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The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

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Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#181
post #26

Well, besides the language and the typeface, the other element of this sequence at the beginning of Blade Runner that makes it so special is the accompanying score by Vangelis, and the sound effects that start with twinkling computer notes and gradually build in volume to explosions and the whoosh of futuristic vehicles. It effectively immerses viewers into this incredible world and story.

I was never a big 1980's synth music guy, but for some reason I always enjoyed the soundtracks Vangelis made. Not only for this movie, but also "Chariots of Fire", "Antarctica", &c.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only a few months back that I found out that Vangelis couldn't read or write music notation. He would just improv play and record on a tape, recording additional parts and mixing as needed. If he needed to have other musicians involved, then he would hire someone to listen back and write down the notation. Considering he recorded something like 35 albums, he was doing something right.

Vangelis is a bit funny and odd! Have a listen of Jon Anderson's (formerly of Yes) account of meeting and collaborating with Vangelis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItV5h3Arl5M

Man, Jon and Vangelis is a surprisingly good album

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the story as attributed to Asimov: he was walking out of Hamlet when a fellow patron said, "I don't see what the big deal is. It was all just cliches strung together."

It’s a bit like how the end point of the most wildly successful music is that you hear it on a loop in the grocery store

I think that's actually just that me espresso.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#185
post #26

Well, besides the language and the typeface, the other element of this sequence at the beginning of Blade Runner that makes it so special is the accompanying score by Vangelis, and the sound effects that start with twinkling computer notes and gradually build in volume to explosions and the whoosh of futuristic vehicles. It effectively immerses viewers into this incredible world and story.

I rarely read about the contribution a good music score has to a movie's popularity. A great score makes the movie. For example, The Blue Max, Ben Hur, the first Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr Zhivago, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and, of course, Blade Runner!

P.S. I deliberately did not include musicals or movies like 2001 that did not compose an original score.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#186
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely read about the contribution a good music score has to a movie's popularity. A great score makes the movie. For example, The Blue Max, Ben Hur, the first Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr Zhivago, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and, of course, Blade Runner!

The original teaser for Star Wars was made before they had John Williams' score: https://youtu.be/XHk5kCIiGoM?si=VxAJcCATzwn6gZPw Watching it may help you appreciate just how important the Williams' score was to Star Wars' success. It's one of the all-time greats! I'd also add that some movies are worth watching purely because of their score. e.g. "Conan the Barbarian" is a pretty shlocky flick. However, the director…

I went with my dorm to see SW on the second day of release. I had no idea what to expect.

Then, with the opening stab of music, I knew it was going to be great.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#187
post #51
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised at how many famous professional musicians don't read music notation. Outside of the classical world, session work, and jazz fake-books, it's far from de rigueur .

This is true. I read an interview with Hans Zimmer who has scored dozens of Hollywood films (including Blade Runner 2049) and when he first arrived in London in the 1980s he couldn’t read music. Not sure about now. ETA: he did eventually learn how to read music: “I learnt to read music after I bought the Roland MC8 Microcomposer, because it then became essential for me. … I learnt music by ear and have picked up most…

So, I looked up this piece of equipment that he references.

The Roland MC-8 MicroComposer by the Roland Corporation was introduced in early 1977 at a list price of US$4,795 (¥1,200,000 JPY) ... it was considered revolutionary at the time, introducing features such as a keypad to enter note information and 16 kilobytes of random access memory which allowed a maximum sequence length of 5200 notes, a huge step forward from the 8-16 step sequencers ... Roland switched to the then brand new Intel 8080A 8-bit microprocessor and increased the RAM from 512 bytes to 16KB, allowing storage of over 5,300 notes, which could be entered via the calculator keyboard (the preferred method) or recorded in real-time (not so easy). Backup was via cassette and could take 45 minutes to an hour for a three- or four-minute piece of music to back up and verify. The memory was volatile, so a loss of power meant complete loss of data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer

Only 200 were made, but it's possible he purchased it second-hand, as he had done for the Moog that was once owned by Tangerine Dream.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#188
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only a few months back that I found out that Vangelis couldn't read or write music notation. He would just improv play and record on a tape, recording additional parts and mixing as needed. If he needed to have other musicians involved, then he would hire someone to listen back and write down the notation. Considering he recorded something like 35 albums, he was doing something right.

You might be surprised at how many famous professional musicians don't read music notation. Outside of the classical world, session work, and jazz fake-books, it's far from de rigueur .

Even a lot of session work. Tony Levin (bass player best known for his work with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson, but who’s also played with Chuck and Gap Mangione, Paul Simon, Dire Straits, Yes, … well, more than I could reasonably put here). commented in his book Beyond the Bass Clef, that he went years doing session work without having to read music. Most rock/pop/jazz music is largely improvisatory in its structure. It’s really only when you get to larger groups (say more than about 7 or 8) that some sort of notation becomes essential to keep everyone together and even then, the rhythm section (guitar/bass/drums/keys) may not be working from anything more precise than a set of chord changes.

Improvisation goes back as far as music and even some classical music has improvised elements (cadenzas were traditionally improvised before they became commonly notated, Baroque music scored for continuo essentially provides a bassline and chord changes, albeit the chords given in an archaic form (figured bass) that is not widely known by contemporary musicians.

The most amazing improvisers, it turns out, are professional church organists (think the ones who work for the largest churches/cathedrals, not the grandmas playing a church warbler at the corner parish, but sometimes them too). When I auditioned for the Holy Name Cathedral Choir, I wanted to sing a piece by Massenet, but I had lost my original sheet music halfway through trying to transcribe a cleaner copy so I had a melody line and only a few parts of the piano accompaniment. The (assistant!) organist who accompanied me at my audition site-improvised an accompaniment for the piece that was, in my opinion, actually better than the written accompaniment I had lost.

That said, being able to read music can be a sort of superpower. So many times on church gigs, I’ve had guitar players be astonished by my ability to pull chord changes out of piano/organ parts without notated chords. Certainly, some aspects of music are hard to convey in notation. Swung rhythm is a particularly notable case where you’re playing something halfway between a triplet rhythm of ♩♪ and a dotted rhythm (insufficient Unicode to write a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth). The early transmission of jazz music to European composers by way of sheet music led to them missing out on the rhythmic aspects but picking up some of the harmonic novelties. A common injunction to musicians is to play the music, not the notes.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#189

While yes, the opening and title cards are very good, I can't get over the (imho) pretty "meh" layout of the crawling text. The right margin is very jagged (especially the "Replicant"), even when it doesn't appear to be necessary (notice that in "Replicants were used Off-world as\n slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and\n colonization of other planets.", the "slave" could've fit into the first line and "coloni…

I think the placement of Replicant is deliberate. It's heading out of bounds and makes you uneasy when you see it.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the problem with LinkedIn, local news etc. Contemporary American culture is addicted to dramatic writing and tries to leverage its tropes to create emotional engagement on everything .

Exactly. That's not just a load-bearing truth — it's a testament to the power of the contemporary zeitgeist!

You're absolutely right.
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