Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Hey, anyone had a good listen to the new Lethal Weapon set yet? I got mine a few days ago, and in general, it sounds fantastic! It is great to finally have all 4 scores, in complete form. There is one anomaly I have noticed, and I'm wondering if it has stood out to any of you: in disc 3, track 1 ("Main Title / Chase the Red BMW / Krugerrand"), there are voices speaking under the music. I hear it faintly at the very beginning of the track, and again from 1:25-1:40. I used to do orchestral takedowns (transcriptions) for the musical parodies on Family Guy, so I find that I hear every nuance in a well-made recording when I listen. Unfortunately, sometimes this is a curse. Once I find a defect in a recording, however minor, it sticks out every time I listen to it. Anyone else notice these voices when listening, at a moderate volume, with headphones or good speakers? This is not a criticism of Lalaland's production, which I think is fantastic as usual. I'm just curious.

You what?

Kamen sessions tended to be very noisy and from time to time some things like a bit of chatter just is there on the tape.

That's just the way it is, so I would suggest you just accept it and MOVE ON.

I found imperfections like this to be sort of cool to leave in, it shows the music is being produced and performed by HUMAN BEINGS.

There are vastly more important things to worry about.


Ford A. Thaxton

First let me say that I'm blown away by the Lethal Weapon box set and I am so stoked to have it! It's great to finally hear the scores as they deserve to be presented in their entirety. Wow!!!! But I have to confess that I didn't hear any chatter, room tone or background session "noise" and even if I had, no big deal. Anyone who has ever worked on a recording stage knows that from time to time, the SOUND can be heard during recording. It's ok. Personally, I kind of like hearing a little bit of rustle as the woodwind players take a breath or someone's foot brushes the floor a little while keeping time. It's cool!

BUT.. I gotta say... Thaxton's response to what sounded like an innocent inquiry (from someone who works in the industry no less) was less than cool in it's tone and verbage. Dude.. take it easy. It's all good man.... THANK YOU for the hard work and we all dig the 8 MARVELOUS discs you've produced.

We're never too old for this s***!!!!

By the way, how can such a boxset be twice more expensive than the Medal of Honor boxset, which contained the same amount of CDs/music and twice more individual scores from many different composers ? The only solution I can come up with is that Warner Bros asks for a lot more of money than Electronic Arts does... I don't believe it can be only because of the few scores from MOH recorded in Europe (I believe European Assault has been recorded in London and the choir from Rising Sun has been recorded in Prague).
Does a specialist have a better answer ?

Well for starters, the orchestras were probably smaller on MoH and more importantly, were recorded in Seattle.
On top of that, much of it was released previously in full, there wasn't nearly as much new music.

So I'm learning new things here...
Your answer seems to imply that Seattle has a special status amongst AFM orchestras and that releasing music previously released before is twice as cheaper than unreleased music. Two things I didn't know!
About the size of the orchestras, I don't believe a MOH orchestra is smaller than a Lethal Weapon orchestra (or at least Michael Giacchino makes it sound bigger !), especially considering the choir used for many MOH scores.

If I remember correctly, the Seattle musicians are not union. This means that they were probably paid up-front and are not part of future residual negotiations. The Lethal Weapon scores were recorded in Los Angeles.

It should also be remembered that there are other costs to producing a box set of a big Hollywood franchise, (e.g. negotiating the rights to the stars' likenesses for the artwork, licensing all of the songs) that wouldn't have figured into the Medal of Honor set at all. Apples and oranges.

Its very simple

When dealing with video games you are just dealing with the Video game company. There are special rules applied to video games scored in LA. They are produced with "buy outs" meaning no royalties (or Union fees) are due to the players if an album is released

The MOH scores are also recent recordings that need little to no transfers done. The cost of transferring the elements for the 4 Lethal Weapon projects alone (with the multiple elements and formats we had to work with) could have bought us a very nice car.

With the LW scores, we also had to make deals with not only Warner Bros Pictures, but with the WEA, the record company that owned the soundtrack rights to the first 3 films. So, the cost of producing these 4 soundtrack releases jump considerably when dealing with TWO companies.

Speaking of the original soundtrack, deals were made years ago to include the very high profile artists that had songs on the original soundtracks -- guys like Sting, Beach Boys, George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Those deals must be honored.

Speaking of Eric Clapton...he, Michael Kamen and David Sanborn are credited as composers on these films. As the more films were made, the higher the royalties got.

And then there are costs for images, cd manufacturing, paper, boxes, etc...

In all honesty, this set should be $150.



Hope that makes sense

MV

No explanation needed MV.

It was quite obvious why the set was priced the way it was for most people... Well, it was for me anyway. However, thank you for taking the time to break it down even though you didn't have to.

Thanks MV and La-La Land.

Of course ! Now all that makes perfect sense ! Transfer costs + original albums + Eric Clapton and co = big bucks! Thank you MV for enlightening us...
By the way, I'm saving money to buy this set right now, but I hope it is selling well!

To answer the original posters question, I heard the chatter as well.

Figured it was just studio chatter. I keep trying to figure out what they are saying.

It is not studio chatter it is dialogue from the film. Obviously during the recording of the cue the playback of the scene's dialogue is being picked up by the mics. I've heard a similar thing on another Kamen session tape for Last Boy Scout. If that ever gets released and they can't fix it then you will hear as clear as day Bruce Willis shouting "It eats the tape!"

Well done MV again for this. I would have paid $200 for this stunning set.

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Jason Needs
Webmaster, Jerry Goldsmith Online