Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 1m2 New Start, the first of three inserts written for 1m2 The Imperial Probe.
This insert was written to replace the first minute of 1m2 The Imperial Probe, which the filmmakers evidently felt was too bombastic.
This insert is 25 bars long and was orchestrated by Angela Morley.
Here's what the tops of the sketch and conductor's score look like:
With the intro out of the way, let's listen to the insert together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOodvpsCzc
At 0:00 we hear the same mysterious woodwinds that open the original cue. The first 7 bars of this insert were copy-pasted from it.
At 0:07 the woodwinds Imperial March over ascending brass, again copied from the original cue.
At 0:13 we finally get our first new material. instead of sharp brass, we get soft woodwinds and harp as all the probe pods emerge. A small harp climax at 0:21 as the pod flies past the screen.
More woodwinds including a flute solo for the flyby, followed by some descending woodwinds at 0:30 for the reveal of Hoth and the pod crash. Unlike in the original cue, the explosion isn't mickey-moused as heavily.
A small hint of sinister brass at 0:43 as we see the probe droid arise from the wreckage. This is followed by harp for the probe droid flying off at 0:51.
At 0:55 we get one last string note for the "Wipe to snow". This is intended to overlap with the similar string material at 0:58 in the original cue. Thus, the insert ends...
This insert is used mostly as intended in the final cut, replacing the original opening of 1m2 The Imperial Probe. However, like the original cue, there were several footage changes made. I'm not going to repeat them all here since they're all the same as last week but I will mention that this time I included the missing "wipe to snow" transition using the 70mm cut, which released earlier than the wide release and was unfinished in various ways, making it closer to the cut Williams scored.
I think this insert was primarily written to make the opening of the film more mysterious, and to remove the big bombastic Imperial March statement so that it could be revealed later. But honestly, I prefer the original cue - it's more energetic and it more closely scores the footage.
Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers written in the sketch it was one of the later things recorded in mid-late January (according to the sketch it was recorded immediately after 1m3-2m1 Luke's Escape). I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 255 and 256.
This insert has been officially released on one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 1m2 New Start can be heard:
From 0:00-0:55 of disc 1 track 4 "Aboard the Executor" on the 1997 album.
The 1997 set has a clean opening but no clean ending - it segues on the harp as the probe flies away. Admittedly this transition is pretty masterful, it took me years to figure out where the segue even was.
The 1997 set also needs to be slowed down by 0.450 to match film.
Unfortunately, the 1997 set sounds nothing like the film. It doesn't appear to be a remix - all the instruments are panned to the right places - but it has much more treble and less bass than the film. I believe that the film is correct because this is also how the audio dramas that use this insert sound.
As a result, the edit above doesn't use any soundtrack albums at all, instead it's a combination of a film rip and a rip of the Crimson Empire audiobook. In particular, the clean ending from 0:53-1:03, which is completely missing on the 1997 album, can be found from 19:04-19:14 of Crimson Empire Part 2.
I apologize for some of the AI artifacts in the upload, hopefully Disney will eventually release proper expansions so that this insert can be properly heard in its correct form.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be listening to the second insert for the opening, 1m2 Insert Bar 80. See you then!