Movie Review : Star Wars

It’s hard to choose the most iconic songs of Star Wars. John Williams composed many memorable and moving pieces of music for the saga and several of them have lasting power. That said, “The Imperial March” has to be near the top of any of Star Wars “best of” list. The powerful theme is ominous, hard-hitting, and delivers all the notes a villain like Darth Vader deserves. But what if the tune was

Have you ever got a new toy on Christmas Day, but the toy did not come with any batteries? Do you remember how anxious you were to find batteries so you could play with your new toy? In this Duracell commercial a young boy receives a toy light saber like the ones used in Star Wars. As the boy opens up the box to his new light saber, he finds that batteries are not included. He then races upstairs to his bedroom and finds Duracell batteries. After putting in the Duracell batteries into his Star Wars Light Saber, suddenly his whole house and neighborhood turns into a Star Wars battlefield. This Duracell commercial was aired on television on October 30, 2015. This was a great time to air this commercial, mainly because Christmas was coming up and the release of the new Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was also coming up fast. The commercial grew anticipation for buying Christmas toys and for the release of the Star Wars movie. This commercial has a Christmas theme to it with the kids opening up presents and the Star Wars theme with the light saber and the Star Wars movie ad at the end of the commercial. The target audience for this commercial would most likely go towards young children who want an awesome new Star Wars light saber for Christmas, or any other toy that would require batteries to operate. Other than young children, Star War fans may also be attracted to this commercial. The purpose of this Duracell commercial was to create hype between young kids and

The use of leitmotifs by Richard Wagner across the Star Wars movies plays a crucial role in the score. Wagner uses leitmotifs, a “recurring musical theme, associated within a particular piece of music with a particular person, place or idea” that is “characterized by a single harmonic or rhythmic trait”. They are used by film composers to serve as a recognizable reference for the audience to direct their attention to details as simple as the entrance of a character to complex issues and events the foreshadow character development. Although the heavy use of leitmotifs compromise a film score as a musical whole by restricting melodic and harmonic development, it gives the music as a film component a new and arguably more effective importance.

This early film music had many influences from different genres, such as jazz and blues, ragtime, vaudeville, and the style of music from Broadway musicals was also becoming popular. 4 Film “composers” of this era had a wealth of popular music to draw on in order to create the music for the silent films they were working on. The varying genres also meant that they were able to create different styles and moods of music to suit the different genres of film, or the different

Nowadays classical music, including music from the canon, is used in a huge number of ways by people in modern culture; music is emotional underscoring, it is a field of force/perfume like an atmosphere, it is medicine, to alter your mood like a drug, it is also a key to mysteries of nature. (Robert Fink) Mostly William Tell Overture and ‘Largo al Factotum’ from Barber have primarily been used for chase/excitement sequences (Tell) or comedy (Barber). For example “The Rabbit of Seville” performed by Bugs Bunny in 1950 in the famous cartoon Looney Tunes. Other examples would be the opening sequence of Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993 and The Lone Ranger in 1948. Beethoven is ‘popular’ in pop culture and in the concert hall, for example, Fur Elise is a ‘popular’ piece. It is the soundtrack of modern life, providing a surfeit of musical wallpaper that delivers easy listening to nurseries, upscale supermarkets, doctors’ offices, cafes, and retirement homes. (Yang,

In 1949 Joseph Campbell published his book on myth and heroic archetypes known as “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Most importantly, the book outlined the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey. Star Wars: A New Hope is no exception to the many stories that contain a lot of the main principles presented in the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey. While writing Star Wars, George Lucas became fascinated with Joseph Campbell’s book. Even though this wasn't necessarily the basis of his story, he was certainly influenced by his obsession with the monomyth.

With 50 Foundation Honor assignments, Williams is the second most-named individual, after Walt Disney.In 2005, the American Film Establishment picked Williams' score to 1977's Star Wars as American film score ever. The soundtrack to Star Wars was additionally secured Library of Congress into the National Account Registry, for being "socially, really, or stunningly significant. Williams was drafted into the Hollywood Bowl's Lobby of Distinction in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Respects in 2004 and the AFI Life Accomplishment Honor in 2016. Williams shaped for eight of twenty most shocking acquiring films at the U.S. film industry (adjusted for inflation).John Towner Williams was considered on February 8, 1932 in Blossom Stop, New York, the offspring of Esther (née Towner) and Johnny Williams,a jazz percussionist who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet. Williams has said of his heredity, "My father was a Maine man—we were close. My mother was from Boston. My father's people ran a retail foundation in Bangor, Maine, and my mother's father was a cabinetmaker. People with those roots are not inclined to be

Who is Richard Wagner? Who is John Williams? How did Richard Wagner influence John Williams? What is leitmotif and how did both of these men use the idea of leitmotif? In this paper I am going to talk about whom these men are and what advancements they brought to their era of composition.

