Star Wars Scores! Watching the film with the isolated score is like seeing it again for the first time.

Star Wars fans are always hoping for something new each time the saga is re-released. Some want versions of the original trilogy as they were first shown, without the Special Edition changes made for their 1997 re-release. Many more hope for an isolated track of John Williams’s score so they can watch the film as a kind of silent movie, finally fulfilling an alternate vision of the series’ creator and director, George Lucas.

“I’ve always been a follower of silent movies,” Lucas explains, “I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.”

For 38 years, John Williams original film score to “Star Wars” has reigned supreme as the best selling non-pop recording in history. The American Film Institute’s (AFI) voters chose it as the greatest film score of all time, besting “Gone With the Wind,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Psycho,” and “The Godfather.”

At a time when film directors were asking their composers to create scores using jazz, pop, and rock and roll, George Lucas, asked Mr. Williams to create a romantic score with a large symphony orchestra. The success of Star Wars and its music ushered in a new era for romantic symphonic film scores. It’s almost unimaginable that any film today would be accompanied by anything but a symphonic score.

The music was so vital to the success of the film that when early viewers saw Star Wars with existing classical music as a temporary score (like 2001: A Space Odyssey), most thought the film was a sure flop. That changed once Williams began conducting the London Symphony Orchestra at Abby Road Studios in early March of 1977. Film Executives at Fox who underwrote most of the costs of the film, were finally ecstatic: they knew they had a hit. Still, they were unprepared for the stratospheric frenzy that was to come.

Star Wars became the most successful film of all time when it was released. It swept past every previous record holder, and was nominated for 10 academy awards, winning 6. Williams won for his score and has been nominated for 49 Academy Awards in total, second only to Walt Disney.

The Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, and is now in post-production on a new Star Wars film, “The Force Awakens.” As Mr. Williams prepares to score his seventh Star Wars film, fans can hardly contain themselves.  When word hit the streets that Disney was planning a digital downloadable version of all six films, the rumor mill exploded: We were going to get isolated scores as a bonus!

That didn’t happen. So no big deal, right? If you own a purchased copy of the movie on disc or download, and you own a copy of the soundtrack recording, all you have to do is play the movie on your television with the sound off and start the recording on your stereo (or phone/Sonos/Bluetooth speakers) at the right moment. Or you could use a program like iMovie and sync the two together.

Not so fast! Setting aside the copyright issues, the music won’t match up. Why? It’s complicated, but I’ll try and explain.

The scoring process often begins with the director and composer meeting to view the film after it’s been roughly edited into shape. They view this “rough cut” with the film’s music editor, and spot the places where music will eventually go. The composer will start composing to this rough edit but the film will constantly be changing as special effects are added, scenes are reshot, or maybe additional scenes are needed to clarify the film’s plot or sub-plot.

As a side note: Movie making is an extremely expensive process, tying up tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars for a couple years while the film is being made. This expensive juggernaut is rolling along at high speed, racing to reach a preset release date, so that investors can finally recoup the money they’ve shelled out. They can’t wait for a composer to craft a symphony that might take another year or two to wait for.

For the composer, who is operating on too much coffee and not-enough sleep, it’s a nearly impossible task. Like trying to shoot a moving target a mile off from the back of an elephant riding on a train car that can’t keep up with the target: it gets closer sometimes and just when it’s in sight, it moves away again. Fortunately, the music editor is there to assist with temporary music approved by the director and edited in for the composer’s reference. Music editors assist further with their excellent memory and skill for keeping track of all the composer’s completed work.

Eventually it’s time to record the orchestra while viewing the latest edit of the film. The conductor will interpret the composer’s score, hitting all the right moments in the film: Leia’s hologram suddenly appears, a pod escapes with the Droids, Vader’s entrance, etc. All of these moments must be precisely recorded in time to the image to elicit the desired response from the audience when played back later. Once the score is recorded, the film will still be edited into a different state. For instance, a few frames might be cut from the middle of the scene, so the orchestra recording is now out of sync with the image: Vader’s entrance fanfare is late. The music editor’s job will be to edit the music so that it fits the final edit of the film. With sound effects and dialog covering some of the rougher transitions of the edited music recording, the audience is blissfully unaware that the music was essentially re-cut and pasted together again.

Those edits can make it tough to listen to an isolated score. The soundtrack recording that can be purchased won’t be the same as the score in the movie. Different "takes" or versions chosen by the music editor to fit the film might be better left off the soundtrack to be sold for listening purposes only, and the rougher sounding edits made to hit the precise moment won’t have sound effects or dialog to cover up behind. It is possible, though, to prepare an isolated score. With modern Non-Linear Editing (NLE) software, a powerful computer system and excellent monitoring equipment, a talented individual with access to the recordings might be able to recreate a score with clean sounding edits that make musical sense. It’s been done for over 100 films and many are available today on Blu-ray and DVD. The list includes films scored by Jerry Goldsmith (Alien, L.A. Confidential, Planet of the Apes, The Omen) and Bernard Herrmann (North by Northwest, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Mysterious Island, Vertigo)

Unfortunately the cost of re-creating the score can be prohibitive, and it may be difficult to find an individual who knows the film and score well enough to pull it off. The job itself can take a lot of time to get right, and for many years, Kenneth Wannberg was THE Star Wars music editor. He passed the shears to the talented Ramiro Belgardt on the last film (Revenge of the Sith) and will assist Williams and new director, wunderkind J.J. Abrams on The Force Awakens. Even if these talented individuals were available to recreate an isolated score, music rights, performance rights and synchronization rights all have to be worked out with different groups or individuals who have disparate reasons for cooperating, or not.

