Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) - Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL)

[Wawrzyniec]

Ups, tym razem ja popełniłem błąd. Poprawione.

[Mystery]

No i całkiem nieźle odnalazł się Tom w familijnym kinie i brzmi to bardziej jak animacyjny Jackman, niż toporny Junkie, choć spokojnie, barabanienia nie zabraknie, choć bardziej tu wspomaga, niż wychodzi na pierwszy plan. Jest symfonicznie, elektronika jedynie śladowo, nienachalnie, akcja porządnie prze do przodu i zdaje się, że swoją przebojowością będzie pasować do Sonica. Mogłoby to brzmieć oczywiście lepiej i przydałby się bardziej wyraziste melodie, ale lipy nie ma, tym bardziej, że album dobrze zamyka się w nieco ponad 40 minutach. Myślę, że teraz można śmiało wypatrywać Scooby-Doo

A sam film łapie zaskakująco dobre recki.

[Adam]

na tematy z Junkiem powinien na tym forum być AdBlock, który nie pozwoli użyć jego ksywki czy nazwiska w poście a po nim o Balfie

[Wawrzyniec]

Długi wywiad z Tomem Holkenborgiem o muzyce do Sonica i czemu brzmi tak, a nie inaczej. Plus też bardzo ogólnie o jego guście i stylu, plus odnosi się trochę do krytyki jaka spada na jego muzykę:
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2020 ... -junkie-xl

That partly dictates what the music is then going to do, and I can’t emphasize enough, as a composer for video games and for films, it’s a completely different animal. No pun intended. [laughs] The movie is a very horizontal way of thinking. It starts and it ends. Video games are way more vertical thinking, where there’s interactivity with the player, multiple layers that come in and out, and also storytelling. But the approach is just different. The Japanese composer, Masato Nakamura, did this really well in ’91, especially with the theme song that I’ve loved the most, the Green Hills theme. [sings a portion of the theme] It’s such a beautiful melody and harmony, you can listen to that for hours in a loop when you’re actually playing the game. This is something that would not work in a film, where you start that thing and you just keep looping it through a two-hour film. It just wouldn’t work.

The other thing that we found out in the movie-storytelling sense, purely playing video game music with that character was actually not really helping with the storytelling. It would sound too small for the big action scenes, it would not cover enough emotion when Sonic is all alone in his cave and he has no friends. There’s a lot of that to it. Yes, I tried to infuse as much as I could, and also the studio allowed me to push it more to that other side. What I did agree with the director with is that anytime where we had a video game-type sounding track underneath something, we would mute it and then we would replace that with a piece of music from an old Tom and Jerry episode. It worked a hundred times better. That’s just the nature of film scoring, and you have to acknowledge that. That’s also the job as a film composer, you need to enhance what is in front of you, even though you have such a personal relationship with the sound of those old video games. I really love it. I’m really emotionally attached to that, but I also have to be honest as a film composer: “Yeah, it’s not quite working for the scene.”

I read that, in addition to being inspired by early Tom and Jerry scores, that you’d also taken a little inspiration from Leonard Bernstein.

A couple of things come into play here. If we just talk about Leonard Bernstein, we’re talking about West Side Story, and the “Overture.” This thing is rapid orchestration, really fast and so well-written. Leonard Bernstein was an absolute genius. Then Tom and Jerry. Tom and Jerry, it’s this marvelous working relationship between Scott Bradley and Fred Quimby. The music composed for that, it’s such a craft, and that craft has really more or less disappeared in the 2000s. It syncs up with the pictures, so detailed, and the sound effects really didn’t exist in those days, so the music has to do everything. So if Jerry yanks the hairs of Tom, you hear a bunch of violins [makes gulping noise], you know, just doing that. Or if they try to run away, you get a very Flintstones-style [makes fast, plucking sounds], just like a bunch of bongos going nuts. If somebody falls down the stairs, it’s a piano that’s [makes crashing musical sounds], and everything has to sync up absolutely precisely with the picture.

That was truly an inspiration to then go to Sonic with these really fast action sequences, to take the best bits of that, but then put it in a 2020 environment, because that music from the ’30s is absolutely great music. But that, in itself, is old-fashioned, so you’ve got to take the best bits from it and then just redo it. What really fits in a 2020 film? For that super fast stuff, I was able to use the sound chips very effectively because I’m able to program really fast arpeggios with it [sings a few ascending and descending arpeggios]. That will do pretty much what that Tom and Jerry music did in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s. I’m not dwelling on things from the past, like we just talked about the sound chips or even Tom and Jerry music, but you have to admit that the craftsmanship in the last century, when it comes to inventing these new sound chips, inventing what the sound of Tom and Jerry was going to be like, that’s just mind-blowing. I wish we had a little bit more of that in 2020 when it comes to video game music or film music. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying I wish we had a little bit more of that craftsmanship.

