Good music really adds something creative to the film, something which wasn’t there before, an element which wasn’t in the film before. You can be working with very distinguished directors and actors and designers and so on. I take film music very seriously, and every time I do a film, I insulate myself by saying, “This is good, and I’m going to do a good job.” If I went through the film music I do, the commercial work I do, thinking this is just awful and it’s to pay the bills, I would be ashamed of myself. I never have done that. I try and add something really good to each film I do, really the best I can do for that film, but it ain’t writing novels. It’s not a symphony; it’s applied music.

I figure there's two things in a movie: that you are looking at something, you are listening to something. So I like to put a lot of attention into the music and into the recording of the dialogue and into the sets.

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.

Film music is always and only accompaniment. Whether it’s loud or occasionally important in itself, it’s what it is because of where it is — how it’s placed in the film. In a film score, the composer literally measures every note, because it has to be synchronized with the picture. The film strictly determines every element of a film score. The only reason music exists in film is to help tell a story. No one hires a composer for a film to write pretty flute lines. I generally don’t get concerned about this, but I’ll admit to getting irritated or disappointed at times on how the music is used after I’ve composed it. In the United States, all film composers work under a condition called ‘Work for Hire’. Aesthetically, it can be soul-sucking.

Working to timings and synchronizing your musical thoughts with the film can be stimulating rather than restrictive. Scoring is a limitation but like any limitation is can be made to work for you. Verdi, except for a handful of pieces, worked best when he was 'turned on' by a libretto. The most difficult problem in music is form, and in a film you already have this problem solved for you. You are presented with a basic structure, and a blueprint, and provided the film has been well put together, and well edited, it often suggests its rhythms and tempo. The quality of the music is strictly up to the composer. Many people seem to assume that because film music serves the visual it must be something of secondary value. Well, the function of any art is to serve a purpose in society. For many years, music and painting served religion. The thing to bear in mind is that film is the youngest of the arts, and that scoring is the youngest of the music arts. We have a great deal of development ahead of us.

The majority of people that get involved in film music are kind of like me, who had a dream and fell in love with it and then pursued it on the base of their mad love for it. My advice to the young aspiring composer is that film composing is about the long journey, about developing over a period of time, of hopefully creating a career that is constantly rising.

Finally, the role of sound in these films is very important, and directors give it a lot of attention. We work hard, we try, it is not just enough to illustrate. We must build a character in its own music.

On film music: "There are cases in which a film can stand on its own without music, but if music is used, it's better for it to touch the soul and create emotions that the rest of the film cannot do. Music should continue emotions where words finish. Unfortunately most films are flooded with music, due to mediocre scripts and to producers' and directors' lack of talent".

I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.

The main thing is to remain yourself, and this is impossible for a professional actor. Although it is difficult to think ahead. It seems to me that cinema and music, complementing each other, can coexist in my life.

Commercial music for films doesn’t explore the little, but crucial things in life as the music is often situational. I found it to be a gold mine of opportunity and wanted to give 70mm Dolby-movie quality for short films, and establish my mark in it. My strategy paid off.

Here’s my attitude, and I’m sort of sorry to say this sometimes – but there are people who try and elevate film music - of all kinds – to being the great twentieth century classical music, and my opinion is it just isn’t. It’s very straightforward, major/minor or modal writing. The only time you get any kind of originality is usually in the timbres and the sounds and the mixture of elements. But to get through a scene it’s either happy, or sad – and it’s either going forward in action or it’s not – and it can be ironic, which means you’ve got to switch from major to minor frequently. But it’s not rocket science. It’s a lot of skills – a lot of political skills, frankly. It’s being in a room and playing off fifty opinions from studios, producers, directors, sometimes actors – and coming out the end with something that vaguely represents music. And frequently it doesn’t. The minute you try to get original or break the box – unless you’ve got either a very experimental or powerful director, it’s probably not going to happen.

It is my goal to be more intentional about the choices I make about the themes in my films so this one spoke to me.

What’s really interesting about music and the audience, whether that’s a soundtrack audience or a listening audience… of course, we’re talking about soundtracks. My music was really designed very, very much to go to the image. I was never thinking about people listening to it without the image. There are some composers whose music really lends itself to pleasurable, interesting, listening, and sometimes, that music has been created and made listenable a little bit at the expense of the service of the movie; in other words, the ego of the composer. If you get in there and say, ‘Wow, this will sound so great with the orchestra and it’ll sound great on the soundtrack album,’ and maybe they can actually end up doing too much and writing ‘too many notes’ (laugh). I’ve always been surprised that people enjoy listening to my soundtracks, because I felt like I was part of a team – the filmmaking team. I always loved movies and I just happened to have the skill to create sounds and music and that’s just what got me on the team, but it was always about the movie. I think part of what makes a piece of music your favorite theme has so much to do with the movie and the impact it has, and of course, the synchronicities that occur.