Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 3m2 Leia's Instructions.
This cue is 63 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=gJtuD0I3s6o
At 0:00, the cue begins with some staccato strings and percussion as Leia outlines her plans to the troops.
The staccato style fades away at the shot change at 0:09, as the strings becomes more melodic, featuring a unique set-piece theme exclusively heard in this cue.
This climaxes with one final rousing statement at 0:29 as the soldiers head to their stations following Leia's speech.
At 0:33 we see rebel soldiers setting up a trench outside Echo Base, and the music changes to quiet, ominous woodwinds. This ominous music continues for the short shots inside the rebel command center and for the launch of the first transports.
A sudden partial Imperial March statement at 0:58 for the quick look at Vader's fleet. Interestingly the sketch note here ("VH12") is a reference to the ILM shot number/storyboard code for the fleet shot, which seems to imply that Williams might've been given storyboards for shots that weren't finished yet at the time of scoring.
The Imperial March fragments don't last very long, developing into an exciting but less threatening brass line for the quick interior shots on the Star Destroyer ("our first catch of the day").
This builds into a quick tease of the Rolling Thunder at 1:06 followed by some Rebel Fanfare at 1:07.
A loud drum for the ion cannon firing at 1:11, followed immediately by ascending brass as the Rebel transports take off, with a quick statement of Luke's theme at 1:19 as the Star Destroyer is immobilized and the transports escape.
At 1:26 the set-piece melody from the earlier Leia speech scene returns as all the pilots in the hangar enter their snowspeeders.
This leads to a final heroic fanfare at 1:36 as Luke speaks to Dak and exclaims that he could take on the whole Empire by himself. Thus, the cue ends...
Just like last week, no picture edits appear to have been made after scoring, and this cue was used exactly as intended in the final cut - a rarity in this film.
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 184.
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 2:08-end of disc 4 track 6 "Drawing the Battle Lines/Leia's Instructions" on the 1993 album
From 2:08-4:02 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 ending but neither of them has a clean opening. Neither album is remixed nor microedited, although both are brickwalled. The 1993 set is way more brickwalled than the 1997 set, although they both have a strange issue where one channel is significantly louder than the other:
The 1993 album also has the left and right channels swapped by accident, so all the instruments play on the wrong side, but this can be fixed in an audio editor.
Additionally, the 1997 release of this cue plays at the wrong pitch/speed, and has to be sped up by 1.63 to match the film.
For the video above I used a speed corrected copy of 1997 set with a clean opening taken from the 1983 radio drama (ep 4 at 11:55).
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll finally be listening to the start of the battle of Hoth with 3m3 The Snow Battle. See you then!