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Ladyhawke RESCORED

MusicEd921

MusicEd921

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Well, I can't believe I'm even trying this, but I just couldn't get this out of my head, so here we are.....

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Ladyhawke came out in 1985 starring Matthew Broderick (in top billing!), Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. Directed by Richard Donner, this movie is quite a gem lost among other films like Excalibur and the awesome Willow. I would really go out on a limb and say that the music choices for this film is what really kept it from being more well known.

A Ladyhawke fan edit attempt is not new for the site, but I feel strongly about this enough to make it my first edit in a while as well as my first edit on my new laptop with new software in Vegas Pro 18.

I have spent the last week working on ONLY the first 18 minutes and have already downloaded 48 new sound effects. My idea is simple.....rescore as much of this film as possible. I will also be cutting bits here and there to fit with the beat of the music and there are a couple little tweaks I want to make to the overall film (less of Mouse talking extensively to himself and less of Mouse being entranced by Isabeau and any hint of there being anything between them).

I am committed to only using music by the great Jerry Goldsmith from the film Lionheart.

So far, it has taken a long time to get enough to a point to feel like I can do this. It will certainly take a looooong time to work on and I want to do this right because I really enjoy the movie and I want you, the fans of it, to enjoy seeing it in a new way.

It is by no means perfect, but here is my attempt at Navarre's entrance and the ensuing fight and escape that occurs. Outside of a couple of orchestral hits after Francesco is accidentally killed, everything else you hear in this clip is NEW MUSIC. Password: fanedit
This is just a preview of what I'm working towards and I hope you enjoy where I'm going with this.
 
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Dang, blocked already. I'm a long time fan of this movie, so I am interested to see where the project goes.
 
Video blocked, yup, but you had me at Jerry Goldsmith. Color me interested.
 
its been a while - i loved it as a kid...im gonna buy this in anticipation of your edit. I'm subscribed

Warner Brothers will always block content on You Tube. Maybe upload to Vimeo with a password.
 
Just watched it. Works awesomely well! Love where this is going!
 
MusicEd921 said:
It is by no means perfect, but here is my attempt at Navarre's entrance and the ensuing fight and escape that occurs. Outside of a couple of orchestral hits after Francesco is accidentally killed, everything else you hear in this clip is NEW MUSIC. Password: fanedit
This is just a preview of what I'm working towards and I hope you enjoy where I'm going with this.
Click to expand...

Okay, that was 3 minutes of pure AWESOMENESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (y) :love:
 
That works really well. The trims mentioned sound good. Though I hope not too much of Mouse breaking the fourth wall gets cut; that's one of the unique parts of the movie I always enjoyed.
 
Racerx1969 said:
That works really well. The trims mentioned sound good. Though I hope not too much of Mouse breaking the fourth wall gets cut; that's one of the unique parts of the movie I always enjoyed.
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Oh I agree that his musings are an important part of his character. There are some cases where he goes on just a little bit too much or, like in a part I was working on last night, the score gets in the way and it wasn’t important enough to keep in.
 
Spent most of Friday night and some of Saturday on this. The score for Lionheart has a few motifs that I want to lean into. Much like how the Force theme doubles as Luke's theme or for big moments in the franchise, the initial music you hear for Navarre in my first clip will do the same (his theme as well as the overall theme of the movie). In the clip below, you will hear Isabeau's motif for her first appearance and a lighter version of the same motif was used in a previous scene not posted where Navarre opens his bag and takes out her dress.

Also, this scene also shows an example of where I had to cut back on Mouse a little. In the original scene, after Isabeau goes to Navarre, Mouse goes back into the little hut and goes upstairs where he watches them and speaks to the lord about what he's seeing. There are 2 major reasons I cut it, the most obvious is that the original score is too loud to work around and the other reason is that I felt like as an audience, we just saw something weird and mysterious and we needed to focus on that more than on Mouse's continued reaction to it. Also, not for nothing, but I cut right before he hears "a voice" which I guess was supposed to be Isabeau's, but she was already out by Navarre and it just added a weird vibe. I don't know, it didn't gel with me the first time I saw the movie before I had any thoughts of editing it, so I had a vision of how I felt the scene should play out and fortunately it's exactly how I wanted it to turn out.

Password: fanedit


*A note about the quality of the upload.....I had to shrink it down considerably for Vimeo because I am on the free version and not the paid version. The actual final quality will be up to our site's standards.
 
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Slight update!

I'm around the 36 minute mark in the movie and have been hard at work replacing music and sound effects. At this point in the film, I'm approaching the ambush scene where Isabeau gets hurt. The way I've been working with the music is that our main 3 characters will all have their own motifs. I actually need to go back and slightly re-work an earlier scene with Mouse since I want to have his "theme" make an appearance earlier than it currently does.

There are 3 parts I am dreading/fearful of.....the fight at the monastery, sneaking back into Aquila and the final fight/ending. If they are similar to what I've dealt with so far, then outside of the immense sound fx work, this will turn out really great.

Without a doubt, this has been one of the hardest edits I've worked on.
 
MusicEd921 said:
My idea is simple.....rescore as much of this film as possible.
Click to expand...

