Mike Figgis Quotes

Our job as composers becomes easy when directors have a good knowledge of music and know exactly what they want.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

When you're working on film music, you're only working on 20, 30-minute sections at a time.

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.

All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.

I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.

I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

I am just the band leader, and I just keep everything in tune.

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.

Composing music for 'Mungaru Male 2' is a big responsibility and challenge.

I think John Williams, him and his team, have been incredible orchestrators. By that, I mean how he chooses which instrument plays which note.

He was making all kinds of sounds apparently with his mouth, and shaking his head and I thought, gosh, is he trying to stop the orchestra? Is it all wrong? It was just unbelievable.

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.

Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.

Jeff Lynne is an arranger, and I think it's probably much easier for him to go ahead and play a part himself than to try to show somebody else what he wants. But it's hard for me to say; I barely know Jeff.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

The process of composing the film score for each movie is completely different. They all have their own personality and their own completely different life, but there's never been a formula. Each time, it's a new thing.

I started directing chamber orchestras, then adding bigger pieces, adding winds, adding small symphonies. I've always loved chamber music, and I've done a lot.

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

When I don't know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don't usually come up with a similar kind of thing.

Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.

I have done songs here and there. But I have never scored a film. That is something I would like to do at some point.