Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.

Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

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.

You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.

Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.