Michael Giacchino Quotes

Normally, when people compose for film, you give them the film, and they look at it, and they compose it.

As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That's not my mental image of them.' It takes that moment for it to click and become their mental image.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

It's hard to see a film that's been made from a book that you really loved because it's such a different experience.

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.

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.

I'm all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they're just listening to the song.

I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic.

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

Every time I read a script, I see the movie in my head, and I try to see the best movie in my head because everybody interprets the movie differently.

When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?

All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.

When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.

The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film.

Music is one of the important things for me in cinema.

I think for anybody reading the book they're going to get an idea in their heads of all those characters, and I think that once that gets fixed, it's quite hard to shake.

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.

I can't separate the process of writing from the visual process. I'm speaking only for myself here, but I'm a highly visual writer. In my imagination, when I'm thinking of a scene, I think of every last detail of it: The space, the color palette, the blocking of the actors, the placement of the camera.

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

When I'm writing songs, I write visually. When I'm writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that's a great song.

You know how when you read a book and it becomes a movie, and it's different than you pictured? In some ways, acting is a lot like that.

If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

I thought I understood the story very well, because I've lived with it for so long. But movies change and take on a life of their own once they start to be made, and you have to keep your eye on the real ball, not the ball that's in your head.

It's hard sometimes, especially with a book like 'Scorch Trials,' to truly adapt to the way the book is because so many of the scenes that take place in the book are really graphed and painted for the imagination. Trying to bring that to life is a really big task.