Your general purpose is to support the movie like everybody who works on a film. You want to support that story. Whatever the story is that is being told you want to enhance it. Music plays a big part in that. A lot of is subconscious for the audience, but a lot of it also obvious. Film composers really, more than anything else, provide the glue - the emotional glue - that really holds the movie together and helps the story to be told as effectively as possible.

It pretty interesting because the way that music affects emotions starts way before the idea of the character - the direct character support, which is something actually Richard Vagner came up with and I'm therefore, not that happy with the concept in itself. Bach already had a concept of affecting emotions it was in German called “Effekte Gefuhle.” Basically meant a key to effect people through music in a certain way. This wasn’t church music because these were all basically parts of the Bible told and set to music. They wanted to affect people and their emotions with these stories in a certain way.

So it was story-telling 101 and music was used to that purpose. So Bach had a whole system for what he would do in which case to affect emotions in a certain way. There was a theory; there was a system for it. You can follow the story of film music really picks up there, because it's the story of using music to affect emotions. You can go 400 years into history and it's already there.

Everything that’s happened since then was a continuation of the development from that point. If you see that, for instance, Ennio Morricone uses a lot of Bach in his work, so he borrows elements from it. You’ll see the connection is pretty obvious. The Richard Vagner light motif technique is something that came along much later and it's a sort of a simplified version of that.

If you go to Bach it's not as simple as that. It’s not just everybody has his little theme that you’ll recognize and can whistle, but it's much deeper in a way. It's affects emotions much stronger and this is the real theory behind film music.

Light motif was his concert that he developed at each character in a story - and he had these very convoluted story lines, of course, each of the characters would have to have its own little theme. So that in the course of a four hour opera to avoid everybody going to sleep they can recognize all these little motifs and so be guided through the story.

This leads straight to early animation scoring and even contemporary animations scoring very often employs that same technique. To say, “Okay, this is this character. This is that character. Everybody has their little theme. And it has - in current Hollywood still application in that most movies - most big dramatic movies anyway, look for the main theme. The main characters theme. The bad guy theme and so forth.

So it is something that is prevalent, but it is the surface of this theory. It's unfortunate that most projects just stay on the surface. Where as if you could go - if you go for the emotion you can go much deeper.

The simple way of saying that is theme is a melody or equated with a melody. What I'm saying it can be many things. Ultimately it is a vibe, an atmosphere that you bring the audience into. With which means you do that should be open. It shouldn’t be predictable. Melodies in that sense are a little bit predictable, because it's sort of like the hook in pop music. Yeah, it's good to have it, but it's also very simple formula and a simplistic formula. It forces you into a narrow street.

Whereas, film music very often has a choice of means. That’s the real freedom in film music. That’s what makes film music, in a way, more interesting to work, for me as a musician, then regular music, because I feel there’s more choice of language. There's more choice of styles. And as long as it supports the movie people are generally happy. You won't be successful with one style and then forced to repeat that one style forever. Every movie’s a new project.

I'm talking about this a lot with colleagues and this is for everybody the favorite part of the project. Because it's sort of like a kid in the candy store phase of a project. You get hired. You get the brief. This is what the story is. This is what the project is about. Now you can set out to go as crazy as you want, do research, engulf yourself in music. I particularly like - I'm always hoping for projects that involve ethnic elements so that I can explore a new ethnic music that I don’t know yet.

It's really the - it's like a present every time you get a project, because you can use it to either explore other horizons or just go crazy with ideas. So this is the favorite phase for everybody.

There's no formula for it. Typically you're brought in in the postproduction phase, which is pretty late. This is when the movie’s shot and edited, or at least rough edited. The composer is brought in for a spotting session. You discuss with the sound effects and music supervisors, and the director what the direction should be for the music and then you go off and write your score. This is the traditional model and typically you’ll get six to eight weeks to finish the score.

There are exceptions to that rule where sometimes the composer’s asked to write music before the movie is shot. Some of these are the most remarkable examples of effective film music. Once Upon a Time in America is one example. Morricone wrote the score before the movie was shot. The movie was shot to the score. Tangerine Dream film, Wages of Fear - Sorcerer, was also music composed before a movie was shot. A movie was shot to music.

Wouldn’t say that works every single time, but it is remarkable that the few times that it has happened that way - or think of Armadus, would be another good example. It has worked remarkably well. So my suggestion to the directors that I work with on a regular basis is involve me early. Because even if I just think about music - even if I think about the concept. It will help the process later on, because I'm not doing this as first round, but I’ll have time to think about and develop a concept and come from a concept that’s developed rather from one that I have to develop already recorded, already mix, already deliver.

If I could reorganize the role of distribution, I would probably call it Director of Music in Film. Just like there's a Director of Photography. I would say Director of Music. That would be my perfect spot, because it is really a conceptual position. And I so much enjoy the conceptual part of it. This is like the beginning phase when you do research and you develop a concept it's all about the ideas. And having the ideas and putting the right combination of ideas together. That’s so fascinating and it's so motivating and that’s the most interesting part.

At the moment the way the process has grown traditionally you have a post supervisor, a sound supervisor who pretty much controls the way sound is applied through out the movie, including sound effects, dialogue, and music. This is because traditionally dialogue was most important, sound effects next, and music came last sort of as a gloss over.

Maybe this will change in the future. Maybe it will not. Maybe these roles will persist. We’ll see. I'm hoping that more creative way to handle this and more ways to handle this creatively aesthetically will come through. Maybe through computer games. Maybe through new forms that will make that possible.

That is one of the most asked questions for film composers. How do you work? How do you start your process? And the most honest answer I can give you is that there is no formula for this. Every composer has at least three different ways that they're - how they're approaching it.

For me, particularly, since I studied Classical music, anything from the old sitting at the piano with a pencil and paper and going at it. Down to just hearing a sound and being - putting the sound together with a certain image and then starting out via based on that. Anything goes really and there is no - just as I said, sometimes it's better to have the music before the film, but I wouldn’t make that a formula either.

I very often wrote the best music for a film before I’d actually seen the picture, because I heard about the story. I was inspired. I sat down and thought, “Man, for that character something like this would really work well.” I captured it, later played it against the picture, and it fit perfectly. Just to say, sometimes I saw a picture and said - and basically brushed everything away saying, “Oh, everything I thought about, it's not going to work here. This needs something completely different.” Then wrote in response to picture something that was just more affective for picture.

So it's - like I said there's no formula. You have to jump in and then see what the day brings.

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