Re: Re: Re: Alexander Nevsky


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Posted by Tom B. on April 16, 2002 at 20:14:32:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Alexander Nevsky posted by Rick Denney on April 15, 2002 at 17:20:13:

The Dallas Symphony has done similar things. A few seasons ago they did Ivan the Terrible and this season they did "Symphonic Night at the Movies."

The "Symphonic Night at the Movies" program is a concert program produced by John Goberman that features several movies that have all won oscars. Mr. Goberman collected several movies (Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Robin Hood, Ben Hur, Gone with the Wind, & An American in Paris) and obtained the original scores.

The first thing that was done was examination of the scores. In other words, the music was the priority, not the movie clips. After the "cuts" from the music had been established, Mr. Goberman ran the films through a mixer and pulled out all the music, unimportant dialouge, and sounds. This sounds a lot easier than it really was. The films that he picked are very old, and recording/mixing technology was very different, and as a result removing selected elements from the films was VERY difficult.

He worked closely with Richard Kaufman, principal pops conductor of the Dallas Symphony. Projects like this are Mr. Kaufman's thing...he is a music consultant for MGM studios and understands how to do things like this.

The preperation on his part was amazing. He spent tons of time watching the movie, conducting as we played the movie, and timing the whole thing. For every measure of music, he marked his score with a sticky note telling him exactly how much time there was in the measure in relation to the movie. He kept things in sync by watching the film on a monitor at his podium and well as by watching one of two "movie-time" clocks we had setup for him.

Productions like that are a big deal. I imagine that seeing Nevsky done live with the film was great. I just thought I'd add my experiences to your comments.


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