Music For Film Quotes

#1. My biggest dream from the beginning - besides Evanescence - is scoring film and writing music for film.

Amy Lee

#2. In the future, I kind of like the idea of doing music for film. I think that would be a nice job. I've always liked the sound aspect in movies. I guess once I have more instruments under my belt, it could be something I could do.

Christopher Abbott

#3. I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.

Michael Franti

#4. The music is an important and crucial part to an animated film. You don't think about it, but you can watch Tom and Jerry with no words, for hours, and the music dictates the emotion and where the story is going and how you're supposed to feel. Everything is in the music.

Rihanna

#5. I don't want to direct music videos at all. Any work I do with a camera I'd like to be for a film.

Giuseppe Andrews

#6. There are so many parts of music that it's actually a pleasure for me to work with an orchestra, or a jazz band, or a choir, and use every element that the musical tool box can offer. The world of music I love so much, and I can change the costume depending on the part, and I'm actually in the film.

Alexandre Desplat

#7. When I hear the word 'independent' I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film. Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore.

Jim Jarmusch

#8. There was a time that I was only known for being a plagiarist. It used to hurt at times because there was so much effort I was putting into music. And instead of that, it was a couple tunes that I had reproduced from folk songs to remake as film songs, which were being written about.

Pritam Chakraborty

#9. Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.

Ravi Shankar

#10. I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time.

John Lloyd Young

#11. Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.

Walter Murch

#12. No matter how many great performances or exciting visuals we put together for the movie, we found that it was all somewhat two dimensional until we added the emotional heart of Howard Shore's music. Then, and only then, did the film come to life.

Peter Jackson

#13. I think every age has a medium that talks to it more eloquently than the others. In the 19th century it was symphonic music and the novel. For various technical and artistic reasons, film became that eloquent medium for the 20th century.

Walter Murch

#14. 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.

Howard Shore

#15. 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

#16. First, I was a glacial blonde doing music programmes. Then I was the film kind of sexy bird late at night. It was frustrating like I guess it's frustrating for everyone who is not fully employing their talents.

Mariella Frostrup

#17. Film brings together framing and light and color and performance and music and all of that. To me, everything I've done in my life has been preparing me for filmmaking.

Peter Landesman

#18. For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes.

Clarice Lispector

#19. The thing that helped me get into the film business was that I went to school in Athens, Georgia and managed to get on, um, working on music videos for a band called R.E.M. and that kind of opened up a lot of doors for me.

Alton Brown

#20. For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.

Aleksey Igudesman

#21. 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

#22. 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. So what I do, as I'm writing a movie, is go through all those songs, trying to find good songs for fights, or good pieces of music to layer into the film.

Quentin Tarantino

#23. I think, for me anyway, music and film is where you can really transport yourself to another universe.

Teresa Palmer

#24. I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.

Malorie Blackman

#25. With Dick Smith there, and the words of Peter Shaffer ... they've got to be the most beautiful descriptions in music ever written on film or in literature. And we could hear the music accompanying the words ... What more can you ask for?

F. Murray Abraham

#26. It's very hard to write music for a film because you're writing about somebody else's experience.

Alessandro Nivola

#27. I'm a big believer in supporting the action on film with the appropriate music. It covers a multitude of sins. It's gotten me out of a lot of jams, over the years. So, music for me is a very big thing in films and I use it unashamedly.

Woody Allen

#28. I think film is the best medium to inspire people. It's a combination of image, dialogue, and music, which can make for a powerful message or a simple escape.

Martha Hunt

#29. My life in Hollywood surrounded by celebrities became a point of view for me - sports, fashion, music, film, arts, and politics as a media play.

John Van Hamersveld

#30. When the fearsome foursome of rock music, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, decided to show up in Toronto for a rock and roll festival, I knew we had to go there to try to get them all on film.

D. A. Pennebaker

#31. 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

#32. When you're editing the film, you use a temp track. So you're putting music in there for a rough cut to keep track of what's going on. It can be a hindrance if wrong, it can be an enormous asset if you get it right.

Nicholas Jarecki

#33. I don't know - music in film, for me, is not another part of a soundtrack; it is something that also helps to approach a character, to foresee the type of image - you see what I mean - it's like a part of the process.

Claire Denis

#34. I work because I love it. It's a projection of myself. It allows me to express my enthusiasm for music and film using the spoken word, which I love, and broadcasting, a medium which has always fascinated me. I'm very lucky.

Paul Gambaccini

#35. Well, what we do is we have a script, of course. But for us, writing is also like storyboarding. It's drawing. And so we will cut all of those drawings together with music, sound effects and dialogue. And we screen this kind of stick-figure version of the film.

Pete Docter

#36. For me, the work begins with a rough cut of the film. I can't do much with the script. I've tried to write music to a script prior to seeing the film, but I've found it turns out to be a waste of time.

