In Friday’s (12/16) Wall Street Journal, John Jurgensen writes about composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg’s artistic partnership, which has “endured for nearly 40 years, through Hollywood upheavals, studio shuffles and now a dramatic shift in how film music is produced and paid for. … Music budgets have shrunk by at least 25% in the last seven years, says Sandy De Crescent, who hires musicians for Mr. Williams and other top composers. … Kathleen Kennedy, Mr. Spielberg’s longtime producer, says she’s never denied Mr. Williams any resources. … But in other ways Mr. Williams’s process is ‘very tight and efficient,’ Ms. Kennedy says. He works with the same core team of about four people, including Ms. De Crescent (whom he met in the early 1960s) and doesn’t employ an assistant or other intermediary staff. His biggest time saver: because of Mr. Spielberg’s trust in the composer and the preliminary piano sketches he presents, Mr. Williams doesn’t spend time mocking up ‘demo’ recordings, an essential step for composers seeking a director’s approval to move forward. Unlike some of his peers who service multiple film projects at a time, Mr. Williams doesn’t farm out any piecework to underlings. … Yet at age 79, he works more swiftly than many in his field, his collaborators say, crediting his singleminded approach to each project.”
Posted December 19, 2011
