If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
If you think about filmmaking as an entire spectrum, starting with the writer and ending with maybe the marketing department, the actor's contribution is a rather slender band.
The first time I saw 'Minecraft,' people wanted to have 8-bit style video game music. But I wanted to go around that and make something organic and partly electronic, partly acoustic, and see if that would be interesting.
There's this weird game called 'Blueberry Garden.' For that game an artist recorded some piano music, but evidently he only had a really terrible microphone on top of the piano, and I really liked it and wanted to experiment with that. So, I made piano recording and really mangled it, and kept experimenting with the technique.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
When you make a film, everyone wants to define it.
You never really know as an actor; it's completely out of your control, in terms of editing, and music, and film stock, shot selection, and what takes they use.
The cinema is a very truthful medium because the camera doesn't let you get away with anything. On stage, you can even loaf a little, if you're so inclined.
The problem with trying to make a film good and have it work for an audience is the problem of trying to tell a story well. The shape or the color of it doesn't matter.
Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.
When I was nine, ten, I was super young, but I installed a program on my computer so I could start producing music. I just started messing around. Then, after a couple of years, I got better. I actually learned some tricks, so I knew what I was doing instead of just messing.
I am a creative person and watching a movie is like writing a story. So when I see a movie, I also see the editing, the music, the camera angles, etc.
Making movies is about creating illusions, and they can be subtle illusions, but it's all a cumulative effect as you make these little tweaks. It kinda adds up to something, hopefully.
Personally, I think that the story is all-important; everything else comes later. But if there's any other way to ensure the betterment of the film, I always implement it.
If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works - he has an idea and he writes it down, so there's one transmission loss. Then he gives the score to a group of musicians who interpret that, so there's another transmission loss. So he's involved with three information losses. Whereas what I nearly always do is work directly to the sound if it doesn't sound right. So there's a continuous loop going on.
Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.
At the time, I was making good money doing background work and demos.
When you think of a movie, most people imagine a two hour finished, polished product. But to get to that two hour product, it can take hundreds or thousands of people many months of full time work.
I make more than a handsome living doing voices for commercials; I hear myself all day on the tube.
Before I made a film, I thought it was easy.
Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?
I've been in the studio environment since I was young, so I know what to expect.
My favorite music is when the sound is supplementing the message. I don't think it's dramatic; it's cinematic.
For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.