In this film, it is also used as a leitmotif for Marion Ravenwood. The theme is first presented at [00:21:30] when Jones and Brody discuss her in relation to her father. However, Williams does not use it in conjunction with her on-screen appearance until [00:34:50], when she leaves Jones and Sallah as they discuss the Ark. As the movie continues, this piece increasing beginnings to take on the standard role of the love theme. In fact, after the Nazis are killed by the Ark, instead of the triumphant Raiders March, Williams plays this theme to highlight the show of affection between the two following their victory

Pauline Oliveros composed a piece titled "Sound Patterns." Some of its traditional musical techniques that we are used to is the polyphonic texture and the A Capella voices. It also uses a form that we are quite familiar with Sonata form.Milton Babbitt composed a piece titled "Ensembles For Synthesizer." We here the manipulation of tones and pitches in what is called a 12-tone technique. I believe that an artists tends to create music such as the ones listed above to expand our mind set on our belief of the musical world and its aspects. It gives them the opportunity show us a whole new world of things like dynamics, rhythm, timbre, and much more. An open-minded listener could experience this as a whole new aspect to view the world of music.

Williams started piano lessons at a very young age, many people believe John Williams “stole” other composer’s works, but in fact, took them and made them his own by fixing the pieces into something new. He has been influenced strongly by Orchestral and Classical music by too many composers to name, listening closely to his music; you can hear the separate but same musical organizations. Being a composer and also a film composer (and being great at it) has put Williams at the top of the food chain when it comes to composers that have and will go down in the history books. His music is based heavily on the style of the late romantics such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Williams portrays pieces that are perfect for setting the mood of any film. Tunes that are memorable to almost everyone that has witnessed or heard his music. Williams may be best known for his work with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Just about all of Spielbergs movies have Williams scores; some of their collaborations include Jaws (1975), E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993),Schindler's List (1993), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Munich (2005) and Lincoln (2012). Williams also composed the music for George Lucas's six Star Wars movies. It has been announced in 2013 that he would also compose music for Star Wars VII.

Nearly every piece on the program highlighted the Cleveland Orchestra string section’s unique richness of sound, as well as its flexibility. From the soaring, expressive passages of “Marion’s Theme” (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) to the sparkling, dancing melody of “Harry Potter’s Wondrous World,” to the flowing accompaniment in “Hymn to the Fallen,” and the countermelody in “Midway March,” reminiscent of something John Philip Sousa once wrote for the piccolo, every song was handled with unrivaled artistry. No, none of it was Mozart, but some of it could well have been, given the rapidity and complexity of the technical passages. It’s often overlooked that film composers don’t pull any punches. Their music is extraordinarily difficult on many levels, and Williams’ is more difficult than most. Like their counterparts in the brass section, the string players more than did him

We all know of the famous sci-fi space adventure of the movie, Star Wars, which premiered on May 25th, 1977. How could we not know of this movie without its amazing soundtrack. One of his major works for the movie was the entire beginning of the movie scene and the intro. The Star Wars theme, Deconstructed, is pretty much known worldwide because of the new genre and the way it was created to go perfect with the movie. John Williams always adds his own taste of symphonic style to every film which brought back the “symphonic style” to the movies as well as “unforgettable themes” in his other works that are “set in an accessible, neo- Romantic idiom (Forney)”. The theme to the Jurassic Park movies are another major work of John Williams. In this theme, the french horns sing the popular melody that almost puts you in the dinosaur age next to the massive beasts back over millions of years ago. Jaws is another top hollywood movie back in the 70’s that John Williams did in fact score, and is most notably known for the Jaws theme. Jaws did come out before Star Wars so it was early for William’s career, but he in fact put movie critics in amazement as nobody had ever scored any movie this well. The Jaws theme is composed mostly of the string section, the violins and the cellos, in “two minor notes” back and forth which give the texture an uncomfortable feeling that “warns the audience

In 2001 space odyssey, as formentioned, he uses light classical music juxtaposed with the dark mysteries that surround the mission and the spaceship Discovery One. The music provides a sense of serenity as well as discombobulated feel like one might feel in space. As with all of his films there was great attention to detail and it was visually stunning as well as aesthetically pleasing. One specific shot of beauty is in the beginning of the movie titled “dawn of man” after the apes jump around the monolith, the sun is setting behind a flat topped hill and the moon is juxtaposed right above it with golden clouds all around. Also in this movie, the reoccurring theme of an unsavory character that we are manipulated into sympathizing with is HAL during the

“the music should give a feeling of importance, weight, and sense of the ’ancient’ to the visuals of Halo” -Joseph Staten, Bungie's Director of Cinematics