Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions. — Alex North
For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work. — James Wan
Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle. — Thomas Beecham
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading. — Igor Stravinsky
I like films where the music and the sound design, at times, are almost indistinguishable. — Christopher Nolan
A good composer does not imitate; he steals. — Igor Stravinsky
The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing. — John Cage
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. — Ingmar Bergman
I'm a big collector of vinyl - I have a record room in my house - and I've always had a huge soundtrack album collection. — Quentin Tarantino
Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism. — Howard Dietz
I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it. — Philip Glass
Short Film Composer Quotes
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. — Gustav Mahler
It's nice to have a great female composer in the program and add her color. — Cecilia Bartoli
I write music with an exclamation point! — Richard Wagner
Music is the soundtrack of your life. — Dick Clark
Music is the shorthand of emotion. — Leo Tolstoy
My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future. — Franz Liszt
The deaf man cannot hear, but he composes well. — Mexican Proverbs
I see music as fluid architecture. — Joni Mitchell
The architect must not only understand drawing, but music. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
Music is something I've always been interested in and incorporated into my videos. — Jake Paul
Film Composer Image Quotes
Forever is composed of nows.
Film Music Quotes
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams
Starting in the mid-1990s, the end-to-end ubiquity of the Internet, combined with its cheapness, spontaneously combusted to give us Napster - a site that revolutionized the music industry overnight. We got P2P file swapping in the film and TV industry as well. — Max Keiser
Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. — Francois Truffaut
When written in Chinese the word "Crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. — Stanley Kubrick
Advertising, music, atmospheres, subliminal messages and films can have an impact on our emotional life, and we cannot control it because we are not even conscious of it. — Tariq Ramadan
I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets. — Spike Lee
I feel like I'm a trendsetter. I try to always stay on the edge of everything I do, whether it be music, fashion, film. I just like to stay abreast of what's going on. What's going on in the street and what's going on in the hood I put in my music and I feel like a lot of people follow that. — Gucci Mane
The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. — Chuck Palahniuk
I’m in a band. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I’m obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior. — Hayley Williams
Film Scores Quotes
I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that. — Serj Tankian
I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical music, and he gave me a lot of inspiration, as well as composers from other countries. — Howard Shore
It is when music is added that a film can come to life for a director. A live orchestra, playing the score as a conductor watches the film on a huge screen, often gives a fimmaker the first real glimpse of his soon-to-be-completed work. That's where the magic is. — Robert Paul Wolff
I'm not interested in a realistic look - not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.
I'd like to produce, direct, write, score, and star in a film in exactly the way Chaplin did. I'll do that before I'm thirty. — Eddie Murphy
I'm not saying that there weren't other inherent problems with the score that couldn't have been overcome with a bit of remixing, but why did they ask me to do it, and why did Griffin ask me to do it this way, for a film that had nothing to do with American vernacular? — Michael Nyman
My grand plan is that I can master having a better life by making sure I have a regular flow of songs. Then I can give myself time to tour or celebrate or write a film score. — Imogen Heap
Great moments are born from great opportunities.
Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved. — Anne Dudley
I grew up on film scores and scores from films. — Skitch Henderson
I can write songs, I've had songs in movies, but I can't compose film scores, you know? — Brian Wilson
It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres. — Ennio Morricone
Great Composer Quotes
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. — Marcel Proust
In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles. — Johannes Brahms
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy
To make a great film need three things - the script, the script and the script.
