Jaime_Weinman
07-01-2001, 08:54 PM
J. Lee wrote:
Even in the bad WB cartoons between 1960-62 at least the musical scores and overall soundtracks were still good. When Lava took over in the middle of "The Jet Cage" it sounded like Warner's took away about half the musicians that were working with Franklin.
It doesn't sound like that to me, actually. The size of the orchestra had been shrinking for some years, as the budgets shrank -- for example, listening to the Carl Stalling Project CDs, the orchestra sounds much bigger in cartoons from the the '40s than in cartoons post-1955 (after the layoff). Also, I don't think Stalling and Franklyn were getting the same quality of musicians that they'd had before (some of the string playing on the soundtrack of "Speedy Gonzales" is pretty bad). By the early '60s, the size of the orchestra was clearly a fraction of what it had been. Maybe it got smaller with Lava, but it sounds to me like a fairly small orchestra in both halves of "The Jet Cage."
No, the problem with Lava is that he clearly didn't know the "house style," which means that his scores just don't sound like a WB cartoon score. That's most blatant in "The Jet Cage": the first half (by Franklyn) has all the familiar tricks and quirks, right down to the Raymond Scott quotes ("Powerhouse" over the main titles), whereas the second half (by Lava) just sounds generic.
But in defense of Lava, I doubt if anyone at WB really tried to get him to write in the Stalling/Franklyn style -- I suspect that the directors didn't fully understand how important that style was to the cartoons. For example, Chuck Jones gave an interview in the '70s where he stated that Carl Stalling quoted songs because that was the fastest, easiest way for him to score a cartoon -- which I think shows a surprising ignorance of Stalling's methods and the importance of those song quotes. And in some ways the Stalling style was rather anachronistic by 1962 -- you listen to a late Franklyn score and he's still quoting songs from the '20s that hardly anybody remembered (who was singing "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You" by then?). Also, I think Lava first scored cartoons for UPA -- and UPA's principle was that cartoon music shouldn't sound much different from regular movie music (that's why they often hired people like Lava who mainly did B-Movies and, later, TV programs). It just wouldn't have seemed necessary to him, the way it seems to us, to play xylophone chords when characters blink.
Even in the bad WB cartoons between 1960-62 at least the musical scores and overall soundtracks were still good. When Lava took over in the middle of "The Jet Cage" it sounded like Warner's took away about half the musicians that were working with Franklin.
It doesn't sound like that to me, actually. The size of the orchestra had been shrinking for some years, as the budgets shrank -- for example, listening to the Carl Stalling Project CDs, the orchestra sounds much bigger in cartoons from the the '40s than in cartoons post-1955 (after the layoff). Also, I don't think Stalling and Franklyn were getting the same quality of musicians that they'd had before (some of the string playing on the soundtrack of "Speedy Gonzales" is pretty bad). By the early '60s, the size of the orchestra was clearly a fraction of what it had been. Maybe it got smaller with Lava, but it sounds to me like a fairly small orchestra in both halves of "The Jet Cage."
No, the problem with Lava is that he clearly didn't know the "house style," which means that his scores just don't sound like a WB cartoon score. That's most blatant in "The Jet Cage": the first half (by Franklyn) has all the familiar tricks and quirks, right down to the Raymond Scott quotes ("Powerhouse" over the main titles), whereas the second half (by Lava) just sounds generic.
But in defense of Lava, I doubt if anyone at WB really tried to get him to write in the Stalling/Franklyn style -- I suspect that the directors didn't fully understand how important that style was to the cartoons. For example, Chuck Jones gave an interview in the '70s where he stated that Carl Stalling quoted songs because that was the fastest, easiest way for him to score a cartoon -- which I think shows a surprising ignorance of Stalling's methods and the importance of those song quotes. And in some ways the Stalling style was rather anachronistic by 1962 -- you listen to a late Franklyn score and he's still quoting songs from the '20s that hardly anybody remembered (who was singing "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You" by then?). Also, I think Lava first scored cartoons for UPA -- and UPA's principle was that cartoon music shouldn't sound much different from regular movie music (that's why they often hired people like Lava who mainly did B-Movies and, later, TV programs). It just wouldn't have seemed necessary to him, the way it seems to us, to play xylophone chords when characters blink.