Now the good news: it can be done. I did it. Twice. Fortunately, I'm a huge fan and I've been very familiar with the scores since they were released. Since I've scored a few small movies, I'm well versed in all the technology needed to do get the job done in ultra-high quality.

After a couple weeks and hundreds of edits, I was able to create an isolated score for both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but additionally, I let the original sound effects and dialog fade back in  when there is no music. Modern audiences aren’t used to watching an image without some sound, and it’s enjoyable to hear the dialog and sound effects when the score isn’t present; favorite lines jump out, whether they’re heard from the actor, or underscored by the orchestra, and somehow, even expository moments are made more poignant.

When I viewed the films in my private reference home cinema, the effect was astounding: it was as if I were viewing Star Wars again for the first time.  The emotional impact of John Williams’s score playing at full volume is so strong that your breath is taken away. Emotions are heightened by the music, revealing another “Take” on the film. Mr. Lucas was right. Star Wars is a modern day silent movie.

Now for the bad news: You can’t see these versions of the films. These edited films have been created for my own enjoyment. I cannot share them by screening them in any public venue and I can’t post them to the Internet without permission. Fair use allows me to enjoy them in my home with my friends only. I can share some clips online showing the process for educational purposes and for discussion on the merits of isolating the score, etc. It would be very cool to be able to show them at the landmark Castro Theater, just a few blocks from my house, but those permissions would have to be worked out, and I don’t see a path forward on that, yet.

It’s my hope that Disney sees value in an isolated score as an added bonus to build excitement for future releases, to introduce the films in a new way to young and older audiences, and as a tool for live symphonic performances played to the film showcasing John Williams’ extraordinary and ingenious contribution to the greatest film soundtrack of all time: Star Wars.

Star Wars Episode VII

My infatuation with Star Wars is part of my early geek identity. Still a teenager, I was very early to the party -- so to speak. Saw an early screening in San Francisco and used the semi-glossy program from the premiere to show all my friends to round up a group to go see it.

You've heard it all before: it was madness. No one had ever seen anything like it.

Since Jurassic Park in 1993,  computer graphics (CG) make the impossible possible. Sort of. The human brain is so good at picking up subtleties in movement, shadow detail, reflection, color, etc., that even though your conscious mind can be fooled, the subconscious isn't. That subconscious mind is the main tap to our emotions, and if our emotions aren't engaged, our disbelief isn't suspended. The movie doesn't work.

Very few filmmakers seem able to make things look realistic enough to suspend the audiences disbelief enough to get us viscerally involved. You know this feeling more often than not, finding yourself in a near catatonic state as the on screen calamity takes on an increasingly unrealistic sheen that distances, keeping us from caring about what happens next.

Which is why some filmmakers are returning to good old set-building, model-making, animatronics, and other old-school film techniques, alongside computer graphics, to keep today's audiences engaged.

J.J. Abrams is one of the new breed of filmmakers, using the entire cinematic toolbox on Star Trek and Star Trek into Darkness. He's upping the ante on Star Wars: Episode VII, using partly-built full sized props, along with CG to keep us believing. The X-wing in this video from YouTube is partly built, but the engine, wing and struts are CG. I can't tell the difference. At least, not yet. Your mileage may vary.

Reefer Madness!

As Captain of a large 44 ton vessel, I don’t smoke Pot, and I have to be regularly drug tested by the Coast Guard, so I won't be able to smoke it in the future. But in the past, I've imbibed on occasion. When I say occasion, I'm saying several times a year and only a hit or two. So you can imagine that I was very concerned when this was blasted across Facebook, Twitter, and the front page of almost every news source on planet Earth:

Occasional Light Use of Marijuana Damages the BRAIN FOREVER!!!!!

I panicked because the first thing I do is believe everything I read in the news, and then I run around like a turkey spewing blood everywhere from the place on my neck where my head just popped off. Then I post my pre-formed opinion from reading the news article that supports everything I've been saying for years. Yeah I did that, and then I had wild, hot, soulful man sex with George Clooney, and then James Franco dropped by my ultra-cool pad and they made me the meat in their Star-f*ck Sandwich... Oh... sorry that was my marijuana damaged brain talking. Yeah, that didn't happen.

