Steve Jablonsky's Transformers: Age of Extinction Maybe Coming to CD, Win a Signed Score Sheet

You've worked with filmmaker Michael Bay and his production company, Platinum Dunes, on a number of projects. How involved is he in working with you?

He's very involved. He said to me one time that for him, the sound of his movies is 50% of what he puts out there. He considers it that important. That includes music and sound effects. He wants to hear every cue, he likes to live with it for a little while-which I get, when someone hears a piece of music for the first time and I say, do you like it or not? If I were in his position, I would go "I think I like it. I need to hear it a few more times. Can I hear it again tomorrow?"

He's very involved, not just in sound and music, but he's very involved in every aspect of his films; which I think is why his life is just so crazy because he'll come to me to hear some music and he's always racing off to go to look at the color timing of the picture or to go listen to sound effects. Whatever it is, there are a million things ... he might be more involved than people think. The music to him, he either feels it or he doesn't. He feels the music and he knows it's something working for him. That's how he judges it, and like I said, he wants to hear everything. It's good for me because he pushes me to make it right. There's so much music in these movies, I kind of get lost in these scenes, writing for days and days. He's a good judge of what works, what doesn't and what's boring. It's a good collaboration, I think, that we have at this point.

How much creative freedom do you have?

He gives me all the freedom in the world, which is great. When we started Age of Extinction, the only thing he said to me is that it was a brand new cast; let's treat this as something new. We have three movies worth of music, but let's set it aside and start working on these new ideas. That was it; I just started writing and would send him theme pieces that I was writing. I wasn't even writing to picture yet, I was just writing music inspired by some of the visuals that I had seen in his cutting room. I would just send pieces to him to see what he was responding to. He seemed to be responding to the simpler things. This little piano melody I did and things like this, which is just something I thought would be cool in the movie. It's not something he asked me to do, so he definitely does give me an open canvas to try new things that I think might work. Of course, if he doesn't like it he's gonna say so. If there's something that's not quite right, he will definitely give me general notes. "I like this, you lose me here..." We have a good shorthand now where I can just send him music and he will listen to it when he's in the music mood. He will call me up and tell me if it's good or not. He let's me do what I think is right and we take it from there.

VirusCarnage wrote:I don't quite understand the appeal for CDs anymore, I find digital to be much more convenient. It seems like making a CD version of the score would just be a waste of money imo.

I've listened to the score over 20 times (not even kidding lol) and my Favourite tracks are: I'm an Autobot, Optimus is Alive, Cemetery Wind, The Creators want you back, The Legend Exists, Dinobot Charge, and Honor To The End.

fenrir72 wrote:

VirusCarnage wrote:I don't quite understand the appeal for CDs anymore, I find digital to be much more convenient. It seems like making a CD version of the score would just be a waste of money imo.

I've listened to the score over 20 times (not even kidding lol) and my Favourite tracks are: I'm an Autobot, Optimus is Alive, Cemetery Wind, The Creators want you back, The Legend Exists, Dinobot Charge, and Honor To The End.

On my side, I rather have physical copies of his work. Similar to having physical representation of the TF figures. Digicopies are convenient I'd grant you that but screen resolution (in let's say digi comics) depends on the hardware and nothing compares to the real thing using your eyes. Same can be said of CDs. Make back ups? Fine but nothing compares to owning the real thing.

Waste of money? You mean more money for the producers and the consumer still pays the same cost of the physical copy.

Steve Jablonsky wrote:I’ve received a lot of questions on Facebook and Twitter asking why the TF4 soundtrack was removed from iTunes. Here’s the short-ish answer: The AFM (American Federation of Musicians) has rules regarding soundtrack releases and re-use fees. One option they offer is the option to produce and sell 14,999 units without any additional re-use fees. Once sales hit 15,000+ units, additional payments kick in. The number 15,000 was chosen I believe because a good selling soundtrack generally sells around 5k-10k units, so this option provides most union film productions the opportunity to release a soundtrack and sell up to 15k units without incurring any additional re-use costs.

Now because you guys are so awesome, the TF4 score hit 15,000 units really quickly. I honestly had no idea the score had been pulled down until fans started contacting me asking why the soundtrack had vanished from iTunes, only a couple months after the release of the film. I suspected the 15k limit was the reason, a little investigation proved that to be the case.

Some of you have asked another great question: why are TF1 and TF2 still available? For both of those scores, the people responsible for paying the additional re-use costs chose to go ahead and pay them. In other words they allowed sales to go beyond the 15k limit. Different people are in charge of TF3 and TF4, and they have chosen not to pay the additional costs, which is why neither TF3 or TF4 are available any longer. It’s strictly an economic decision. The additional re-use costs can and do add up to significant numbers, especially with scores like Transformers. These movies are huge with a ton of score, and I hire a lot of very talented musicians to perform, which results in even higher re-use costs if we go beyond the 15k limit.

I have had many many discussions about this topic, unfortunately it is out of my hands because I am not the one responsible for paying the re-use fees. For those interested in a physical TF4 CD I believe La La Land records has some unsigned copies left (sorry the signed ones are all gone). After these are gone, the TF4 score will no longer be available. The TF3 score is already gone. My hope is that we will figure out a way to re-release in the future, but for now this is the situation.

This topic is very close to my heart. It’s really hard to put so many months of work into a score and then hear from people all over the world that they would love to purchase your music but they cannot because it’s not available. These are good people looking to buy this music, asking me what happened where did it go, and I don’t have a good answer for them. I’m hoping with more discussion we can find better ways to address this issue. I do believe there are better ways, where everyone can benefit without fans being left out in the cold because they didn’t buy the score fast enough.

thanks

Steve

Fifo wrote:It's business decisions like this that just encourage illegal sharing of music.

Mr_Autobot411 wrote:um just download it............

who buys music anymore ?? lololol

MegaDump wrote:As much as I dislike the movie-verse, I feel for Mr Jablonsky. Is it any wonder the music industry is suffering due to illegal downloading? A ten-second search on Google provides an huge list of free (illegal) download sites. The industry is pretty much encouraging this in preference to legal purchases.

RAR wrote:Has there ever been an explanation for why Age of Extinction barely has any Music in it - it goes quiet for minutes at a time - the end sequence is especially lacking Music for action scenes.

From what I've been able to find out the total amount of written music for AOE is tiny compared to any of the previous Movies.

I know some people like that audio consistency of the Movies, but it looks like Jablonsky had many of his best ideas in 2007 (by copying The Magnificent Seven score).

The Dinobots deserved their own much more distinct theme.
Bay needs to be much braver with the scores he commissions and have less of the generic music that so plagues Marvel Movies in particular but blockbusters in general these days.

I don't think Steve was given barely any time to write them either which never helps either - That used to be the reason why Videogame Music sometimes sucked more than it needed to due to a "lack of time".

I'm happy with Steve's work - just give the guy more time, let him interact with the writers and CGI artists, give him the story boards and tell him to let loose a bit.

I know he can do better than 'Bland' if allowed to, I don't think his post 2007 Transformers scores are bad all of them have some good in them - just that they are not as good as some of his Videogame scores have been I feel when taken as a whole and as contentious as it might be I also prefer the TF Prime TV shows's score too to the Movie Music when taken as a whole not that I dislike Steve's work I listened to him before he even got the Transformers Gig much as I did Michael Giacchino before he got much more well known.

I did hear something once that one reason why score's (and music in general) sometimes vanish is to do with having to pay an artist more if the music sells over a pre-set amount so the music is withdrawn to avoid higher royalties having to be paid to them.

I don't know if that is relevant though in the case of Steve.