Horse Racing Fantasy Community

Musical Expression

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I was basically weaned on Superman The Movie and it's accompanying score. That film is as familiar to me, maybe more so, as the back of my hand. Every line, every sound, every note of music is literally ingrained in my mind so much so that if I were ever in a coma the best hope of bringing me out of it would be to play that film at a reasonable volume and set it on repeat; sooner or later my subconscious mind would nudge me back to the world.

John Williams has always been the modern day Mozart to me, the greatest living composer on the planet, and the standard by which all other great composers are compared. In short, all of his work is fantastic, but the reason I hold the Superman score higher than all of his other work has a lot to do with The London Symphony Orchestra's performance. Superman The Movie was the second time in as many years he had worked with them after Star Wars, and with their sheer size and skill level throughout, and the great Maurice Murphy on the main trumpet, the LSO brought a depth to each score that cannot be matched. Richard Donner, Director of the film, echoes my feelings exactly when he said that the most amazing thing about the main theme was that, if you listen closely, the music says the word Sup-er-man!, something that I've never heard done quite as effectively. Now of course it doesn't really say the word, but the three-syllable note makes it easy to imagine, and that's the magic of Williams. The fact that the LSO so perfectly brings Williams' musical vision to life represents the key to the greatness of the score.

My project began as a whim: from the time I was 11-12 and have seen that incredible 1973 Belmont and other SECRETARIAT races, I have always thought of him as without peer, and this was before I really began researching him. For me it was natural that the Superman theme danced in my head whenever I saw the snippets of the 1973 Belmont; when I was a kid I didn't really examine precisely why, but now I understand perfectly. Aside from the obvious (the Supes music expresses a being that can do things out of this world, and this horse did things out of this world), the biggest reason the music fits this horse so well is because that three-syllable note that, in the film, says the word Superman can also say another word that fits this horse to a tee: Sup-er-HORSE!

My job involves traveling about 6 months out of the year. When I got home in early October of 2006 I had only recently discovered YouTube, mainly visiting to find music that I wanted to hear. I got a really awful copy of the 1973 Belmont and, armed with my 2-Disc Superman Soundtrack, crudely put together a video using the main title, complete with the film build up, and uploaded it on YouTube. I was not versed in editing, not even on Windows Movie Maker, and over the next month or so immersed myself in attaining a basic level of competence working with that editing program. Very gradually I improved my techniques and started discovering that there were many people out there who felt the same fascination for this horse as I did, and what started as a lark turned into, over time, an organized project.

The opening title sequence to Superman The Movie is by far my favorite of all time. The interesting thing about it is that the film was recorded in Dolby 2.0 stereo for the 1978 release, the very first film in history to do so. The sound was so good that it actually won an Academy Award and, for fans of the film like me, is instantly recognizable. Among other things the credit whooshes in the title sequence compliment the music rather than drown it out, and throughout the film the level of the music is front and center, very easily heard. For the 2001 DVD release, the sound was redesigned and, in some cases, sound effects completely redone for a new 5.1 Stereo-surround sound mix. To make a long story short, it's vastly inferior to the original 2.0 audio. For the opening title sequence to my project, I wanted to pay homage to that great sequence in the film and it's a point of pride for me that my opening features the 2.0 mix, complete with the original credit whooshes. Clearly, my opening is not as refined as the film's, not by a long shot, but it is faithful to the concept of the opening to Superman The Movie, promising to take you on a journey filled with wondrous fulfillment. You will recall that the opening to the film features dances of mysterious light as the camera travels from Earth to Krypton. What I did for my opening was select various pieces of footage of SECRETARIAT's races and intentionally darkened and colored them to create a somewhat mysterious look that would mirror the mystical quality of the dances of light in the film's title sequence. In short, those images are dark on purpose. Enjoy the opening title sequence to The SECRETARIAT Project:

More to come later!

gfn02