I don’t know very much about this crucial Silvestri’s collaborator, but James B. Campbell orchestrated every Silvestri score in the 80’s until RICOCHET (that’s the first time I read the name of William Ross on a Silvestri CD, credited as « Bill Ross »).
Now, it’s obvious to me that there is a «Campbell sound », a 80’s sound in Silvestri’s career, even if the whole career of Alan remains coherent, from BTTF to THE MUMMY RETURNS for example.

So I wanted to know more about Campbell. How did he met Alan ? How good was this relationship that lasted an entire decade ? What did Campbell become after his wonderful works on BTTF Part III and PREDATOR 2 ? Why did he left Alan in those years ? Didn’t he wanted to compose himself ? After working on the orchestrations of such lengendary films as ROMANCING THE STONE, The BACK TO THE FUTURE Trilogy, the PREDATOR movies, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, THE ABYSS, didn’t he prove enough his ability to create magnificent pieces for an orchestra with Alan’s compositions ?

Of course, I’m not telling that Campbell did everything for Silvestri. Our Alan is still the essential creator of his art. But no doubt that Campbell was talented and certainly learnt very much from Alan’s own talent. ;)

Silvestri revealed in a 1990 Keyboard magazine interview that he composes on 12 staves of music. That would pretty much cover most of the bases when it comes to orchestration ideas.

James Campbell scored at least one movie by himself (Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark in 1988 when he was still Silvestri's orchestrator); otherwise he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth...

R u kidding ? It was one of my most used VHS when I was a kid :blink: (Well it's been a while since I watched it for the last time :huh: )...

Thank u for the info, perhaps the score sounds silvestrian...? ;)

James Campbell is a mystery man. Very little is known about him. There is only one short interview of him available in the unobtainable winter 1990 issue of the magazine "Movie Music" (from the Goldsmith Society).

James studied composition and was a professional bass player for 15 years in among others television and feature films before he met Alan through a mutual friend. They decided to team up on Romancing the Stone and collaborated very successfully for about 8 years. Dutch was their last film together I believe. After that he followed his composing background and pursued a career as a film composer, but never made his breakthrough.

In my opinion he's an excellent orchestrator. He's behind scores like Predator, The Abyss, Who framed Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Future scores!

I'm positively surprised that you made this topic about James Campbell, Aurélien. Nobody seems to know him or talks about him. He must have been an important man behind the screens and I'm sure a very modest person too. He fascinates me. I heard that he is in good health nowadays, but I'm wondering what he's doing with his life.

Here's the only known picture of James:

Silvestri's next orchestrator has been trying his hand at scoring features as well (William Ross - who did land the second Harry Potter movie, but that was from John Williams's work).

James B. Campbell was a very important collaborator of Alan Silvestri.

Silvestri is also a very good orchestrator. The orchestrations WHAT LIES BENEATH are very good.

I understand that Alan often gives pretty detailed sketches to his orchestrators like Mark McKenzie, William Ross, Chris Boardman, Conrad Pope and David Slonaker. I also understand that Alan loves to orchestrate himself when he has enough time on a project. He orchestrated the following scores himself:

- Shattered
- What Lies Beneath
- Cast Away
- The Mexican (with Conrad Pope)
- Maid in Manhattan (with McKenzie)
- Identity

I love it when Alan is in full charge. For instance the fact that he always conducts himself surely makes a difference. The conducting on The Back to the Future trilogy by John Debney is no match for what Alan can do. It lacked a certain amount of energy or juice compared with the originals. Alan is really an excellent conductor. I guess an orchestra is more eager to give their best when the composer himself conducts and when a composer with the status of Alan stands in front of them. I once saw a interesting documentary about conducting and you would be surprised how much it revolves around psychology! You have to understand that playing is just a day at work for some players and they have to be motivated in a certain way.

It is right.

It is a very good reasoning.

Thank you for all these infos Emile. Pretty rare and precious ones for a Silvestri admirer. :P
True that Campbell intrigues me very much since I realized that his name was on every Silvestri CD before RICOCHET.

Anakin, I understand what you want to say.

Are you french ?

I'm french and italian but I live in France.