For most of my life, I've been surrounded by really, really smart, successful people. My friends and associates are scientists, engineers, intellectual property attorneys, doctors, psychologists, artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Owing to this, I live in constant fear that one day at one of my frequent dinner parties, the conversation is going to flow toward something that I know absolutely nothing about and I'll be exposed for the idiot that I frequently suspect I am. So I read constantly, between 50 and 100 books a year, everything from a few likely prize candidates from each of the Pulitzer, Man-Booker, National, Hugo, and Nebula Awards to the latest New York Times bestseller list, often slurping up a juicy biography or memoir for dessert late at night. I'm usually prepping a project like a script for a Civil War biopic about Clara Barton for DreamWorks, or my current project: a script about an inter-racial couple driving a VW MicroBus from Long Island to Berkeley in the late spring of 1963. So for the past year or so, I've been studying the American Civil rights movement of the mid 1950's to early 1964. I'm devouring approximately twenty books on that subject, everything from Taylor Branch's Pulitzer Prize winning, Parting the Waters  or Interracial Intimacies, by Randall Kennedy, and Rebecca Walker's Black, White and Jewish. On top of that, I spend at least 12-14 hours a week reading from major newspapers, again mostly Pulitzer prize winning sources. No garbage, definitely nothing owned by Rupert Murdoch, the most garbage producing information source on the planet. That means no Fox News and the Wall Street Journal gets a huge amount of fact checking from multiple sources.

What I'm leading up to here is that I love a good argument with a well informed opponent. I love the back and forth of passionate debate and the enlightenment I gain from the process. This runs counter to our dumbed-down culture in this country where the majority of folks cannot stand the scrutiny of fact checking, and when debated, turn to hurling insults or turn away in sullen anger, stewing privately forever.

My spouse of 27 years, Michael Shuster is a neuroscientist that was part of Eric Kandel's Nobel Prize winning team of neuroscientists at Columbia University, so I noticed that the Marijuana study was posted in the 10th most prestigious Journal of Neuroscience. I know that Journal. My husband and a friend Jon Levine have published together a few times in that journal. What I've learned from science is that a result from any study has to be replicated time and again by other teams of scientists for that finding to be accepted as fact. So far, no other study has corroborated that occasional marijuana use causes any damage to the brain.

What does the data in this study actually claim? It claims that it's slightly possible that a group of twenty users had some very small changes to the shapes and size of a few portions of their brain. Oh, and these were not occasional users.

Looking more closely, the twenty subjects smoked between 10 and 30 joints a week. Think about this. That's four hours of being high from a whole joint ten times per week. A recreational smoker might take a few hits and pass the joint along, or stub it out and take a few hits on a another day. Pot these days is really strong, so that's enough for a light user. A whole joint is going to get you extremely high, so that you can't really do much but sit around and watch TV, or more than likely you're just going to nod off and fall asleep. But these users were high for the same number of hours that they're working, assuming a forty hour work week. These are professional smokers, not occasional users as the study's language proclaims, and that's the lowest use group. The others used twice to three times as much! The group that smokes 30 joints, they're pretty much high all the time. That's enough for me to question the peer review policy of the Journal. That's an obvious screw up, allowing for the dishonest, misleading title and shoddy analysis.

Weekly alcohol consumption among the tokers was twice the amount of the non-tokers, and alcohol consumption has a well known causative affect on the brain. This is another shoddy example of the study design. The study buries this fact in a short sentence:

Early exposure to alcohol may have also affected brain structure.

So, what they've downplayed here is that they selected to look at the brains of users who, as children,  drank 5-6 alcoholic beverages per week. The non-tokers were not childhood users. The scientists stacked the deck with unequal control subjects.

Unlike the many newspaper headlines, the study itself say says nothing about damage, either. The word used is "brain morphology" or "brain structure", but compare the language used in the study:

The study demonstrates that different aspects of brain morphology may be affected by cannabis.

 Now compare the claims made by Hans Breiter, the studies' principle investigator, when interviewed by the Washington Post:

People think a little recreational use shouldn't cause a problem, if someone is doing OK with work or school. Our data directly says this is not the case.

Breiter claims that the subject's brains were adversely affected yet the study itself says nothing of the kind. Breiter is inferring a negative effect when for all we know, the affect may be highly positive. Neither can be proven by this one study. And the study says exactly that:

This preliminary study has several caveats. First, the sample size does not provide power to examine complex interactions... .Because this is a cross-sectional study, causation cannot be determined.

This again refutes Breiter's claims.

There is one surprise that I found buried in the data. I'm not a biostatistician but when I looked at this Figure:

I saw something that they missed. Note the control group 0, and compare their data set with the data set of the lightest user group 1. These two group's data sets are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Saying it another way,  there is no difference between the brains of the lightest users and the non-users. This is the exact opposite conclusion from the same data.

You may make your own conclusions from the study. What I conclude is that we deserve better science done by unbiased scientists, whose political motivations are beyond question. We also deserve a better press whose reporting accurately captures the critical limitations of small preliminary forays into controversial subject matter.