Hi everyone and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today's cue marks a few firsts for this series. Most immediately, it is the first cue we've discussed that has a major revision - the original cue 2m2 The Little People was scrapped before recording and replaced by 2m3-2m4 New The Little People, which is used in the film. I had debated whether or not to do two separate posts for this, but I've opted to combine them together into this post so as to not drag out the series.
Both versions were orchestrated by Herbert Spencer, the original cue is 50 bars long, and the revised version is 61 bars long.
Here's the top of the conductor's scores for the original and revised versions:
You can see that rebalancing occurred at the same time as the revision, hence the note on the revision that it's based on the previous 2m2 to try to prevent any confusion. This rebalancing likely occurred as a result of the rebalancing of last week's cue (which went from 1m5-2m1 to 2m2), forcing this cue to go from 2m2 to 2m3. We'll continue to see the effects of this through the rest of reel 2, as each cue got moved forward in number.
That said, the final cue list for this film actually lists this cue as 2m3-2m4. The gap at 2m4 is a bit of a mystery in this score, since the next cue that immediately follows this one was rebalanced to 2m5, meaning that there was clearly a gap left at 2m4 for something. Eventually that gap got filled by this cue which was rebalanced again from 2m3 to 2m3-2m4.
My theory on what happened is this: If you're familiar with the editing of this film, you'll know that all of the Imperial scenes were reordered compared to how they were intended in the script/during filming. The "look sir, droids" scene that follows this cue in the final cut was originally supposed to happen much later, and the scene originally intended to be here was the Death Star conference scene. My proposal is that the 2m4 gap was intended for a Death Star conference cue. Then at some point before recording when the scenes had been rearranged, 2m4 was dropped and 2m3 became 2m3-2m4. If I'm right, that means there may be a cue written for the Death Star conference scene that no one's ever heard before, it may not have ever even been orchestrated depending on when it was dropped. This would also explain why it's not in the sheet music scans that I have, since I don't have the sketches.
Anyway, the main differences between the original and the revision are that the revision appends 10 new bars to the beginning, and replaces the final 3 bars with 4 new bars.
Okay now it's time to listen to the revised cue:
From 0:00-0:38 is the extended intro added in the revision. It is primarily a steady string rhythm, with an occasional flourish from the woodwinds section, usually to accompany a Jawa sighting. It's possible that the ones that don't accompany Jawa sightings were meant to in an earlier cut, but I'm not aware of any alternate footage for this sequence being available to the public.
It is also worth noting that all of these shots so far were filmed in Death Valley, where most of the rest of the scene was filmed in Tunisia (or in England for the indoor shots). Therefore it's possible that the reason that this intro was added in the revision is because this footage didn't exist yet when Williams wrote the original version. The spotting sessions started January 10th, where the USA pickup shooting continued all the way into February, so it's definitely possible that there were cues written before pickups were finished. Perhaps this is one of those cues.
0:38 marks the original opening of the unrevised cue, beginning with the proper Jawa theme rhythm as we see R2 moving through the cliff. The rhythm continues on its own until 0:46 when the full A section of the Jawa theme kicks in as we see some Jawas hide. The theme continues as one surprise pops out and stuns R2, with no indication in the music that this has happened until the strings at 1:06 which accentuate R2 hitting the ground.
The music changes a little into softer woodwinds with less rhythm as the other Jawas start to appear. You can almost hear the woodwinds mimicking footsteps around 1:12 for the shot of the Jawa running.
The full theme and rhythm then return at 1:15 as we see many more Jawas come out. This continues until 1:32, when the music transitions to playful music at 1:35 for the Jawas carrying R2 away. At 1:47 the music builds into a full statement of the B section of the Jawa theme for our first appearance of the sandcrawler at 1:50.
This continues until 2:06, where we get another small bit of Jawa rhythm, before some descending strings at 2:10 for the vacuum thing being lowered. This part of the cue always stuck out to me in the movie when I watched it as a kid.
At 2:19 we get a nice sandcrawler melody built out of the Jawa rhythm on the tuba, which continues until 2:33. There's a short break in between of just Jawa rhythm at 2:25, for the shot of R2 getting his restraining bolt. Additionally, there's some ascending woodwinds on top of the tuba at 2:30 for the shot of R2 being sucked up by the vacuum.
Finally, at 2:33 there's a brass crescendo as the Jawas enter the sandcrawler, taking us to the second half of the cue. Starting at 2:37 there's a strings/woodwinds section that's hesitant and fearful, almost sad, but that becomes more playful around 3:06 as R2 wakes up and realizes that he's surrounded by other droids.
