Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Who can't relate to a story of a dreamer who, against all odds, is going to make something of himself that is completely unexpected?
I like to write a piece of music that reflects how I felt about a film as opposed to, here's this action scene; here's this set piece.
I've always, always, always listened to music since I was, like, 7 years old and made up stories in my head based on what I was hearing.
My writing is consistently influenced by everything I watched and listened to growing up, so it's just this crazy collage of everything.
I always thought of 'Lost' as a psychotic opera. Because there were so many characters, it was important for me to track them with themes.
When I was a kid, there was no DVD, no VHS. The only way to re-live a movie once it was out of the theater was to listen to its film score.
I like the sounds of real, living, breathing musicians. When a real person plays something, there's a soul. They're giving you their emotions.
There was a time that I did 'Up,' 'Star Trek' and 'Land of the Lost,' and I was working on 'Lost,' at the same time, and that was really hard.
I think I learned everything about comedy and timing and drama from watching 'The Muppet Show,' which was one of the best shows ever produced.
I like to think that I probably have written more World War II music than anyone on the planet after all the 'Medal of Honors' and 'Call of Duties.'
I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.
Nothing can grab you by the throat - or heart or soul - like an orchestra. It's undeniably the most engaging and exciting way to bring a score to life.
'Lost,' at its core, is a science-fiction show. Live music helps lend an air of legitimacy to this otherwise crazy storyline. It makes a big difference.
We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.
I used to do puppet shows as a kid - me and my brother would do them - and then any poor soul who came into the house had to sit and watch our puppet shows.
I always loved movies like 'King Kong' and 'Planet of the Apes,' monster movies, Ray Harryhausen films, all of that stuff. I always loved the music in them, too.
I loved 'Planet of the Apes,' and I loved 'Star Wars,' and I loved 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' and to me, the goal always was to work on something as cool as that.
I always feel like my writing is consistently influenced by everything I watched and listened to growing up, so it's just this crazy collage of everything, you know.
There are a lot of guys who do this job, and they have tons of assistants. They all kind of write together, and for me, it's basically me here in this room, and that's it.
In 'Ratatouille,' there are two different themes that express the two sides of Remy's personality: the creative side: the chef, and the 'thief' side: his nature as a mouse.
I've always looked at guys who I've admired, like John Williams and Lalo Schifrin and Max Steiner, and looked at the choices they made and always try to take a cue from that.
I was obsessed with 'The Twilight Zone' as a kid, and one of those things I didn't realize until I was in college was that I had been listening to Bernard Herrmann all my life.
My great uncle, my mom's uncle, had an appliance store in Philadelphia, and it was called Peter's TV. They sold stereos and televisions and washers, dryers, all kinds of stuff.
Scoring animated films, I have the exact same approach and philosophy as I do for a live action. It's all story- and character-driven. I don't care if it's a mouse or Tom Cruise.
For some reason, as a kid, I felt outwardly embarrassed to say that I liked rock music. I don't know where that came from. For me, it just wasn't cool - orchestral music was cool.
On 'Lost,' I write a score and orchestrate it on days one and two; I record it on day three. In animation and film and videogames, you have a little more time to work things through.
I was fortunate enough in my public school that they had a full music program, and no one escaped it. It was treated as a subject that was as important as everything else, and I believe it is.
When I was growing up, every show had live music. Now, almost none have live music. Probably 97 percent of the shows on television are probably synthesized, or mostly synthesized, and that's a shame.
There have been several movies that I've done over the years that have got a bad shake - 'Speed Racer' was one of them. I loved that movie, and the fact it got such a bad reception was disheartening.
I started out as a producer. and I used to work at Disney. and I worked with a lot of the animators and went on to become great friends with a lot of these guys and worked on a lot of projects together.
I think Mozart, with all his impatience in writing, would have loved it. It would have allowed him to write twice as much. He would have loved a Mac. If he'd had a laptop, he would have been unstoppable.
I feel like I have a group of friends, guys could be interchanged with my neighbors from back home. These guys are really close and really tight, and it all stems from 'Wouldn't it be cool if this happened.'
As an audience member, everyone I talk to is like, 'I'm so excited to see 'Super 8.' I'm so excited to see it.' And part of that is because of his drive to make sure that it stays hidden until the last minute.
I grew up listening to 'Planet of the Apes' and other scores, and it was fun for me because you weren't just listening to those scores, but you were also questioning what you were listening to. What are those sounds?
Adventure is out there, it’s heading our way So grab your scarf and goggles, let’s fly! I’ve mapped out our journey, we’re up here to stay. A sunset is our home. A moonbeam we will own. My Spirit of Adventure is you!
There was a paperwork mishap on 'War For The Planet Of The Apes,' in that the end credits was simply called 'End Credits.' And that's what appears on the album. Once we realised that was out there, we were so ashamed.
As a kid, I would listen to anything that had a live orchestra or ensemble playing, so that covered everything from show tunes to eclectic jazz things to film soundtracks to classical music. They're all inspiring to me.
It wasn't until high school that I actually started writing. I was in a lot of the school plays and musicals, and there was a lot of down time during rehearsals. I would go into the orchestra pit and mess around on the grand piano.
I think my writing has an old-fashioned feel to it for whatever reason. I'm just so influenced by the music that I listened to growing up, a lot of it out of the '60s, so it has a natural tendency to feel like it's from another era.
The core of the film is usually something very emotional and something that feels really real that you can relate to, it's not like done in a false way. You know a lot of films will treat emotion falsely and you can sense that very quickly.
My parents loved music, but they weren't musicians. So my musical training as a young kid was limited to piano lessons. I was not the best student; I was awful, never practiced. But I was always interested in just messing around on the piano.
My dad had these great Benny Goodman albums that I was obsessed with, and Louis Prima's another guy I loved, and Peter Niro the jazz pianist. I loved international music: Irish music, Mexican music. I love the different colours that they all have.
I think that one of the things I'd learned from being so attentive to the careers of the people I've admired is the fact that they would say 'no' a lot. Early on, I took that as a cue to only work on things that I knew I would be passionate about.
I even went to film school at School of Visual Arts in New York City. And then, after that, I got a day job at Universal publicity department, then moved over to Disney publicity department. So I had this day job, and at night I would study music.
Brad Bird is fond of saying that music is the easiest thing that can derail a film because if it slightly goes a degree off track it will take the viewer in the wrong emotional direction. To work with people who actually care about that is a good thing.
'Lost' is such a thematic show that I'm always afraid that if I know something's going to happen at the end, I'll subconsciously write something in where someone who's astute will go, 'Oh, he used so-and-so's theme: that must mean so-and-so is coming back!'
More often than not, I'm worried about, where shouldn't we have music? Because the tendency is just to put everything everywhere all the time in a lot of movies. You end up just numbing the audience when you do that and it's not the best way to tell a story.
For me, I always go back to when I was 10 years old and, I think between the time I was 10 and going to high school, were some of the greatest moments for me, because I had a group of friends that I was inseparable with, who we would make movies with all the time.
Because of John Williams, I began collecting all kinds of film scores. I listened to them when I fell asleep, and it was through my obsessive listening that I learned what all the different parts of the orchestra were. I learnt a great deal from him by just simply listening.
Hopefully, by the time I do a project, I already have a true understanding and love of what I'm about to do because if I don't, I'm not going to work on that project. I really want to have those connections so I can be truthful to the emotional aspect of what I have to deliver for the story.