Ryan

Yes, yes, I know I haven't posted here in forever. To be honest, I've largely moved most of my keeping-up-with-friends to Twitter and Facebook.

However, every once in a while, I want to post/write up something a bit more long-form than even Facebook will allow. Especially when I want images to appear inline, which FB still can't do.

So this past Monday, I attended Star Trek Live at the San Francisco Symphony. The TL;DR version is that it was an amazing experience, and one that I would like to see other studios set up for other films with excellent and dramatic scores.

For those who haven't seen or heard about this, Star Trek Live is a series of concerts where they show the 2009 Star Trek film, or its sequel Star Trek into Darkness, with a live symphony orchestra playing the score. The one they showed in SF was the 2009 film.

Regardless of what you might think about the Star Trek reboot in general and JJ Abrams' treatment of the franchise, you have to admit that Michael Giacchino composed an incredible score for the film. Tracks like these fully live up to the Star Trek films' legacy of dramatic scoring.



Anyway, my seat was in the front row, because it was one of the few left that wasn't $100 or all the way at the extreme sides of the symphony hall. Having to look up to see the movie screen beats not being able to see it straight-on at all.

When I first sat down, I thought perhaps I had made a mistake... because all I could see was this giant cello in my face:



Okay, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, since I could see the movie screen perfectly fine, more or less. But still, it was ... closer than I expected.

As the conductor came out, I realized that I had a better seat than I originally thought, because I had a really good view of the conductor from enough of an angle that I could see what she was doing:



I had a good view of the podium, and though it's hard to make out in this photo, I could see the cellists' music well enough to at least read the title of each movement (which was a bizarre format like 1m30, 2m47, 3m20 and so on. I don't know *what* that meant.)

The setup was very interesting. As you'll see in the next photo, there's an LCD monitor on a stand in front of the podium, so to the conductor, it would be visible "above" the score:

I had been curious to see how they would keep the music in sync, since for any movie with a modicum of action, there's always at least one point in the score when a "hit" or other musical action coincides with activity on the screen. It turns out this monitor is the key.

During the performance, it showed the film with two overlays. The upper left corner was a video timestamp in h:mm:ss:ff format (hours, minutes, seconds, and frames). The upper right corner, which I have circled in yellow in the photo, showed a count: 1|1, 1|2, 1|3, 1|4, 2|1, 2|2, etc. etc. The left was the measure in each movement, and the right was the beat. It also gave a two-measure intro (where possible) slightly to the left (e.g. "8 into 1|1" for a second or two, then "1/8 into 1|1" "2/8 ..." etc.)

Thus, the conductor could be sure of 1) staying in tempo to ensure the music remained in sync with the film, and 2) being able to recover if she dropped a beat or the orchestra lagged. She also had an earpiece which either kept her in contact with the projection room, ticked the time metronomically, or both.

I spent waaaaaay too much time during the performance watching the count and how she chose to conduct it. I don't feel that I really missed anything since I've seen it several times and also own a copy. :P

Some of the more interesting bits:

• The intro of "Enterprising Young Men", the track I linked above, is in 3/4 at ~163 BPM. When the main theme starts at 0'37", it's in 4/4 at 155 BPM. (Actually, the transition to 4/4 is two measures prior, when the trumpets come in.) Prior to watching it being performed, I had assumed it would have been done at 78 or so because of the sweeping legato phrases, so watching her practically flap her arms about, twice as fast as I expected, was a bit surprising.

• There is a bit in "Run and Shoot Offense" at about 0'40" or so which I would have loved to see the score for, if only to understand how it was indicated. The counter on the screen was alternating 1, 2, 3 for a measure and then a measure at 3x the tempo, so it went 1, 2, 3, 1-2-3, 1, 2, 3, 1-2-3 etc. I would love to know what that looked like on paper.

• They didn't perform the whole end titles movement, which kind of makes sense since it's over 9 minutes long. They did the end titles through the TOS theme and where it brings in the new theme, to the end of that first section, with the ending of the score pastede on yay. (It didn't actually sound bad, I just wasn't expecting them to cut off there.)

• They put the intermission directly after the destruction of Vulcan. Like, planet implodes, fade to black, lights come up. Because of this, there is a ~30 second window after the intermission at the start of the "second act", where the orchestra plays the last cue again from the planet's destruction before the film comes back on and Spock makes the captain's log entry.

Overall, as I said above, I thought it was an incredible experience, and if there's a showing coming to your town (see the list here), I really recommend going if you can.