By recognizing that the chemical atom is composed of single separable electric quanta, humanity has taken a great step forward in the investigation of the natural world. — Johannes Stark
Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound. — Clara Schumann
It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do. — Marcus Miller
What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. — Camille Saint-Saens
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most. — Michel de Montaigne
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together. — Anais Nin
Hanifs (Muslims) are stumbling, Christians all astray
Jews wildered, Magians far on error’s way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. — Al-Maʿarri
With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer. — Henry Mancini
A film just doesn't involve actors, a director and a producer, there is also the cameraman, the sound engineer, the music composer, the lyric writer. So many people come together to make a film. When we all feel satisfied with the film that we have created it's a win for all of us. — Aamir Khan
I'm not a frustrated concert composer, and the concert pieces I've done have been a small part of my work. What I've sought there is instruction, variation from the demands of film and relief from its restrictions. — John Towner Williams
Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered. — Ralph Vaughan Williams
My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan. — Alex North
When you're working in the [film] industry and you're working with people who are well known and are so regarded, you do just pick up on things. Seeing the way that people hold themselves and compose themselves before a scene - it's inspirational. — Asa Butterfield
The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film. — Howard Shore
I'm a person of the arts. I love the arts very, very, very much. And ah, I'm a musician, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm a composer, I'm a producer, and I love the medium. I love film very, very much. I think it's the most expressive of all of the art mediums. — Michael Jackson
It all depends on the directors. Working closely with a director is the main job of a film composer. Interpreting what he perceives as a color, an emotion or mood is very abstract. A director tells you something he wants and then you have to run back... — Danny Elfman
There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen! — J. J. Johnson
The fact that certain composers have been able to create first-class music within the medium of film proves that film music can be as good as the composer is gifted. — Jerry Goldsmith
I have tremendous respect for film composers. — John Corigliano
The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge. — John Corigliano
So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It's still their ball game. It's their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director's impulses. — Danny Elfman
I always wanted to be a film composer. So very early on I started collecting soundtracks and paying attention to how movie music works. Actually I'd like to have the opportunity to conduct for the rest of my life. — Alexandre Desplat
John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks. — Carter Burwell
If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer. — Steven Spielberg
I have a team, the same team of filmmakers I worked with on 'Pi' and 'Requiem'. Which is my cameraman, and my composer, and my producer. We've all worked together for a number of films. — Darren Aronofsky
I think that being a film composer, someone that gets it and actually applies the music, it allows you to open up a spectrum of feeling. You're now allowed to approach the music from an audio visual perspective. — Adrian Younge
Jerry Goldsmith is an artist who meets all the demands upon the composer in films. He communicates, integrates, subordinates, supports, and designs with discipline. — Jerry Goldsmith
I think I've done more recording in the past 10 years than most people, but it's all been directed toward film composing and soundtracks. Just the same, it's been great. — Stanley Clarke
I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer. — Danny Elfman
If you're reading a comic strip, you can read it at any speed you want. But with film and music, the audience has to take it the way the composer gives it. — John Kricfalusi
Communists love to make films about composers, because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things. — Milos Forman
Composing for concert performance is a somewhat lonely occupation, but composing a film score is highly collaborative. — William P. Perry
I was sixteen, I became a working guitar player gigging in LA, mostly in top 40 bands, then touring. I learned to take songs apart, down to their bones. Songwriters would hire me to produce their demos, which lead me to become a songwriter. The relationship and power music has to TV and film attracted me to composing [and] I learned to write for instruments other than guitar. — Danny Jacob
After directing the first film it feels kind of tricky being back to being in front of the camera, because I've always got one eye over there, kind of thinking of what they are doing, and how the shot is being composed. I think it takes a couple of films to just get back to just being an actor. — Denzel Washington
I like directors that give their composer a juicy role in their films. Some films have a small, minor role for music, some have a larger role. — Cliff Martinez
One of the first decisions I made, as the director of "Hide and Seek," was that our film would be silent and use underscoring of original music that I was planning on composing. The decision was mostly predicated on knowing how time consuming the editing of dialogue can be and given the various locations we shot in, I didn't want to worry about having to mix room tones in such a short amount of time. — Garth Kravits
With television you are producing hours and hours of music and for film it is a shorter experience for both the audience and for you as a composer. — Bear McCreary
I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled. — Alfred Hitchcock
If you're the sort of person that likes a job where once you know what you're doing you can keep doing what you're doing, don't ever become a film composer. — Henry Jackman
To make good films, you have to have a good relationship and good collaboration as composer-director, composer-editor, composer-production designer-actor because you're working with the actors on screen. — Howard Shore
My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film. — Mike Leigh
There is competition. It's almost like I'm back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film. — Aaron Zigman
Be persistent. Establishing yourself in this field could easily take years. Rarely will any composer get that one "big break." More often, success is built on hundreds - or thousands - of very small breaks. When I decided that I was definitely going to pursue a career as a film composer, I decided I was going to beat my head against that particular wall until something broke. — John Keltonic
The main thing the composer needs to do is it needs to remember that the director is there to cheer you on. The director wants you to succeed because if you succeed, you'll be helping the film. And they are truly your conscience. And they're truly your guide. — Hans Zimmer
I'd love to do a musical actually. My background is in music. I have a bachelors in music. I thought that I was going to be a composer, long ago when I first started. So it was amazingly fun to do those two routines in the film. — Ivan Reitman
I would love to compose more fantasy music, whether it's for a film or a game. That genre has so much opportunity for harmonic experimentation, not to mention all the interesting instruments that become available when composing music for alien species and other worlds. — Jason Graves
One important thing, just being a film composer in general, is to have a great respect for the art that you're working on - a great respect for the film and a great respect for the filmmakers. — Joseph Trapanese
From an outsider's perspective, it's amazing what [Clint Eastwood] does. If he's not directing a film, he's acting in it, or rather he's composing the music for that film. His commitment to what he does is astounding for all of us to witness. It's inspiring, actually. — Leonardo DiCaprio
Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it. — Robert Lopez
In Conclusion
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