Jaws 3D par Romain Néophyte

Le nom de Graham Walker est loin d’ être inconnu des fans de la bande originale de Jaws 3D! Et pour cause, une biographie de ce producteur réputé (Dark Crystal, Sid & Nancy, The Talented Mr Ripley) est imprimée au verso de chacune des éditions vinyles de l’ OST… Ca en dit long sur l’ importance de son rôle dans la réussite d’ un tel projet musical. Contacté par mail, Graham a gentiment accepté de participer à votre site préféré sous la forme d’ une petite interview. Sachez que les réponses ont été approuvées par le compositeur Alan Parker avec qui Graham a eu une réunion de travail fin septembre. L’ occasion pour eux de me signer un exemplaire du LP…

1/ Before Jaws 3D, you have collaborated with the producer Alan Landsburg on shows like « that’s incredible ». What kind of character was Landsburg. To work with a TV producer was something easy?

We did this via the UK television company Yorkshire Television. The Head of Music Keith Morgan was the person that got us involved in this which caused Alan Landsburg to contact us. He obviously liked Alan Parker’s music he composed for ‘That’s Incredible’ which led us to being asked by Alan Landsburg to do the original score for Jaws 3. Alan Lansdburg was a nice person and good to work with.

2/When, exactly, were you engaged on the project Jaws 3D?

June 1982

3/Parker wrote a demo for two sequences of the film. These demos still exist? No. These were titles that we find in the movie? Yes but all rerecorded to fit the picture with the orchestra.

4/ What budget have you received for the recording?

I do not have any notes of this; it was too long ago. What I do recall was that whilst we had enough money to engage a large orchestra for 6 x 3hr sessions, with the amount of music needed, we would have like more so that we didn’t have to rush the recording process. After we had delivered the master score Alan Landsburg re-edited the film quite extensively. He thought we would be able to mainly edit the music cues to fit the new edited film scenes. Alan Parker and I flew to Los Angeles and reviewed the edited film and it was changed so much that editing the music would not work. The contractual delivery date of the film to Universal was very close so we had to rush back to London, Alan Parker had the re-arrange 30 minutes of the score and has one week to do it. Whilst Alan was doing this I had to schedule 3 sessions with the orchestra and then remix the rerecords. This was all done and delivered in 10 days. How many musicians made up the orchestra? 78 plus the organist

5/The songs on the LP are different from the film. Is this a recording made specially for the disc or is it the recording made for the first cut?

We were not involved in this. This was pushed onto Alan Lansburg by MCA/Universal. Alan refused to go with this as he rightly took the view that the music should be firstly correct for the film and not undermine the music to just sell more records.

6/Jaws 3D uses very little of the famous theme of John Williams. Is a willingness on your part or a desire of the studio?

The brief Alan Parker got from the Producer and Director was that they wanted new music and not the same music as used in Jaws 1 and 2. Alan Parker’s response to this was whilst agreeing with this approach, he would create the same feeling for the shark motive whilst not copying it which would then be the reference throughout the film so that it was in a complimentary style whilst creating an original music score.

7/ Universal wanted a more commercial soundtrack. Did you know that tests with the song « Jaws 3-D End Titles » had been made by the composer Steve Thompson?

Yes, This was not used in the final dubbed version as released. See my comments in point 6 above.

Merci à Graham, Alan et Liz Schrek pour leur aide. Nous aurons tout le temps de commenter ces propos lors de nos prochains articles. En bonus, je vous offre les Music Notes de Jaws 3D issues des archives de Mr Walker.

Jaws 3-D notes