Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

There's music in my films but you seldom hear it. Very early I got the idea that the important things in films were people - the actors. They are the intermediary between the director and the audience. They make direct contact. People to people communication.

The score, which comes often quite later in a film, can help reinvigorate your emotional engagement with it.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

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.

Songs definitely add to the excitement about a movie.

My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.

The music in a film like this is as critical as anything because Kong is mute. He doesn't talk.

We've always liked music in movies, you know, just 'cause it helps tell the story. It can be emotional. It can be funny. It can be so many different things. And it just and it gives you variety from and again, there's a certain stylization that happens with music. Animation and music seem to go together well.

Sometimes you write music to a script or while a film is being edited. Sometimes I write without seeing any images, but that's rare. The approach is often based on practical decisions, but I'm interested in the narrative and physical space that music can occupy in a film or play.

Certain songs bring me back to certain places I've been in my life. So definitely, I listen to my stuff.

So I prefer to do the entire music for a film. And when I'm doing the background score, I can weave the whole film together in terms of themes and songs for a good cinematic feel.

You're able to get into somebody's brain through song.

I think that most films have too much music in them; it overwhelms an audience.

The background score plays an important role in black comedies.

Good music tells a story that people relate to.

In the end, you don't want music to be noticed as much as digested and integrated into the storytelling. And make audiences sit forward in their seats and enjoy the movie.

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.

I remember when I saw 'King's Speech' or 'Girl With the Pearl Earring;' there are moments in my life where I was blown away and thought, 'Wow, that's why I chose to be a film composer.' These films are so beautiful and so strong, and the music can be very much part of the emotion.

What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.

I always like to think of music as if you were to turn the picture off, actually. Just by listening to the piece of music, there's a story there and a connection to the characters and the plots and all of that.

A few things I've noticed about myself as a listener, and the music that I relate to and the music that's continued to mean something to me since I was a little kid or a teenager, is that they're songs that tell stories and songs that come from a place of experience.

If a song or group hits you at the right time in your life, it's everything. It's bigger than school or family or anything else.

I think that's what 'Stranger Things' does, it opens you up - it has a real beating heart to it.

The experience of a film is immersive, and music is supposed to underline and help that experience.

What I strive to do is to make the theater experience something that people remember and recall rather than dismiss because it was less like their everyday experiences. So, I'm less interested in internal emotionalism and much more in making the audience laugh and cry by the devices that we use as theater actors.