Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
I deeply apologize for the 1-month delay, my personal life suddenly became very busy recently. Things seem to have just about settled down now, hopefully I can get back into a regular posting schedule soon.
Today we're going to be listening to 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze.
This cue is 87 bars long and was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer. It's quite interesting that the score appears to skip over 9m5 - the last cue we looked at was 9m4 Trouble in Prison.
I'm not entirely sure why this gap occurred - often this might lead to speculation of an unrecorded cue between them, but this seems unlikely given how short of a gap there is between the two cues. There's only 38 seconds between them, even less if you count the optional addenda for 9m4 Trouble in Prison. There's no deleted dialogue here either, the scene is the same length in the shooting script.
My best guess is that it was either a handwritten typo (along the lines of "Vadar" and "Yodal"), or as John Takis speculated back when the ESB cue list was first revealed, that it might be that Carbon Freeze was written earlier in the process and a higher cue number was picked for it than was necessary after an earlier cue was dropped. If this were the case though, I'm unsure why it wouldn't have been renumbered later on like most of the ANH cues were.
Whatever the case, here are the tops of the sketch and the orchestrated score:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with a short horn solo intro leading into a beautiful rendition of Luke's theme at 0:04 as he flies through the clouds.
This bleeds into some slightly sinister sounding transition material at 0:20, leading to an Imperial March statement at 0:23 as the prisoners are literally marched into the carbon freezing chamber.
Some hesitant woodwinds at 0:52 as Lando explains what's going on, followed by a partial statement of the Love theme at 0:57, which is interrupted by Vader's "Put him in!" at 1:01.
Some brief action music at 1:02 as Chewie tries to defend him, but it quickly fades to sorrowful strings as Han stops him and the stormtroopers handcuff him.
The Imperial March briefly returns at 1:18 as Leia looks at Vader. This transitions into the briefest hint of the main title theme as Han speaks to Chewie at 1:26, we basically just hear the opening interval.
A brief sad string intro, and then we get what might be the most powerful rendition of the Love theme in the entire score at 1:34 as Leia and Han have one final kiss before Han is ripped away from her and placed into the Carbon Freezing chamber.
Instead of leading to the final verse, the Love theme statement leads to some dark and final sounding brass at 1:57 as Han is lowered into the chamber.
At 2:13 this fades away into some rhythmic brass and percussion for C-3PO's panic and the quick cuts that help provide a feeling of disorientation.
At 2:26 we hear an ultimate rendition of the Imperial March as the grabber equipment lowers.
One final bit of brass at 2:34, before the music fades to quiet strings and woodwinds as Han is lifted out of the chamber in frozen form.
Some atonal woodwinds play as all the characters look upon him, with some brief brass from the closeup at 3:01 and the profile at 3:12.
Sorrowful brass plays at 3:20 as Lando inspects the Carbonite block and determines that he is still alive.
At 3:39 we get our first appearance of what Frank Lehman calls the "Bespin Dirge 1", a sad funeral procession melody for Han. This appearance of it is actually relatively upbeat and militaristic as Vader dishes out commands. This bleeds seamlessly into a final Imperial March statement at 3:50 as Vader says he's altering the deal, before returning to the dirge at 4:04, which ends with one final crash for the scene transition at 4:14. Thus, the cue ends...
Multiple picture edits appear to have been made after scoring:
1 second of footage appears to have been cut at 0:16. Based on the sync note this seems to have been more cloud footage? Nothing in the storyboards indicates there was an extra shot here but it's the only way to get the music to sync
1 second of footage of Vader leaving appears to have been trimmed at 4:00. I have no idea why this edit was made - again this shot's existence is indicated by the sync notes as well as Vader's large jump in position between the two shots of him leaving
On top of these edits, the filmmakers rejected the emotionally empty atonal section for the reveal of Han in carbonite, leading to an insert recorded to replace that section.
