movie soundtracks?

Other's I like:
"North by Northwest" and "7th Voyage of Sinbad" BHerrmann
"Out of Sight" David Holmes
"Passion" Peter Gabriel
"Ed Wood" Howard Shore
"The Mission" Ennio Morricone

All of Vangelis' scores are pretty nice -- Blade Runner, The Bounty being my faves -- if a tiny bit dated sounding.

Wendy Carlos also kicks a significantly large platter of finely-honed, unhomogenized ass as well.

"Dead Man" - Original Score/Soundtrack by Neil Young - Classic or Dud?

"Heavy Metal: Music from the Motion Picture": Classic or Dud

"REPO MAN" soundtrack: Classic or Dud

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/05/26/2010-05-26_study_pinpoints_why_horror_movie_music_is_so_scary_notes_mimic_distressed_animal.html

Researchers have cracked the mystery of why horror-flick music causes goosebumps.

Freak-out film scores, from the screeching violins in the shower scene of "Psycho" to the two thundering notes played over and over as sharks attack in "Jaws," have one thing in common: they mimic the cries that wild animals in distress have used for millions of years, UCLA researchers said in a study published this week.

Scientists call these cries, screeches and screams "non-linear vocalization" and say they are louder, higher-pitched and more sudden than normal noises animals and humans make.

Animals make the disturbing noises in emergencies to warn of danger or cry for help, and all land vertebrates may be hard-wired to respond.

The study used computers to analyze the soundtracks to iconic scenes from 102 of the most popular films of Western cinema, determined through on-line polling.

Horror movie soundtracks were chock full of disturbing "non-linear" sounds, the study published in the journal Biology Letters found.

The original 1933 version of "King Kong" pioneered the terrifying technique by tampering with recorded animal sounds to make them even more unpredictable and disturbing, researchers said.

Until now, filmmakers probably didn't understand the science behind what they were doing, the study's lead researcher, Professor Daniel Blumstein, told The News.

"I think they've been doing it instinctively," he said.

Blumstein jokingly worried his findings will be put to evil use by future film-makers.

"They're going to manipulate our emotions in more complex, devious ways," he said.

So this is an overdue conversation

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-ugly-truth-of-how-movie-scores-are-made

Wow

I've worked in music publishing a long time, and had business dealings with some of the people named in that article.
I certainly don't want to excuse exploitation of neophyte composers, but one of the reasons this happens is overly strict rules for film awards, which stipulate that co-written scores can't be nominated. So a situation arises where a lead composer takes full credit on the score, and then pays his co-writer's share (around 10% or 15%) out of his own royalties - otherwise, he wouldn't have won his Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Something else not mentioned in that article is that the publishing royalties (50%) of all these big movies are taken by companies affiliated with the studios themselves. Even the biggest composers sacrifice their publishing to work on these expensive films, giving the studios half of the royalties off the top while the composer and his "ghosts" scramble over the other half. (Composers may be allowed to keep their publishing when working on lower-budget films, increasing potential earnings and making the prospect more appealing.) As if these companies need the extra revenue provided by the publishing more than the actual workers.

Valuable perspectives, thanks for sharing that!

I knew that Zimmer had a lot of people working for him, but the numbers in the article are really something

Wasn’t this confirmed by one of the big composers himself (Zimmer maybe?) that they had a number of young composers hired and they limited to be “curators” giving notes and changing some arrangements as they seemed fit.