Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.
You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.
Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.
You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes of the story, and work more with the subtext, and add more depth to the story through the use of music.
I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I try to create music that's honest and true to my heart for the story.
I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.
Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.
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.
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.
I never shied away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They're interesting to me just on a pure music level, just in terms of the amount of music I could create for a symphony orchestra and chorus.
I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good.
I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully long time. It just became part of everyday life.
When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular.
Piano is very elegant. I also think it's a very truthful instrument.
When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.
