Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 8m2 City in the Clouds.
This cue is 96 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury.
Here's the tops of the sketch and orchestrated score:
The 12/11/79 date on the orchestrated sheet likely refers to the date the cue was orchestrated, roughly three weeks before it was recorded.
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 this cue begins with some soft strings as Han and Leia wrap up their conversation.
A brief rest at 0:10 for Han's line "detach", followed by a horn and woodwind rendition of the love theme as Han's plan works perfectly and the Falcon is discretely ejected while the Star Destroyer jumps away.
The love theme leads into a brief return of Boba Fett's theme for the shot of his ship tailing the Falcon at 0:36.
A crash at 0:43 marks the end of the shot, followed by a wipe to Dagobah.
Hints of Yoda's A theme plays on woodwinds as Luke lifts the boxes, followed by an athematic transition, and then a woodwind rendition of the Force theme for Yoda's speech at 1:08. This ends on a tense note as Luke gets a sudden vision of Han and Leia in trouble, leading to three brass crashes as everything falls at 1:23.
One final brass note for Yoda's disappointment at 1:28, and then we get a soft, almost dream-like rendition of Yoda's A theme on the woodwinds as Luke describes his vision.
Some dark brass after Luke asks if they'll die at 2:00, followed by some tension building music for Yoda and Luke's final discussion about the dangers of helping them, building into a wipe to the Falcon at 2:30.
The Falcon's flight is marked by tense brass as it flies behind the clouds. Two descending notes accent the two cloud cars at 2:37.
Some quieter brass and woodwinds in the cockpit as Han asks for landing coordinates and is told to stay on his present course.
The Falcon shot at 3:00 marks the Cloud City arrival melody, one of several melodies that Williams wrote for the Cloud City location. This is joined by a repeating ominous brass ostinato, and eventually by a women's choir at 3:22. This marks the first appearance of a choir in both this score, as well as the Star Wars saga as a whole.
Some more ostinato statements at 3:35 for the shots of the landing platform and of the ramp descending.
Woodwinds play for the door shot at 3:53, with one final ostinato statement at Han consoles Leia.
Ttimpani plays for the door opening at 4:07. Some have noted how this sounds almost like a hidden Imperial March statement. Most of the theme is intact, with just the second note altered. Some more woodwinds as Han discusses with Chewie and steps forward.
More hidden Imperial March-timpani for the wide shot of Lando approaching, and then the woodwinds build into one final ominous string note at 4:37. It sounds like it might be building up to a surprise, but instead it builds up to nothing as Lando turns out not to be a threat. Thus, the cue ends...
Two picture edits were made between the scored cut and the final cut, which resulted in multiple music edits:
A 2 second POV insert shot was added at 0:25 of the Star Destroyer from the perspective of the Falcon cockpit. This shot does exist in the storyboards dated before the cue was written, so it must have been removed when Williams scored it and then added back later. As a side note, curiously enough the shot of the Slave I following the Falcon is dated 12/3/79, which is only a little over a week before this cue was orchestrated. It must've been scored however since the cue contains Boba Fett material to account for it.
A 2 second shot was deleted at 2:31. It's unclear what this shot was. Musically it sounds like it should be another VFX shot, however nothing in the storyboards accounts for this.
Music edits were made to account for these changes, and additionally chunks of the opening and ending were dialed out, presumably because the filmmakers didn't like them.
As a result of these changes, the following music edits were made in the final theatrical cut:
0:00-0:12 = silence
0:12-0:37 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:10-0:35
0:37-0:40 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:31-0:34
0:40-0:44 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:34-0:38
0:44-2:00 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:41-1:56
2:01-2:35 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 1:57-2:32
2:35-3:53 8m2 City in the Clouds 2:34-3:55
3:53-end = silence
The Special Edition adds several new CGI shots to this sequence, resulting in the following changes. In the Special Edition:
0:00-0:08 = silence
0:08-0:44 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:00-0:36
0:44-0:47 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:32-0:35
0:47-0:51 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:35-0:39
0:51-2:07 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 0:41-1:57
2:08-2:42 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 1:58-2:33
2:42-4:05 = 8m2 City in the Clouds 2:35-3:58
4:05-end = silence
You may notice that the Special Edition didn't actually make any additional music edits despite having new shots. Instead they chose to start the music 4 seconds earlier, and to start the cue at 0:00 instead of at 0:10. As a result, that means the cue in the Special Edition starts 8 seconds out of sync, which just so happens to be the combined length of the new shots, meaning the cue naturally re-syncs on its own as a result of the new footage. As a result though, it means that large chunks of the start and end of this cue now play out of sync in the Special Edition (the end because the end now fades out early over new CGI footage rather than as Han steps down the ramp).
Despite not having a recording log, we know that this cue was recorded on December 29, 1979 thanks to the note written on the orchestrated sheet, as well as the take numbers in the sketch. Unfortunately, I'm unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 73 and 74.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1980 on RSO 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, 8m2 City in the Clouds can be heard:
From 2:07-end of track 11 "The City in the Clouds" on the 1980/2018 albums
From 2:07-end of disc 2 track 15 "The City in the Clouds" on the 1993 album
From 1:15-end of disc 2 track 5 "Imperial Starfleet Deployed/City in the Clouds" on the 1997 album.
No release has the clean opening, but all releases have the clean ending. Every release except for the 1993 is remixed. Often the 1980 sounds somewhat similar to the film mix but this cue is a great example of it sounding totally different, especially 2:30-end when the Falcon arrives at Cloud City.
The 1980 and 2018 releases are cutdown:
More specifically, they are missing the sections from 1:30-1:32 and 2:08-2:30.
One other weird thing I noticed while comparing the releases is that the 1980 and 1997 sets appear to have alternate takes for a couple sections?
The section from 2:50-2:59 is shorter on the 1993/2018/film than the 1980/1997 sets, while the section from 3:20-3:36 is longer on the 1993/2018/film than the 1980/1997 sets. The total length of the cue is the same on all sets. I'm not certain the cause of this discrepancy. My best guess is different takes but since they're all different mixes (and they all sound completely different) it's really hard to tell:
Additionally, all releases of this cue play at the wrong pitch/speed, although this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:
1980 set has to be sped up by 0.450 to match film
1993 set has to be slowed down by -0.150 to match film
1997 set has to be sped up by 0.150 to match film
2018 set has to be slowed down by -0.360 to match film
The discrepancies I demonstrated above are still there after accounting for the speed differences.
For my edit above I used the 1993 set, and I used film audio from the Special Edition for the clean opening.
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 8m3 Lando's Palace. See you then!