wanna say?), so perhaps a combo was used for the test screenings, or Newman's temp score was added in when the film was shown to test audiences? I also enjoyed reading the tracklist you found. I wonder who named some of the tracks there — some of the titles, particularly "Take Them, Mr. Poe" and "What Would Violet Do?", don't sound like titles Newman coined himself. Something that I've been mulling over for some time is the album version of "An Unpleasant Incident Involving a Train". It's very different from the version heard in the film; it swaps out the tense strings and booming drums of "Attack of the Hook Handed Man" and "Hurricane Herman" for a sinister and panicky variation on "The Regrettable Episode of the Leeches". I'm sure you've heard it before, but I've wondered why it was changed for the film itself. I've paired up the train scene from the film with a variety of other music tracks (which I might share at some point in the future — they're just fun), including the album version of the piece, and the album version is actually several seconds longer than the scene in the finished movie. Probably the older version of the scene contained the bit with Olaf tasting the sodas, or perhaps the gag where he's wearing the hat as her exits the car. But then why didn't they just edit the music track? GAF's Extended Score has tons of minor variations on pieces made specifically to fit the film, so it wouldn't be special in that regard. The conclusion that I've come to is that: a) the studio executives deemed Newman's original version too scary/intense and told him to make a new one, requiring Newman to create a Frankenstein's monster of a piece to fill the gap or b) the audio mixers couldn't balance everything just right and asked him to rework the whole piece. The ending of the album version is, after all, very loud. You wouldn't happen to have any info or hypotheses on this, tsmefford? Of course as always anybody may pitch it with their thoughts on the matter.
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Post by tsmefford on May 12, 2021 17:14:47 GMT -5
It's very interesting that they used pieces from Thomas Newman's previous work in the test screenings... from what gothicarchiesfan 's work has shown, Newman composed some temporary music for the early screenings (seen on a promotional DVD given out by Papa John's, I wanna say?) Ah yes, I know the clip you're talking about. The early version of all the Baudelaire introductions. That is actually also temp music. That would be "Dead Already", the main titles of his score for American Beauty. It would seem they used a lot of Newman's past scores when editing, since he was hired before they started shooting. I assume so that they could create a similar sound to what would end up in the final product. I will say that in both cases, Newman was able to break free of the temp music and do his own thing vs copying his previous work. You can certain hear the influences in the general sound though. I also enjoyed reading the tracklist you found. I wonder who named some of the tracks there — some of the titles, particularly "Take Them, Mr. Poe" and "What Would Violet Do?", don't sound like titles Newman coined himself. No idea who specifically names the tracks. I imagine it might be Newman himself, but it could've been anyone on his team. Perhaps an orchestrator. I know in the case of composer Michael Giacchino, his music editor comes up with a lot of his punny titles. In this instance the titles are pulled from dialog that occur during the cues. "Take Them, Mr. Poe" might be a quick title given to a rewritten cue that excluded the conversation between Poe and the kids, since we know that scene was removed. Fun fact with that cue, you can actually hear this cue title being spoken during that Unsound Sound Designer featurette at about the 20 minute mark. When he says "re-lay", he's saying that there's new versions of those music cues that need to be "re-lay"ed back down into the sound mix. This means that at this point they're likely adding in the newly edited Train Sequence, a change with the Puttanesca cue, and a change in the "Take Them, Mr. Poe" cue. My guess would be that there was a lot of shuffling around at this point. Perhaps they removed several moments resulting in new edits or even new recordings of the cues...which brings me to... ...the album version of "An Unpleasant Incident Involving a Train". It's very different from the version heard in the film Correct. When I meticulously recreated this cue I counted a whopping 40 or more edit points to bring it together. Although it's a little more complicated than just editing. In the film, several segments are indeed pulled directly from "Attack of the Hook-Handed Man" and "Hurricane Herman", however, those pieces don't quite fit together seamlessly without some additional material. If you look at that cue list again from a few posts above, you'll note a cue called "TRAIN TAG". This indicates that new material was quickly recorded for this edit of the train sequence to be "tagged" onto something else. This does end up making sense when it's broken down, I'll do my best to lay it out (referencing my own edit): - 0:00-0:40 The intended ambient opening featured in the Album version of the cue.
- 0:40-1:15 Edited and Looped sections from "Attack of the Hook-Handed Man"
- 1:15-1:26 My guess, is that this is the first occurrence of "TRAIN TAG". The idea is from Hurricane Herman, but the recording actually doesn't match. In the film, the brass is entirely missing and is more string based. The percussion is also a bit more subdued. This is either a new recording or is heavily remixed from another take of Hurricane Herman.
- 1:26-2:04 The loops from "Attack of the Hook-Handed Man" continue, but something else fades up underneath.
- 2:05-2:17 This is completely new and not found anywhere else in the Album. I assume this is more of "TRAIN TAG", recorded to bridge between two different sounding sections of Hook-Handed Man.
- 2:17-2:41 Hook-Handed Man again in edited form.
- 2:41-3:28 Not entirely sure what is going on here. This is either a heavily remixed portion of Hook-Handed Man or a combo with new recordings. This is the sloppiest part of the edit. The loop may not be pleasing from earlier, but there are bits here that are not remotely in the timing of the original piece.
- 3:28-End Edited version of "Hurricane Herman"
It's quite a mess. I think you're right about the studio deeming the sequence too intense and I assume, considering the quote from the music editor above this was part of a last ditch effort from the studio to lighten the movie up even more. I think these cues were chosen because they would connect thematically to the other perilous events in later portions of the film in the same way that "Regarding the Incredibly Deadly Viper" and "Olaf Scheme Pt 2" utilize similar material. Plus, they were likely chosen because there was not time to write and record and entirely new 4 minute piece for the scene.
There's a similar puzzle going on with "Take Them, Mr. Poe", and the two versions of "Lachrymose Ferry". The Album version of the Ferry cue actually sounds strikingly similar to "Take Them, Mr. Poe" with only a couple of changes. I wonder if this scene was longer and they simply rearranged the sheet music of "Lachrymose Ferry" and recorded a slightly different version for the final "Take Them, Mr. Poe" cue. Now, Lachrymose Ferry as it appears in that place in the film, is actually very reduced only featuring the Ambience, Strings, and Flute Solo and no longer sounds much like the Album Version.
There were certainly a lot of changes at the final hours that seemed to have heavily impacted the score. I think the only way we will get to hear what may have been is if an official expansion of the score is released. No other material has come out in any fashion. A lot of what is above is mostly guess work based on my knowledge of other scores from that time period, scores in general, and my experiences with how some of my own scores have been treated or revised. It happens to everyone, unfortunately.
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Post by thathoboravioli on May 24, 2021 1:07:01 GMT -5
I can't see the video because it says it's private
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