Then at 3:15, as R2 works up the courage to explore more of the sandcrawler, the strings start playing that same sandcrawler melody last heard at 2:19. This continues as R2 and C-3PO reunite, leading to a celebration crescendo from 3:33-3:46. As the music builds in intensity the camera starts to shake more, and eventually the camera moves to a shot of the sandcrawler leaving the canyon area. The music starts to fade out here. This is where the original cue would've ended.
The revision adds a statement of the Imperial theme at 3:50 as a transition to the "Look sir, droids!" scene. It is here, that the cue ends...
This cue is heavily edited in the film, with major portions unused, and several portions that are used underscoring shots they weren't composed for.
In the final cut, 0:00-1:11 is completed unscored.
The part intended for 0:00-0:07 is used from 1:11-1:18.
The part intended for 0:08-0:20 is used from 1:18-1:30.
The part intended for 0:21-0:24 is used from 1:30-1:33.
The part intended for 0:38-0:42 is used from 1:33-1:36.
The part intended for 0:44-0:54 is used from 1:36-1:46.
The part intended for 1:47-end is used from 1:47-end
As you can see, only the part from 1:47-end is used as intended. Curiously, there aren't any picture edits that accompanied these edits, the revised cue syncs with the final cut perfectly. It would appear that the filmmakers either felt that music didn't fit or that the beginning of the scene worked better with silence.
Even so, it is very curious to me that they chose to butcher it so badly and use parts for shots they weren't meant for instead of using the intended music but fading in at the point they wanted it to start. 1:11 would have made a perfectly fine point to fade in at...
Additionally, I personally think the edit at 1:47 in the final cut is extremely jarring, the music cuts into the middle of the Jawa theme and it's very obvious. Most of the music edits before this aren't very noticeable though, and they mostly fit the footage in a way that makes sense. Still, I think I prefer the original intentions over the edited version.
That said, I'm actually not a fan of the extended opening of the revised version, since there's not much going on in it. I much prefer the original opening at 0:38. I do also understand the argument that silence works better for the section from 0:38-1:11, although I haven't yet decided if I prefer having music there or not. From 1:11-end I definitely prefer the original intentions over the film edit.
In the Special Edition there's one additional music edit here, instead of this cue fading out to silence at 3:54, it fades into some reused music from 7m2 The Mouse Robot, which is a cue we're quite a ways away from talking about, being all the way in the 7th reel. The reason that it was tracked here in the Special Edition is because the "Look sir, droids!" scene was extended with new footage, and I guess that because it was longer George Lucas felt that silence didn't work for the scene anymore.
This cue was recorded on March 15, 1977, the seventh day of the recording sessions. It was the third cue recorded that day. Three takes were recorded, 186-188. All three were used for the final performance edit.
Curiously, I noticed while writing this that no official release has the correct takes for the entire cue. Of course, identifying the correct takes from the film is difficult for most of the cue since most of it wasn't used, but for the parts that were, there are sections that differ from the film on all three releases that use the film mix.
As with every cue we've looked at so far, this cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1977 on 20th Century Records' OST album
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)
More specifically, 2m3 New The Little People can be heard:
From 0:00-end of track 6 "The Little People Work" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-end of disc 1 track 5 "The Little People Work" on the 1993 album
From 0:57-end of disc 1 track 4 "The Dune Sea of Tatooine/Jawa Sandcrawler" on the 1997 album.
All releases have clean openings and endings, and of course the 1977 set is a remix. As mentioned before, all three film mix releases (1993/1997/2018) have incorrect takes somewhere. The 1997 release appears to be the closest to the film's performance edit, but I noticed one obviously wrong take from 3:06-3:15 (which is also wrong on the 1993 set), but which is correct on the 2018 set. So the video above uses a hybrid of the 1997 and 2018 versions, using the 1997 release for the entire cue except for the section from 3:06-3:15, which comes from the 2018 release.
The other major incorrect takes I noticed were on the 1993/2018 sets, which both have a different mix (more stereo separation than the 1997 set and film) for the final brass crescendo from 3:38-3:46, followed immediately by a completely different take for the Imperial theme statement.
Sidenote: I haven't gone into specifics on incorrect takes in my previous posts since it was only ever the 1993 set that had alternate ones. I did it this time since they affected all the sets. But is this a section you'd be interested in seeing more of in future posts?
Anyway, I'd recommend listening to this cue with either the 1997 or 2018 sets; they both get the same tier since they're both tied for the least number of wrong takes. That said, ideally you'd want to listen to this cue with a fanedit (or make your own) that combines the 1997/2018 releases in order to use all the correct film takes.
That's all I've got for today, thanks for reading! Bit of a long post today, but it makes up for the super short one last week. I'm not sure if I'll be free next weekend or not so I may be taking another break week.
Either way, next post we'll be analyzing 2m5R More Little People.
