I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.

So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It's still their ball game. It's their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director's impulses.

I took part of Alan Silvestri's theme on the original movie, which I really liked, and I pulled it into it new theme, which became kind of a hybrid. I really enjoyed that.

I think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.

Or certainly I would need time - which I would love to have but there almost never is on a film - to just spend a week with a roomful of guys laying down these patterns.

I had to do this very aggressive, big score in a very short time, and knowing that in the beginning, middle, and end would be this very, very famous theme, but I still had to weave a score around it and make it work as a score was really challenging.

The idea of performing some of Jack Skellington's songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas live for the very first time is immensely exciting.