Another comment on IMDb

Today happens to be the 77th birthday of Quincy Jones, which I noticed while browsing the poorly-sorted birthday list. When I first looked at the list of credits for Jones, I was a bit surprised, in that it only listed about 30 things, many of which weren't movies. Then I noticed that was just Jones' credits for being in the "Music Department". The thing is, IMDb classifies the "Music Department" differently from being the "Composer". And, both of them are different from "Soundtrack" credits.

I have to admit it's a bit tough to determine where to draw the dividing lines. One of the problems is that, especially with modern movies, there can be a substantial difference between being a part of the soundtrack, and being involved with the score, especially in the cases of those films that use a bunch of pop songs by different artists to make up the score. There's also a difference between being a composer, and being an arranger. (Think Glenn Miller.) But is there really such a big difference between "arrangement" and "orchestrations"? Quincy Jones also gets credit under "Music Department" for several TV projects which list him as "composer" -- yet many of these aren't listed under Jones' credits in the "Composer" section.

I suppose I should have mentioned Walk, Don't Run when it aired the other day, since it's got a score by Qunicy Jones.