I co do krytyki i uwielbienia Jóhannssona:

I think from the ’80s on, craftsmanship has been defined slightly differently. In that sense, unfortunately he’s not with us anymore, Jóhann Jóhannsson, but I felt really, really close with him musically. Is he the best composer on the planet? People that are fans of John Williams or Leonard Bernstein would say no. But people from the other school, and that’s more where I come from, for me, Jóhann Jóhannsson was like a film composing version of the Sex Pistols. Everything that he made was unmistakably his, and he had a sense for sounds. He had a sense for drama. He had a sense for incredible writing. The other day I saw Arrival again, and what he did for that movie is so incredibly powerful. On that same token, Hildur Guðnadóttir, who is now [an Oscar-winner] for Joker: Is she the best film composer on the planet? John Williams fans would arguably say no. I would say, well, you know, she’s pretty up there, because she created a sound for that movie, which you can’t take that away from the movie. The movie would not be the same.


For me, composers that speak to me are people that do something in a very original way. I was so happy when Trent Reznor won the Oscar for The Social Network. So many people were like, “Boo, boo, it’s just a bunch of noise!” And I was like, “YEAH! But, you know, great noise!” These are the same people that really take a shit on the Mad Max score or Deadpool, and I say, “Well, you know, this is just controlled noise. It’s not just random noise. It’s really by design. But yeah, it is noise.” It’s not like Mad Max is full of melodies that you can whistle when you’re biking to work. It’s not that type of score. So I think that’s very interesting in the time that we live in, that these two different approaches to film scoring, where there’s the very traditional form and then the very modern form, and I feel comfortable in both areas.

[Ghostek]

I niech ktoś mi powie po wysłuchaniu takiego "But I Will Always Be Faster", że nie słyszy tej rzeźni w miksie i masterze u Junkiego?
Przecież tego nie da sie słuchać. Pomysły na prace całkiem fajne. Kurde, nawet symfonika w miarę spoko się tutaj porusza, ale za cholerę nie mogę tego bez bólu przejść. Cały score zarżnięty limiterami i kompresorami...

[Wawrzyniec]

Oj, czyli znowu Junkie sabotował swoją własną pracą. Oczywiście ja nie mam aż tak dobrych i technicznie rozwiniętych uszu. I też nie słuchałem jeszcze całego albumu, ale uważam, że tytułowy utwór nie brzmi źle:

youtu.be/n55FhNiTMYc

Oczywiście trudno mi pisać o jakimś temacie i melodii, która mi łatwo wpada w ucho i będę pamiętał ją na długo. Ale w porównaniu z Terminator: Dark Fate, to jest dla mnie jak niebo, a piekło.

[qnebra]

Czyli w sumie za niektóre scory Tomka ocena mogłaby być o 0,125 punktu wyższa, jeżeli byłyby one miksowane przez kompetentną osobę?

[Adam]

czy XS tu użył tematu z Segi ?

[Mystery]

Nie zauważyłem, ale w filmie ponoć jest.

[Ghostek]

Ej, no fajny to filmik. Bez napinki, troszkę kiczowaty i przewidywalny od strony fabularnej, ale ogląda się to naprawdę świetnie. A i polski dubbing nie przeszkadza.
Carrey przechodzi tam sam siebie - kreacja CZYSTE ZŁOTO
No i można się uderzyć w piersi, bo muzyka Holkenborga gra tam aż miło. Cały film praktycznie muzą oblepiony, ale są momenty, kiedy daje ona czadu.

[Ghostek]

Recka. Szybka jak błyskawica

https://filmmusic.pl/index.php?act=recki&id=2961

[Wawrzyniec]

Teraz to trochę żałuję, że nie zdążyłem w porę zobaczyć tego filmu. Gdyż naprawdę tutaj według mnie Tom Holkenborg się postarał i jestem ciekaw jak ta muzyka sprawuje się w obrazie.

[Mystery]

Junkie powraca do Sonic the Hedgehog 2, premiera 8 kwietnia 22.


youtu.be/G5kzUpWAusI

[Wawrzyniec]

A już chciałem napisać, że coś się ostatnio cicho wokół Junkiego zrobiło. Ale spoko pierwszy Sonic był w porządku to tutaj swoją obecnością nie powinien nikomu przeszkadzać.

[Mystery]

1. Piece of Shiitake Planet (2:52)
2. Blue Menace (2:28)
3. Mind If I Drive (2:06)
4. Sonic’s Home (1:18)
5. A Wachowski Family Special (3:15)
6. Sonic, Meet Knuckles (2:48)
7. Papa’s Got a Brand New Stache (1:53)
8. The Master Emerald (2:40)
9. So You Think You Can Pivonka (2:14)
10. Goodnight, Tails (2:09)
11. Ages Ago (2:50)
12. You Know Nothing about Me (2:54)
13. Operation Catfish (3:34)
14. Eureka, I Found It (2:45)
15. Gotta Go Fast (1:46)
16. Entering the Labyrinth (1:59)
17. You Don’t Have to Be Alone Anymore (3:10)
18. Sinister (3:37)
19. Team Vs Robotnik (3:36)
20. Okay, We’re Not Friends (3:38)
21. A New Order (2:51)
22. Dad (1:02)