I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past.

I have kind of an intuitive feeling as a composer as to what would be appropriate for those groups and how to feature certain paths in a certain way, whether there was dialogue in a scene, or whether there was no dialogue and music was telling the story at that point.

When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular.

I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.

You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes of the story, and work more with the subtext, and add more depth to the story through the use of music.

The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film.