And that's exactly what should be done with Ladyhawke fanedit.
The question remains, what kind of music will be used?
I am committed to only using music by the great Jerry Goldsmith from the film Lionheart.
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And that is not exactly what I would do. Why give yourself such limitation? I'd rather decide what kind of music, what mood would be right for the edit, and look for the music which fits, to keep some integrity.
 
Gieferg said:
And that is not exactly what I would do. Why give yourself such limitation? I'd rather decide what kind of music, what mood would be right for the edit, and look for the music which fits, to keep some integrity.
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Both approaches are valid, but using just one score guarantees that the whole thing will feel like a compact unity. Also, you can never go wrong with Jerry Goldsmith.
 
Gieferg said:
And that is not exactly what I would do. Why give yourself such limitation? I'd rather decide what kind of music, what mood would be right for the edit, and look for the music which fits, to keep some integrity.
Click to expand...

Well, I can see your point, but between making sure that there is a unity among the style and approach, the score itself has that "medieval" aesthetic to it. I only went this route because I have never seen the film Lionheart and one day while listening to a track I completely pictured Ladyhawke playing out in my head and then with that mindset, other tracks began to fit with the film.

When I found myself limiting my music choices to John Barry's score for The Legend of the Lone Ranger for my Lone Ranger edit (on hold temporarily), I found that I needed to branch out and look for more John Barry stuff that would fit the western sound/aesthetic. Fortunately in this case with Ladyhawke, there is A LOT of music to play with and it all fits nicely in my opinion.

Many other tracks could be used and others have tried to do so with Ladyhawke in the past. Lionheart is a wonderful score that remains somewhat lost due to a film that didn't get any love when it came out (and is hard to find the last I looked). I felt like this awesome score deserved an awesome movie and Ladyhawke's biggest issue for me is the awful 80's synth/pop music.
 
MusicEd921 said:
Well, I can see your point, but between making sure that there is a unity among the style and approach, the score itself has that "medieval" aesthetic to it. I only went this route because I have never seen the film Lionheart and one day while listening to a track I completely pictured Ladyhawke playing out in my head and then with that mindset, other tracks began to fit with the film.

When I found myself limiting my music choices to John Barry's score for The Legend of the Lone Ranger for my Lone Ranger edit (on hold temporarily), I found that I needed to branch out and look for more John Barry stuff that would fit the western sound/aesthetic. Fortunately in this case with Ladyhawke, there is A LOT of music to play with and it all fits nicely in my opinion.

Many other tracks could be used and others have tried to do so with Ladyhawke in the past. Lionheart is a wonderful score that remains somewhat lost due to a film that didn't get any love when it came out (and is hard to find the last I looked). I felt like this awesome score deserved an awesome movie and Ladyhawke's biggest issue for me is the awful 80's synth/pop music.
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Exactly. It's great that you went with a little known score from a little known film, but which has that unmistakeable 80s medieval adventure Goldsmith sound. This is exactly what Ladyhawke needed, and you're turning a film I like into a film I'll LOVE.
 
MusicEd921 said:
Well, I can see your point, but between making sure that there is a unity among the style and approach, the score itself has that "medieval" aesthetic to it. I only went this route because I have never seen the film Lionheart
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Let's say your explanation works for me just fine. Keep up the good work, I'm certainly interested in the results.
I've tried to re-score Troy (2004) once with Yared score, but gave up early on. Too much SFX rebuilding, but who knows, maybe will try it again one day.

Also, you can never go wrong with Jerry Goldsmith.
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Yeah, I'd put him over Zimmer, Horner or Williams any day.


btw, the film which comes to my mind for re-scoring Ladyhawke is Flesh & Blood (music by Basil Poledouris). Maybe El Cid by Miklos Rozsa too.
 
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Gieferg said:
btw, the film which comes to my mind for re-scoring Ladyhawke is Flesh & Blood (music by Basil Poledouris). Maybe El Cid by Miklos Rozsa too.
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Don't know, those scores come across as a bit too serious/dark for the kind of film Ladyhawke is, which needs a sense of fun, light-hearted adventure. I once watched a clip of the credits sequence re-scored with, I think, a piece from Kingdom of Heaven, and while the music was good, it didn't really fit the style of the film.
 
Gieferg said:
btw, the film which comes to my mind for re-scoring Ladyhawke is Flesh & Blood (music by Basil Poledouris). Maybe El Cid by Miklos Rozsa too.
Click to expand...

Thanks for those suggestions. Have you viewed the clips I posted using Goldsmith’s music? Tbh, it carries the tone I’m going for and if anything, I have more music than space to use it. There are so many great melodies throughout that just don’t have a place or scene to connect it to amazingly enough.
 
Love your clips! I'm looking forward to see your version and I think the Goldsmith score fits perfect. I'm also planning to make a Ladyhawke edit when I get faneditor status (there's a sample in the ideas section). My plan is to give the film a darker tone and to use a Hans Zimmer score so my version will be different. But I think you can't go wrong with Jerry Goldsmith and keep up the great work so far.
 
I’m really curious to see how this turns out. I started work on a Ladyhawke edit a few years back to replace the music, too, but my copy (and the only copies I could find to purchase) had the music on every track. There was no way to remove the original music without removing SFX or dialog. I’m crossing my fingers for you!
 
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