Midday Music host Evan Miller spoke with Neal Gittleman, conductor of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, which performed the score of Star Wars: A New Hope for two screenings at the Schuster Center on October 14 and 15. In the interview, Gittleman talked about performing composer John Williams’ iconic soundtrack live for the screening. He also described the challenges of staying perfectly synchronized with the two-hour film, and the technology he uses to make it happen—without the audience noticing.
George Lucas’s original 1977 Star Wars was a blockbuster hit, and the progenitor of a decades-running cinematic franchise. Its original soundtrack, composed and conducted by John Williams, was equally successful; the soundtrack has become the best-selling symphonic album of all time, and is preserved in the Library of Congress for its cultural significance. Williams also composed music for numerous later films in the Star Wars films. “He created his own empire, and he deserves it, because he’s written fabulous music,” Neal Gittleman said.
While Williams’ score is an audience favorite, Gittlman says accompanying Star Wars live is musically and technologically challenging. He must direct the orchestra in exact synchronization with the film, without any pauses.
“John Williams’ scores tend to be very intricate, so even if you’re just playing it in concert, everyone has to do a fair amount of work to play them well. But when you add the tyranny of the film, moving at 24 frames per second, the click moves, and I move with the click, and the orchestra moves with me, and there’s no turning back.”
Gittleman also spoke with Evan about the technology used to perform live scores for film screenings. In the past, film reels were manually doctored to create cues for a conductor. “They would do things physically to the film,” Gittleman said, “They would take a hole punch and punch a hole on a particular frame when something was supposed to happen, which would cause a big circular blot of light to appear on the screen.” Today, Gittleman uses an updated version of the antiquated “streamers and punches” system, which combines visual cues, countdown timers, and a click track. “There’s all this stuff that goes on to make it happen, but ideally the audience has no idea how it’s happening—it’s just like magic.”
For more information about the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra’s upcoming 2023-2024 concert season, including a live-scored screening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, visit daytonperformingarts.org.
Text by Peter Day, adapted from an interview by Evan Miller.