Cliff Martinez

#37. All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

Ava DuVernay

#38. I liked him as a bloke, and I like a lot of their songs. I like "Girls On Film," and I can't pretend otherwise. I don't have hatred for different forms of music, in fact I've got a great deal of love and openness to everything done by anybody. Christ, I have to: I've got two Alvin Stardust albums.

John Lydon

#39. Yeah, I can't separate the art from the music and the music from the art. I think that stems from going to school for film first, and kind of stumbling onto music as my career.

Karen O

#40. Drumming is like film directing. You build a framework for everyone to create something together.

James Genn

#41. I really don't see myself being apart from music. I like doing lots of different things. I've been involved in film for quite a long time and I just like doing film.

Mick Jagger

#42. I've always had a fascination for everything surrounding things that are unexplainable. Not surprising that my first movie was a horror film, even though, of course, at the time I had no experience writing horror music.

Christopher Young

#43. I'd love to do an action film. I'd love to do a film based on a book series; I love to read the book and then go see the movie. I'd love to have a show on Disney; I love working for them. And I'm also working on getting some new music out of my own.

Katherine McNamara

#44. 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

#45. Whether it be through television, or through music, or through dance, or through film, whatever it is, as long as it's the right project that makes sense, then I'm all for it.

Derek Hough

#46. Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does ... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't ... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.

Peter Doig

#47. No one's being precious about their music. They want the film to be great. And that was the huge lesson for me along the way to be a filmmaker. And yes, I'm leading the music department kind of thing and that responsibility with the music is with me, but really that job is one of many.

Steven Price

#48. For me chilling out is when I can stay at home, order food from outside and watch a film with my friends. Listening to music and watching films are my idea of perfect relaxation.

Bipasha Basu

#49. The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing.

Howard Shore

#50. One of the core reasons for creating 'Station to Station' was to provide a space for exploration and cultural friction between different mediums. It should be natural for mediums like music, film and art to cross over, and we wanted to empower that process.

Doug Aitken

#51. But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach.

Isabelle Huppert

#52. I can't believe 50 years have gone by since that film was released. I blinked and suddenly here I am. We all really felt blessed and as for me; how lucky can a girl get. Great music does more than enhance a film, it cements our memories in the film going experience.

Julie Andrews

#53. I've played guitar and piano for a while, so it's really fun to play music on film.

Austin Butler

#54. I think if you write music for soundtracks then sometimes you do something that you could never do if the film did not exist.

Claudio Simonetti

#55. It's very strange what happens when I start working for a film. In my life I've done a lot of stuff - I did a lot of dance music, a lot of TV shows and lots of different types of films - and every time it is a new experience.

Claudio Simonetti

#56. I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#57. I think each film I do has less and less dialogue. It really helps a lot for foreign sales, because when I go to Europe, there's very little problem with communication. All the gags are visual. The music they can understand, and it helps communicate a lot better.

Bill Plympton

#58. The only film I ever made for money was something called 'Music From Another Room', which I really didn't like.

Jude Law

#59. 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

#60. I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

Bruce Springsteen

#61. I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to orchestral and jazz. For me, the nineties were about Oasis, because I was travelling around Britain when that band exploded onto the music scene.

Isla Fisher

#62. Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.

John Grooters

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

Nico Muhly

#64. I actually write film music because I'm classically trained on the piano so as well as songwriting I also write actual film music that could be used for movies like war movies and love movies.

Vanessa Brown

#65. A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist's taste in music, or we're told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

Peter Temple

#66. To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.

Woody Allen

#67. The possibilities are endless for me - Broadway, TV, music and film.

Michelle Williams

#68. My brain kind of rolls pretty fast when I'm conscious. It's constantly looking for stuff to do. Like if I'm in my house and I'm hanging out, I tend to be listening to music whilst watching a film whilst sending e-mails.

Dominic Monaghan

#69. Music makes me alive in a way that nothing quite does. Good art, good film, good books, good dance. Exhibitions, history. Nature makes me feel alive. Georgia in the rain - that makes me feel alive. Compassion makes me feel alive. Hard fought victories for social rights.

Emily Saliers

#70. 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

#71. Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. 'Wizard of Oz' was the first film I ever saw, followed by the 'Bond' movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who's now based in Toronto.

A.R. Rahman

#72. For me, filmmaking combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.

Akira Kurosawa

#73. I think there is a big question in how much music a film needs - a lot of films are overloaded for my taste, so that the story can't carry its own weight.

Volker Bertelmann

#74. The only music I've ever written was for a film called Frank, and the idea was that it was the worst music in the world.

Domhnall Gleeson

#75. 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

#76. Recording a song for a film doesn't take much time; it's hardly an hour's job, but concerts are constant, and so is travelling, so I've to take time out to work on my albums because I'm passionate about creating my own music. When you love something dearly, you set your priorities accordingly.

Kailash Kher

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

Petra Haden