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Why does the music on soundtracks often last longer than the music in the film?


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I have often noticed that music composed especially for a film lasts longer on the soundtrack than in the scene. And I wondered why this is so.
Please let me illustrate what I mean with a concrete example.

I love the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula" by Francis Ford Coppola. In this film there is a scene in which Jonathan Harker is seduced by three vampire women. Of course I also own the soundtrack of the movie on CD, and I was surprised to find that the track "The Brides" lasts longer than the music used in the movie. Or to put it another way: the music on the soundtrack doesn't stop at the point where it ends in the movie, but continues to play.

Why is that so? I thought that a composer who composes the music for a film sees the finished film and adapts his music to the scenes, to the lenght of the scenes. Why does the music on soundtracks often last longer than the music in the film?

 

Greetings,
Sandra

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Often after the scoring session, there is additional editing, or there is editing after a preview screening, so the music has to be edited. The truck chase music on the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" CD doesn't quite match the movie.  Also, sometimes alternate takes are selected for the album than for the movie.  I listened to the "Alien" soundtrack for years but it wasn't until the last CD version was released that it actually matches the takes used in the movie.

I remember on the album for "Star Trek 2", a big overly dramatic cue when Scotty shows up with his dead nephew in his arms and the movie opted to go silent at that point, which was probably wise.

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You mean that perhaps the scene in my Dracula example was originally longer, and the composer composed his music for this longer version? And that the scene (and therefore the music) was shortened later, and now you only hear the whole piece of music on the soundtrack?

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Probably, I'm sure he didn't compose and record a long version just for the heck of it unless it was done specifically for the soundtrack or to be used in end titles -- the love theme for "Superman: The Movie" for example, on the soundtrack, was used in the end credits after the end title music ended, because there were 10 minutes of end credits!  The soundtrack piece titled "Ilia's Theme" on the "Star Trek: The Motion Picture Soundtrack" was only used for the curtain music before the main titles in some theaters.

Coppola in particular is well-known for re-editing his movies so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that after the scoring session, he kept fiddling with the cut.  Gordon Willis complained that while he was trying to color-correct "Godfather Part II" at Technicolor so that they could get started on making the matrices for dye transfer printing, Coppola kept making changes to the negative cut (which of course means changing the sound cut and maybe remixing).

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I have now timed with the stopwatch how long the scene with the brides of Dracula lasts, or rather: how long the music plays. It is 1 minute and 56 seconds.
The track "The Brides" lasts 4 minutes and 25 seconds on the soundtrack CD. Maybe Kilar, who composed the music, saw a much longer rough cut of the scene? Because the time difference is already very big.
I was simply irritated because I assumed that the composer would be shown the finished film, the final version, and the composer would compose his music for this final cut. It's a pity that there are re-cuts afterwards!

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In an ideal world the composer is working to the picture locked film, it's inefficient to do otherwise. Often on big movies the post schedule gets compressed and their may not be time for the composer to get the finished cut and then write and record the music in time for release. 

So the composing task may have to start earlier in the post process, with the composer working to rough cuts that could still change.  Its the same with VFX - shots will get animated, cleaned up, composited and then not make the cut. 1000s of hours of post performed on shots that don't make the cut. But they have to do that to turn the big budget VFX driven movies around. The effects work starts almost parallel to the edit. 

And there are composer filmmaker teams that intentionally start composing earlier in the process.

Angelo Badalamenti is famous in his work with David Lynch to sometime compose music cues ahead of production, so they are able to play his music on set and work with it in the edit. E.g chunks of the Twin Peaks score was composed ahead of the shoot.

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