Film Score Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. The process of composing the film score for each movie is completely different. They all have their own personality and their own completely different life, but there's never been a formula. Each time, it's a new thing.

Trevor Rabin

#4. In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.

Stewart Copeland

#5. My favorite film score is the one Thomas Bangalter created for 'Irreversible.' The soundtrack absolutely defines the daymare-into-nightmare feeling you get from the film.

Richard Phillips

#6. There's always a question of duration, there's a question of who the orchestra is. No one is free to write what you want - you collaborate on a film score, and one of the good things is that someone else's work is motivating you.

Michael Nyman

#7. Singer/songwriters spend two or three years making an album, and then it goes up for sale and everybody pirates it and you don't make any money. Whereas, writing a film score you still get presented with a paycheck.

Cliff Martinez

#8. 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

#9. I prefer live musicians whenever possible. And I tailor the ensemble to what is appropriate for the film and the score I'm writing.

Geoff Zanelli

#10. After working as a producer on many pop, electronica and some soundtrack, incidental music projects, I became more focused on film and TV scores.

Paul Wardingham

#11. To me, score is really important. I would rather not have any score if it's something that's going to detract from the film. So often when I watch films, the score is what really bothers me.

Steve Buscemi

#12. I did some songs for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. I had done a jazz album of Roxy songs, and they used bits of it in the film. It would be nice to score a movie one day.

Bryan Ferry

#13. 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

#14. You go through different stages when you're working on the music in film. At least, I do. You have a temp score, so you have music from other people, usually from other movies, to give you a sense of what the mood is supposed to be, what the atmosphere is.

Duncan Jones

#15. The most common reason that I turn down a film project is because of my schedule. If I can't devote the time to a score that it deserves, I'll pass. I'll also turn down a film if its moral position is different than what my own understanding of right and wrong.

John Keltonic

#16. The score is in your subconscious. Sit down long enough at a keyboard and it will come out.

Jonathan Heatt

#17. The score, which comes often quite later in a film, can help reinvigorate your emotional engagement with it.

James Marsh

#18. When the script was written, it was sent to me with asterisks marking where he felt a song would be appropriate. Before the film was shot, the score was written. I made a demo of it, so they lived with the music as they were making the film.

Alan Price

#19. A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.

A.R. Rahman

#20. I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

Ridley Scott

#21. For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

Nico Muhly

#22. Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a bad film, and a bad score - so it's said - can't sink a good one.

Terry Teachout

#23. 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

#24. My only real hobby is playing music. I write a lot of music on guitar and keyboards and hope one day to make a record or maybe even write the score for a film.

Graeme Base

#25. 'Liberace's a great film. It's a great piece of material. I have a great script and it's a great score.

Jerry Weintraub

#26. Right now I just finished writing the music for a Rugrats feature film and the third week of September I go to London, and the Orchestra is going to perform the score.

Mark Mothersbaugh

#27. 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

#28. I want to write a score for a film. It can be a proper film, maybe for a film kind of like ... I saw that movie 'Drive', or a bit of a 'Blade Runner' vibe. A little bit sci-fi, but I don't know. I've just always wanted to write a score for a film.

Flume

#29. Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange that song so it doesn't get repetitious.

Marvin Hamlisch

#30. I'm also always thinking about the score as a recording, as opposed to a performance that can be recreated in a live environment. Some of what I write could of course be played in a concert hall, but for the needs of a film I don't consider that.

Geoff Zanelli