As a result of the above, several music edits were made in the final theatrical cut:
0:00-0:15 = 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze 0:00-0:15
0:15-2:11 = 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze 0:18-2:14
2:11-2:14 = 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze 2:15-2:18
2:14-2:29 = 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze 2:19-2:34
2:29-2:41 = silence
2:41-3:33 = 9m6-10m1 Insert Bar 57 0:13-1:04
3:33-end = 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze 3:39-end
The percussion snips around 2:11 were not made to accommodate picture edits, rather it seems that those were made in order to change the sync point of the ultimate Imperial March statement so that the hard cut to silence would occur when the grabber equipment stops moving.
Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers it was likely recorded in early January. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, nor which takes were selected for the performance edit. Unfortunately, for whatever reason the sketch doesn't provide any take numbers for this cue.
Luckily for us, there is actually a second source of take numbers for this cue. A Boston Globe reporter, the late Richard Dyer, started reporting on John Williams in early January 1980 due to his recent appointment as conductor of the Boston Pops. For his January 10th article "Williams closeted in a sci-fi setting as Pops secret unfolds", he actually traveled to London and was present for the session where they recorded this cue. This article is a fascinating read and provides a detailed description of what the session was like:
Dyer specifically mentions Take 145, and seems to indicate at least one or two further takes were recorded for this cue. Curiously though the article makes several factual errors. It claims multiple times that the cue is nearly seven minutes long (or more specifically, 394 seconds). It claims that there are 148 minute of music to record for the score (far more than was actually recorded), It makes typos like "George Lukas". It claims that the only line of dialogue in the entire scene is "I love you".
Then again it also mentions several things that are corroborated by other sources, such as the 24-channel recording system, and the description given of the scene - it's actually really funny that this article was allowed to spoil one of the major climaxes of the film so many months before it came out.
It's too bad that Dyer wasn't present for the rest of the sessions, it would've been really interesting to read daily updates like this. Unfortunately. Alan Arnold's making of Journal ends in November 1979, well before the score was recorded.
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, 9m6-10m1 Carbon Freeze can be heard:
From 0:00-2:34 and 3:36-4:12 of disc 4 track 17 "Carbon Freeze/Luke Pursues the Captives/Departure of Boba Fett" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-3:21 and 4:17-4:52 of disc 2 track 7 "Carbon Freeze/Darth Vader's Trap/Departure of Boba Fett" on the 1997 album.
Both releases have a clean opening but no clean ending, and both have the correct mix. Both releases have 9m6-10m1 Insert Bar 57 spliced in - the 1993 set replaces the atonal section of this cue with the insert, while the 1997 set retains most of the atonal section and uses the insert more like an extension. Unfortunately, even the 1997 set is still missing 14 seconds of the original cue recording.
Fortunately, the original unedited cue was used quite extensively in multiple productions worked on by Tom Voegeli, including the 1983 ESB radio drama as well as the 1999 Crimson Empire audio drama. These uses are all buried under dialogue and SFX, but thanks to AI extraction tools I was able to rip the clean ending and the unreleased section totally clean. The unreleased section can be heard in the above video from 3:21-3:35. Presumably this section was snipped out of the 1997 set because a similar passage is contained in the insert.
More specifically, I ripped the unreleased section from episode 8 of the radio drama (16:25-16:39), and I ripped the clean ending from Crimson Empire part 1 (8:32-8:38). The latter didn't seem to sound the same as the album source, it seemed to have a slightly different EQ, but I managed to get it to sound seamless using mvsep's new "matchering" tool.
The album sources also both play at wrong speeds:
The 1993 set needs to be sped up by 0.300
The 1997 set needs to be sped up by 0.300
For my edit above I used a speed corrected copy of the 1997 set along with the AI cleaned extractions from the Radio Drama and Crimson Empire. Surprisingly the 1993 set was actually more brickwalled for this cue than the 1997, so there was no need to use the 1993 set at all.
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 9m6-10m1 Insert Bar 57. See you then!
