Marco Beltrami Quotes

I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.

Any composer should be able to synthesize the primary feelings that the characters are going through in the movie.

My task is to tell a story with the music. I always like to have themes in terms of characters or plots, and things that can tell a story always interest me the most.

There's been a great development with scale on TV, but my approach is always the same across projects, whether it's a video game, a movie, or a TV show: I always try to set up my sounds and my themes. I really try to stay with the characters and do the storytelling through the music.

When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

My songs are more arrangements than they are songs.

When I think of Morricone, more than his using a specific instrument or a specific sound, it's his way of approaching music that sticks out.

Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for.

I think when you're writing films that just come fresh out of your own imagination - I think probably anyone who's done that, there are certain themes or styles.

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.

It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

On 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' I must insist that the sounds of the instrumentation are crucial to reflect what the movie should convey in terms of energy and emotion. It's not just the melody or the tune.

If you're a film composer, you have the music tell the story of the character.

For me, the biggest thing was writing memorable themes for the new characters so that ultimately people would have the same identification with 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' as they do with the Harry Potter films.

My films are based on themes, so I always go for theme tracks and background score.

When I make film music, I'm a filmmaker first and foremost. It's about serving the needs of the film. You're telling a story; in a way, you stop becoming a composer and become a storyteller instead. You tell the story with the most appropriate themes. How you approach these things is a very personal matter, but your goal is to tell the story first.

It's much easier to write a song for a musical than just writing a song because, writing for a musical, you know what the story is about, so you know what the songs have got to say.

I loved writing 'Lost.' It was like a never-ending opera, in a way.

I keep writing stories that I might want to bring to life one day.

To be honest, I have never thought about the intricacies of a script.

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

The stories I work on, especially for any length of time, do tend to become personal to me.

I'm a huge believer in story being this invisible scaffolding that no one ever recognizes or realizes is actually making the audience engaged in what's going on. There is no formula for it.