I ain't french, I'm one proud earthling !!! :proud:

Yeah all right I happen to eat cheese sometimes... <_< :P :D

Emile, you mentioned Chris Boardman as one of alan's orchestrators. I only know his score for the Mel Gibson movie Payback. It sounded like a mixture of gangster music in some kind of 30th music style and the music style of the 70th. He also used the slap bass which appears in alans scores too, like in Sergeant Bilko.

Which ones of alan's scores has he orchestrated?

Look on his site at the credits page:

http://www.chrisboardmanmusic.com

BTW, it seems that IMDb lists him for even more films like Siegfried & Roy, but IMDb isn't always reliable
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0090181/

I admire Chris Boardman for having arranged a wonderful version of the famous Benny Goodman "sing sing sing" jazz band piece of music, on the James Horner Swing Kids soundtrack.

So Chris Boardman worked together with James Newton Howard and Michael Kamen before. Now that i think about it, i always liked the orchestrations of the scores he did. I never really noticed that he was working on so much projects. Hopefully, he will have a better future as a composer than James B. Campbell.

I tried almost my best to find him. I didn't find anything that said he was dead, so maybe he's still out there.

Hopefully he didn't pass away unnoticed.
Just early October I was hunting down Rick Patterson who did the season 3 theme for The Pretender.
I finally found out from friend Neal Fox that Rick passed away 2 years ago. :-(
And no one seemed to know! imdb.com had nothing about it, I found nothing via google.
No composer should die like that. Without a sound.


I only have one last trick up my sleeve for finding him and after that, that's it. I got nothing.


Campbell seems to be part of a small group of composers, I have found, that make their living ghostwriting and orchestrating and scoring a few things here and there and then disappearing, or dying.

You can hear it; when an orchestrator who ghostwrites leaves a composer, or passes away, the composer's work changes. Take Horner for example.

More orchestrators should get work. Like Mr. Campbell.

Interesting topic. I think James Campbell did a great job on some of Silvestri's scores. But if I had to pick some of Alan's scores with great orchestrations, I'd go for "Judge Dredd", "Contact" and "The Mummy Returns", and those are not orchestrated by Campbell. Sorry for saying this, but the orchestrations of those scores are so much better than "Back To The Future" for instance, much fuller and more diverse I think. Campbell did a great job on "The Abyss" though.

Dennis

About conducting

Composers like Alan wants to conduct, that we know, but of those composers that prefers not to conduct (JNH for example)
but my question to those not conducting why their not conducting may be answered by David Arnold, who once said that the reason why he wont conduct the orchestra was that he wanted to be in the booth with the director/producer to watch their reaction when they hear the music,
so based on that, Arnold knew what he did or did not like - that`s a pretty good excuse for not conducting

So this Campbell is the one who caused that thundrous no-nonsense sound during BTTF, Predator, The Abyss... and probably Judgment Night too.

Well, Alan also has a lot to do with his "sound". Like I mentioned earlier, he gives detailed sketches to his orchestrators. It could be that Alan's sound got a tiny bit warmer and clearer when William Ross took over from James Campbell, but the difference is subtle in my opinion. They are both great orchestrators. And McKenzie and Conrad Pope are too.

I see.

Thanks for this topic and infos, Aurélien and Emile.
James B. Campbell surely helped Alan to get his "signature sound", I especially like the action material created by Alan during his period of work with James B. Campbell. But know I know that Alan gives very detailed sketches.
I hope they're will more scores of that period released in the future. I went on a composer career after the "Silvestri era" of his. I always imagined him like an old craftman of film scoring, helping out the young Alan :D
It's quite fun to see the style of a composer evolving with time. I'm also quite fond of Alan's scores composed during the mid 90's using a kind of "gothic" sound (Judge Dredd, Super Mario Bros...).
And more recently Alan has shown his interest in orchestrations with the Beowulf score, orchestrated by himself and John Ashton-Thomas (a newcomer in Alan's team, I think that he is also memeber of John Powell's crew).
Concerning Chris Boardman, he was also a frequent collaborator of Kamen's (Kamen did produced Boardman's score to Bordello Of Blood I believe).