Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 3m4-4m1 Rev. The Sandman Attacks. This cue is a longer revision of an earlier cue, 3m4-4m1 The Sandman Attacks, which went unrecorded.
Both versions were orchestrated by Herbert Spencer. The original is 46 bars long, and the revision is 48 bars long.
Here are the tops of the conductor's scores for both versions:
The only difference between the original and the revision is the extremely minor addition of two new bars between 17 and 18. I'll point out where these were added in a moment.
Now, let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 we get some suspenseful strings as Luke realizes the danger of nearby Tusken Raiders and grabs his gear. The music quiets around 0:08, and we get some soft woodwinds as he watches some Banthas at a distance.
This changes at 0:19 as a Tusken Raider sneak attacks Luke at close range. Here we get some loud scary attack music, driven by a slap-stick. Again, this fades out pretty quickly, and by 0:28 the music quiets down. Curiously it seems the music quiets about a second before the picture changes, I'm not sure if this was intentional or if a sync point was missed,
Regardless, at 0:29 the music quiets again, and we get some slow steady strings with accompanying horn. This is where the additional two bars were added in the revision, bars 17A and 17B can be heard from 0:33-0:36. I think it's likely that the establishing shot that they score was added, and that is the reason for the revision.
Anyway, the strings and horns continue along, playing a hesitant melody as R2 watches the Tusken Raiders tear through Luke's landspeeder. This may actually be intended as a non-action theme for the Tusken Raiders, because it appears again when they're mentioned in the next cue.
This changes suddenly at 1:00, when we get a loud sting for Ben Kenobi's entrance, accompanied in the film by the infamous Krayt Dragon call sound effect that was replaced in some of the Special Edition rereleases.
Then at 1:06 we get these repeating woodwinds/brass statements, as the cloaked Ben approaches Luke and checks on him.
At 1:29, when Ben notices R2 (but before he removes his hood), we get some nice ascending harp, with some steady backing woodwinds.
This is followed by a statement of Ben's theme as Luke stirs awake at 1:38. Once Luke becomes fully conscious and realizes who saved him, the music fades out. Thus, the cue ends...
This cue was recorded on March 16, 1977, the eighth and final day of the recording sessions. It was the second cue recorded that day. This makes it the second to last cue ever recorded in the original Star Wars sessions. Five takes were recorded, numbered 210-214. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used takes 213 and 214.
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, 3m4-4m1 Rev. The Sandman Attacks can be heard:
From 1:01-end of track 10 "The Land of the Sand People" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 1:01-end of disc 1 track 7 "The Land of the Sand People" on the 1993 album
From 1:09-end of disc 1 track 7 "Landspeeder Search/Attack of the Sand People" on the 1997 album.
The 1977 release is a remix and should be avoided. Every release has a clean ending, but none has a clean opening, although the 1997 comes close - except that its opening also uses the wrong take. Also, the 1993 and 1977/2018 sets are both completely missing the first 19 seconds of the cue.
That leads me to one weird thing I noticed while comparing this cue on the different albums and in the film, not only do the different sets have wrong takes, but also different edit points between the takes.
For example, on the 1997 set:
0:00-0:19 is the wrong take
0:19-0:56 matches the film takes
0:56-1:00 is the wrong take
1:00-1:19 matches the film takes
1:19-1:30 is the wrong take
1:30-end matches the film takes
Meanwhile, on the 1993 set:
0:19-1:00 matches the film takes
1:00-1:30 is the wrong take
1:30-end matches the film takes
Meanwhile, on the 2018 set:
0:19-end matches the film takes except for one transition point from 0:59-1:00, the 2018 set jumps between the takes earlier than the film does, making it 1 second shorter. This additional second can be heard on the 1993 set.
This isn't even the only transition point that differs between sources, although it is the only one that you'd have to fix yourself if you made your own edit. One big difference is the transition point at 1:30. The 1997 gets this part so wrong that it's an entire second shorter than the film here. I remember when I first tried to make a film edit several years ago using only the 1997 set as a source and I struggled really hard to get it to sync up, not realizing that it was literally missing material due to the use of wrong takes.
The result of all this is that recovering the original film performance edit using the commercial albums is a nightmare mess. For my edit in the video above, I used a film rip for the first 20 seconds, and the 2018 set for the rest, except for the missing second from 0:59-1:00, which mostly came from the 1993 set, except I used the film rip to patch the transition from the 1993 back to the 2018.
Hopefully one day the correct film take opening will get officially released. The 2018 set probably would've had it if it didn't replicate the 1977 microedits.
Anyway, that's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be discussing 4m2 Obi-Wan Kenobi. See you then!
