Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 3m1 Drawing the Battle Lines.
This cue is 48 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury.
Here's the tops of the sketch and orchestrated score:
Let's listen to the cue together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0hAzbjOZfs
At 0:00 the cue begins with some pleasant strings as Luke thanks the medical droid and leaves.
A heartfelt statement of the main title theme as Chewie hugs him at 0:07, and the pleasant strings continue under his conversation with Han.
The mood upbruptly changes at 0:39 as we jump inside the Rebel command center and hear the Imperial March rhythm for the discussion about the approaching Star Destroyers.
This builds into a full Imperial March statement at 0:53 for the establishing shot of the fleet.
At 1:03 the music slows down, giving us some tense woodwinds for the report to Vader.
At 1:18, a slow Imperial March as Vader reveals his anger with Admiral Ozzel. This builds into some aggressive brass at 1:34 as the chair turns and the call begins at 1:39.
A slow brass statement of the Imperial March is joined by tense woodwinds as Vader criticizes Ozzel and he chokes to death.
Ozzel's fall is marked by a drum hit at 2:01, followed immediately by a drumroll for Piett's promotion. A final string note is held for the segue back to Echo Base. Thus, the cue ends....
No picture edits appear to have been made after scoring, and this cue was used exactly as intended in the final cut - this is the first cue we've looked at so far from ESB where that has been the case.
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 likely recorded in early-mid January. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses take 218.
This cue has been officially released on two different albums:
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 3m1 Drawing the Battle Lines can be heard:
From 0:00-2:08 of disc 4 track 6 "Drawing the Battle Lines/Leia's Instructions" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-2:08 of disc 1 track 5 "The Battle of Hoth (The Ion Cannon/Imperial Walkers/Beneath the AT-AT/Escape in the Millennium Falcon)" on the 1997 album.
Both albums have the clean opening but neither of them has a clean ending. Neither album is remixed nor microedited.
Additionally, both releases of this cue play at the wrong pitch/speed, although this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:
1993 set has to be sped up by 0.65 to match film
1997 set has to be sped up by 0.55 to match film
For the video above I primarily used a speed corrected copy of the 1997 set, with a clean ending sourced from episode 4 of the 1983 radio drama (4:40-4:46) using AI to remove the dialogue and sfx.
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 3m2 Leia's Instructions. See you then!