Danny Elfman Quotes

The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra.

I don't enter into particulars with [Ennio Morricone]. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.

As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much.

One of the major aspects of film composing is that it's not so much a musical thing as it is communicating your ideas with the director, who often does not come from a musical background.

I write music visually.

I'm not a script composer. I'm a film composer and my brain is excited by images and moving elements.

For the last 10 years, I've been working with Donald Glover and Ryan Coogler, and we've put down so much time really trying to make the best that we can, whether it's a movie, a film score, or a song.

I don't like to write any music to a script. Experience has taught me that's generally a waste of time.

Music is like creating an emotional painting. The sounds are the colors.

As an artist, I move along in my life, into whatever things I'm doing, and I hear things where it's like, "Oh, that'd be a great [song] title! I'll use that!" So I keep a running list of titles on my computer. I've got these words and phrases that just sustained my interest. So I'm a step ahead, really, with the titling!

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'

I've always written songs with a visual counterpart in my mind that no one else can see.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.

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.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.

I've wanted to direct for a long time, but it had to be a story I wanted to tell. The writer's job is to find the story that he should tell.

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

Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I follow it and lay it down. I can pare it, shape it, and polish it later...My job is to take down the dribs and drabs - to free-associate, if you will, knowing that the associations have their own plans for where we're going with all this.

Music is like color or acting or whatever. It's really something I think about from the beginning. Not that I always know exactly what I'm going to use, but I don't see it as something like, "Let's find some songs now!" after we have a finished film.

Directing is like guitar playing. That's a unique mind-set and talent, unto itself. I like the idea of putting everything together to make a great movie.

Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that's the difference!

Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."

Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.