A. R. Rahman Quotes

Normally I can't watch playback. I can't watch anything because I know that it's so rough and there's going to be effects that are added, there's going to be sound effects, there's going to be so much stuff that happens between this point and that finished product that it just ruins the illusion for me.

I like films where the music and the sound design, at times, are almost indistinguishable.

Well, I think, I certainly used backward music in Sea of Monsters. I can't remember in the Sea of Time. I would tend to do that all the time, you know? I tended to do all sorts of weird things. Just to get effects.

The dubbing of the music and effects is really incredible today. You're feeling gun shots. I mean, it's not the way people say it is, but the gunshot sounds real. And cars sound real. Among the many things in the evolution (of movies) is to make the sound in the movie incredible. That's what you feel.

Sound is a huge influence on peoples' attention.

For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.

I do a mean mouth trumpet.

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

Sometimes, scenes are great without any music at all.

I start with the music before I start writing the movie. It's such an important part for me, emotionally, to set up the tone for the movie.

I always relish the idea of collaborating with the director on creating the sound world, the sound spectrum, and the sound environment of the film. I use every means at my disposal to create a score that is as strong and powerful to enhance the director's vision for the film.

Sound is the most important thing on any film, especially documentaries.

Often when you're working on dark material, the atmosphere is fun.

I feel music-making is more like a psychological game; each film has its own colour that needs to be identified and addressed.

To me, sound is a crucial component to, really, any moviegoing experience, but particularly with suspense films or thrillers. I think you need the audience to become subtly really attuned to the soundscape in, like, this uncomfortable way.

I'm usually the last man on the totem pole. Except for the sound effects and the final sound mix, the score is the last element to be added to a picture.

I am definitely of the method-acting school. Everything to me is about sound. I don't dress up in period costumes or anything like that. I'm very aural. When I'm working, I try to soak up the sounds of an era.

It's always easy, I think, to raise the importance of a scene through the addition of music. But it's very awkward to end it unless there's a door slam or a gunshot or something that just takes you right out of it.

As a film composer I deal with short bursts of musical ideas that are defined to a large extent by what's happening on the screen, by not only narrative and action, but staying out of the way of dialogue, sound effects.

'Room' was a very dark movie, but 'Wonder' is a fun, light movie that sends out an important message. There is a big difference.

For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.

It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are a kind of hieroglyphics for the ear.

we have complaints that institutional dominance of the stock market has put 'the small investor at a disadvantage because he can't compete with the trust companies' huge resources, etc. The facts are quite the opposite. It may be that the institutions are better equipped than the individual to speculate in the market.But I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than large institutions.

Sound is 50 percent of the movie going experience, and I've always believed audiences are moved and excited by what they hear in my movies at least as much as by what they see.

We lost the crickets," she said. "Even you can't make that sound tough." ..."I am Butler," he said with a straight-face. "Everything I say sounds tough. Now, get out of the lake, fairy.