A Quote by David Henry Hwang
If I do a play, it's my vision, and everybody else is working on the production to support that. If I do an opera, I feel like part of my job is to support that composer, to try and create something that allows the composer to do his or her best work. In movies, it's usually the director.
Related Quotes
To make good films, you have to have a good relationship and good collaboration as composer-director, composer-editor, composer-production designer-actor because you're working with the actors on screen.
When you think about a composer you know like Wagner or Pier Boulez or something like that most of the issues a composer is working with are about discreet, notated music that someone else will play.
It's the vision of the composer that we have to determine, and not the absolute mathematical adherence of the score. In my experience, there have been occasions where I feel that a composer has not notated something as they meant to have it represented.
At the end of the day, I am singing the composer's creation, and I follow the instructions given to me. What I feel may be a right take may not work for the composer or his vision on how he thinks the song should sound.
I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.
In a way, the highest praise you could give to a composer like Bach was to take and make your own arrangement; it was sort of an homage to that composer and to his work, so it wasn't considered sacrilegious to do something like that.
It all depends on the directors. Working closely with a director is the main job of a film composer. Interpreting what he perceives as a color, an emotion or mood is very abstract. A director tells you something he wants and then you have to run back...
The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.
My approach to working in movies is to empower the director to have power over me and to really support his vision because he's the guy, at the end of the day, who's going to put it all together.
To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them.
I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good.
I can admire music where you feel the composer has everything organized and perfectly shaped, but it doesn't touch me. I like to feel that a composer is wounded, like all of us.
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.
I am proud to say I'm a director's composer. People do method acting, I do method composing. I like to get into the skin of the character and go deep into the director's vision.
Frank [Zappa] said he probably would have been a major criminal, given his brain power and his attention to detail, had he not been a composer. But being a composer is not something you can't help.
I like to have fun at work. It's okay if I don't. I've had that a few times. But generally, I'm someone who has a lot of fun at work, because I like my job. I think it's a fantastic job, at least that part of it is a fantastic job. And I like to have fun, and I personally feel that whether you're talking about the cast or the crew or the director or any combination thereof, that when people feel involved and comfortable and they feel like their work is being supported, that's the best environment to do good work.
Related Authors
Abi Morgan Quotes
Welsh
Playwright
Arthur Miller Quotes
American
Playwright
August Wilson Quotes
American
Playwright
Eve Ensler Quotes
American
Playwright
George Bernard Shaw Quotes
Irish
Playwright
George C. Wolfe Quotes
American
Playwright
Jeff Lindsay Quotes
American
Playwright
Lynn Nottage Quotes
American
Playwright
Moliere Quotes
French
Playwright
Noel Coward Quotes
English
Playwright
Plautus Quotes
Roman
Playwright
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes
Irish
Playwright
Robert Greene Quotes
English
Playwright
Sam Shepard Quotes
American
Playwright
Tony Kushner Quotes
American
Playwright
William Shakespeare Quotes
English
Playwright