Hook soundtrack CD
La-La Land Records, 2011
In 1991, John Williams's score for Steven Spielberg's Hook had been released on CD as a single disc edition at the time of the film's original theatrical run. Twenty years later, La-La Land Records newly remastered and greatly expanded Williams's score for an impressive 2-disc album—replete with unused cues and alternate recordings—produced under the supervision of John Williams and with the final approval of Steven Spielberg.
The cover of the original 1991 CD release used the film's teaser poster: An iconic image of the captain's singular hook. In the interest of being thorough, I included a design very similar to that initial CD in my cover roughs (A in the above inset). However, hopes were high that we'd be able to use the film's full theatrical poster on the new cover design.
Painted by Drew Struzan, best known for his many posters for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas, the vertical key art would be difficult to use in its original configuration. Struzan's painting was meant for the taller format of a film poster and not the the square shape of a CD cover. Showing the entire artwork leaves a good deal of real estate unused (B, above) and, at this size, much of the painting's detail is lost.
We considered cropping in tightly on the artwork (C above) and, while it works, much of the anecodtal detail and flavor of the original piece is unavoidably discarded when the treasure-map border is lost.
The final and approved solution (D above) was to combine the top of the poster artwork with the bottom, retaining the ragged border and preserving much more of the full artwork.
Shown at left is Drew Struzan's original poster artwork. Beside it, the figures from the lower half of the poster have been cut out and prepared for reassembly.
The original logo for the film was rendered in flat colors. For the new CD cover, the logo's positioning had changed, and it now overlapped more of the painted artwork, meaning a more illustrative tone was needed to help it blend organically with Struzan's painting.
For the booklet design (with liner notes written by film music journalist Daniel Schweiger), I wanted to open with a strong turn-of-the-century storybook feel. The pages seen below also hint at the distinctive border motifs from illustrated maps which mirror the border Stuzan used along the worn edges of the theatrical poster.
