NoamL, I am not a superfan. I'm a working musician with a resume about 12 miles long
I'm not for/against JW or anyone, I'm just some guy who plays a whole lotta music for a long long time. And I'm an orchestrator as well. I had a chart played last nite by sym, I have another one tonight, I had 45 (new ones) this year I think done by symphony. I'm not trying to turn this into a dick-waving contest, really. I have no interest in that. I made some remarks about MY experiences, I've played the scores. I've also played a lotta opera, all the big-ticket ones.
For the sake of anyone following the thread, the violin 1 part to Mahler #1 is 20 pages. The vln1 to Beethoven 9 is 20 as well. The entire Nutcracker vln 1 is 53 pages. One of the HP scores I did was 138. So, I'm not just giving "opinion" here. It also requires overtime pay to be played in concert. I can show you the check stub.
Both 1 and 2 did. Rather than get into some boring BS, let's just agree that they are long long songs.
Again: I like JW too. I have no interest in insulting your boy. The "superfan" stuff can be a bit much. A quick look at the credits for both the first films list many orchestrators. There are also copyists etc. Why I mention this is for anyone trying to learn about orchestration: I don't have a "copyist" or editor or proofreader etc. and you won't either So, that's a good amount of "time". IMDB lists 7 orchestrators (including JW) for #1. So again, not pulling things outta the air. If these 7 are imaginary, I really wanna get a gig like that.
The actual "point": my interest in forums like this is often about young people who are thinking about/trying to get into the music biz. And in the real world, Mahler 1 vln 1 is available to download, as is Beethoven 9 etc. It can give some insight as to what we are talking about time-wise. JW probably has many rooms full of awards and bags of money everywhere, he probably trips over stacks of $100s. Nobody is interested in taking anything away from JW, superfan or not. He's great. I'm talking about what goes into something like this, not JW. A lot. Nobody is "accusing" JW of anything, he's obviously proven himself over 50-60 years.
For those of us who aren't JW, "orchestration" is somewhat like "music theory" in that it's a term that covers a lot of ground. Hairpins, cresc. and dim, dynamics, "dolce" blah blah. That stuff goes into scores too. Every dot, dash, accent, schmaccent. When someone says "the orchestrator has discretion over wind voicing", well, that's exactly what I said all along. It's a matter of time, not just talent.