Supernova
David Williams
" it's a drama-based score "Written by Justin Boggan - Review of the limited release
Supernova was ... a bad movie, looking back on it. I had the misfortune of watching it in the theater. Some crummy space movie where they are trying to prevent a supernova from going off and eventually reaching Earth one day. As with any deep-in-space sci-fi film, one of them goes crazy and starts killing people. All I remember is big robot suits fighting, and two people having sex in zero gravity -- it was that bad.
Called in to replace a score by The Truman Show composer Burkhard Dallwitz, David Williams tried his hand at sci-fi. So many film scores these days are bland and the orchestrations boring and not grabbing. Williams' score walks a line very close to the blandness, but stays out of there, thankfully. It's just strong enough, and just colorful enough to not be crap. There is also an ethnic woodwind, and some ethnic sounding percussion to spice things up a bit, but not so out there that you wonder, "Hey, why is that out-of-place ethnic percussion in there?".
Williams, who provided an absolutely beautiful main title piece for The Prophecy, was a strange choice for this film (then again, so was Dallwitz). It's hard to describe his score. While it shares some light similarities to the general feel of his score to Phantoms, it is not similar enough. I guess one could say the orchestra feel is somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Wanker's darker material on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which, as a side rant, is actually good, enjoyable work compared to his very lack-luster film work as of late). The score is not an epic fanfare drama with heroic themes, like say the Trek films or Galaxy Quest, it's more of a drama-based score. If you are familiar with his work, just imagine if he had scored a Rambo film, and you've got your answer pretty much.
Stand out tracks include: "Titan" with it's soft & steady percussion beginning, and ominous vocals, and uneasy string-feeling remainder; "Discovery" with the female vocals and orchestral fullness; "Airlock" with it's unusually dramatic build up; "Ben's Battle" with it's catchy beat pace; "The Greatest Treasure", which reprises the opening of "Titan"; "Transmission" and it's tension building, and Jaws theme riffs; and "Landing RRT", with the closest you get to heroic music in the score.
At the time I wrote the review for this promotional CD-R, that's all there was. A week and-a-half after turning in the review, Intrada Records released the score, along with Dallwitz's rejected score. From what I can tell, the Intrada CD contains all the score from the promo.
Called in to replace a score by The Truman Show composer Burkhard Dallwitz, David Williams tried his hand at sci-fi. So many film scores these days are bland and the orchestrations boring and not grabbing. Williams' score walks a line very close to the blandness, but stays out of there, thankfully. It's just strong enough, and just colorful enough to not be crap. There is also an ethnic woodwind, and some ethnic sounding percussion to spice things up a bit, but not so out there that you wonder, "Hey, why is that out-of-place ethnic percussion in there?".
Williams, who provided an absolutely beautiful main title piece for The Prophecy, was a strange choice for this film (then again, so was Dallwitz). It's hard to describe his score. While it shares some light similarities to the general feel of his score to Phantoms, it is not similar enough. I guess one could say the orchestra feel is somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Wanker's darker material on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which, as a side rant, is actually good, enjoyable work compared to his very lack-luster film work as of late). The score is not an epic fanfare drama with heroic themes, like say the Trek films or Galaxy Quest, it's more of a drama-based score. If you are familiar with his work, just imagine if he had scored a Rambo film, and you've got your answer pretty much.
Stand out tracks include: "Titan" with it's soft & steady percussion beginning, and ominous vocals, and uneasy string-feeling remainder; "Discovery" with the female vocals and orchestral fullness; "Airlock" with it's unusually dramatic build up; "Ben's Battle" with it's catchy beat pace; "The Greatest Treasure", which reprises the opening of "Titan"; "Transmission" and it's tension building, and Jaws theme riffs; and "Landing RRT", with the closest you get to heroic music in the score.
At the time I wrote the review for this promotional CD-R, that's all there was. A week and-a-half after turning in the review, Intrada Records released the score, along with Dallwitz's rejected score. From what I can tell, the Intrada CD contains all the score from the promo.