bluejay wrote: Not really sure I get your point here Errikos.
Firstly, it's nice to see that you, like me, know how to orchestrate but recognise the various reasons for using pro-orchestrators etc.
Firstly, thank you for going through my post, I am sure you are quite a busy man. Secondly, I consider myself to be a very highly intelligent man - to say the least, and my dialectical abilities to be impeccable. So if it seems I am contradicting myself it must be due to your own reasoning faculties, the speed with which you read the post, or my bad presentation... So,
I mentioned in my post the names of Williams and Goldsmith's long time orchestrators; did I say Williams and Goldsmith were bad film composers? No. I have no problem with the use of orchestrators or I would only be listening to Mancini, Morricone and Shore. What I said was that despite the apparently enormous help that Elfman has in that regard, he still possesses his own voice (missing from most today), and after Will Hunting and Big Fish he showed that his voice was not mono-dimensional (Beetlejuice, Scissorhands, Nightmare before Christmas etc.). The fact that his sound comes clearly through after so many people allegedly (and maybe that's the way it was) put so much of their own craft into these scores, proves my point. I also said that Elfman was an exception as an example, one that I would not have picked myself as a generically to prove the thread's contentions with which I agree, save to say that his Batman was better than anyone else's.
I also think that it is great that we probably share the same aesthetics towards film music, I only wish it was the case with the current generation of directors.
Additionally I agree with your example of Zimmer being considered a hack by many people and having imitators, but I don't think Elfman is a hack, merely an untrained talent. In other words, I believe that he is a better composer than most of the classically trained "talent" out there, because he has his own personality. I am of course using my own standards of what is important and I never said that he was great; just better than what is usually available today.
I envy you the fact that the independent directors you work with want a Hollywood sound, that is something at least... Most of the indies I know are happy with an acoustic guitar song (it doesn't matter how awful it is so long as the lyrics reflect the sentiment and the undercurrents of the film), or a trite stereotypical "urban" sound for the supposed (in)existential - but really hackneyed - issues and suicidally boring characters they explore...