Film Composer Quotes

#1. 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

#2. I always told my team two things: Never expect them to give you anything and always expect them to make the next shot.

Beth Daniel

#3. Don't support the phonies, SUPPORT THE REAL

Tupac Shakur

#4. John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks.

Carter Burwell

#5. 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 Williams

#6. If you are ungrateful for one blessing,
you will not be grateful for two.
If you are ungrateful for two blessings,
you will not be grateful for three.
If you are grateful for one blessing,
you will be grateful for innumerable.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#7. I didn't want to leave Newcastle, but that's football.

Gary Speed

#8. That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.

Charles Bukowski

#9. If you're not worshiping God on Monday the way you [did] the day before, perhaps you're not worshiping Him at all.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. I don't think a guy that really has no understanding about people, or has no interest in understanding people would make a good film composer.

Stanley Clarke

#16. I think of myself as a film composer.

John Williams

#17. I love Philip Glass' work, not only as a film composer but also as a musician. The film score work that he does always amazes and shocks me.

Park Chan-wook

#18. To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer.

Paul Thomas Anderson

#19. I know exactly who I am, what I'm about and who I will become.

Emma Paul

#20. 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

#21. When you do well in school as a young person you can foresee a bountiful future for yourself. When you don't do well, the future you see is bleak. It's tough to find an honour student in trouble with the law. We have to feel that we're of value and we get that from people reacting to our prudence.

George Chuvalo

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. Magick happens when you step into who you truly are and embrace that which fulfills your soul.

Dacha Avelin

#26. In film, I was surprised when I first saw the movie 'Drive.' I said, 'Oh, God. It sounds great - I love it. Wow, this could be the soundtrack from 'American Gigolo' or 'Cat People.' But I'm surprised that the director would agree with a composer to write that kind of sound.

Giorgio Moroder

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. You might be a redneck if you have a color coordinating rope that ties down your car hood.

Jeff Foxworthy

#30. I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

Danny Elfman

#31. 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

#32. A writer can't afford to just focus on writing and leave marketing aside in today's competitive market.

Amish Tripathi

#33. Poetry is the breath of beauty.

Leigh Hunt

#34. I listen to Morricone, the famed Italian film composer, while I'm working.

Daniel Handler

#35. 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

#36. Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about.

E. T. Bell

#37. 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

#38. I can't hear what Jeremy says because my ears are blocked with my two Stanley Cup Rings.

Patrick Roy

#39. If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.

Steven Spielberg