A Quote by Johann Johannsson

When I make film music, I'm a filmmaker first and foremost. It's about serving the needs of the film. You're telling a story; in a way, you stop becoming a composer and become a storyteller instead. You tell the story with the most appropriate themes. How you approach these things is a very personal matter, but your goal is to tell the story first.

Johann Johannsson

Quote Topics

About Approach Appropriate Become Becoming Composer Film Film Music Filmmaker First Foremost Goal How Instead Make Matter Most Music Needs Personal Personal Matter Serving Stop Story Storyteller Tell Telling Themes Things Very Way Your

Quote Author

Johann Johannsson
Icelander - Composer
September 19, 1969 - February 9, 2018

I think that people have to have a story. When you tell a story, most people are not good storytellers because they think it's about them. You have to make your story, whatever story it is you're telling, their story. So you have to get good at telling a story so they can identify themselves in your story.

Larry Winget

What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there.

Rebecca Solnit

I've been making films with almost no dialogue (laughs), so sound and music become a very powerful character to tell the story. It's almost like with sound and music and images, it's your tool to tell the story, especially when I decide to structure the film in a way that usually goes against the conventions of the three-act structure which most films are made out of.

Nicolas Winding Refn

A new writer starting out today, whether it's for TV or film, they have to remember that they're telling the story to themselves first of all, and they have to tell the story so that their life depends upon it.

Tony Grisoni

I don't ever approach anything from the issue first, so I can't tell you that I've thought about tackling universal health care. I'd have to have some great story I'd want to tell, and then universal health care would become part of the way to tell that story.

Shonda Rhimes

You have to do three things really well to make a successful film. You have to tell a compelling story that has a story that is unpredictable, that keeps people on the edge of their seat where they can't wait to see what happens next. You then populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters. And then, you put that story and those characters in a believable world, not realistic but believable for the story that you're telling.

John Lasseter

I'm a storyteller, and as a story-teller, you see that each country, and therefore the language that it speaks has its very own way and very unique way of telling a story. And there's a lot to be learned from each country, and each language, and how they tell a story.

Mido Hamada

My task is to tell a story with the music. I always like to have themes in terms of characters or plots, and things that can tell a story always interest me the most.

Ramin Djawadi

The best time to tell your story is when you have to tell your story. When it's not really a choice. But then, when you get that first, messy, complicated version down, you have to read it over and be very tough on yourself and ask, 'Well what's the story here?' If you're lucky enough to have someone you trust looking over your shoulder, he or she can help you if [you] lack perspective on your own story.

Jeannette Walls

If you gauge how you're doing on whether somebody is responding vocally or not, you're up a creek. You can't do that; you kind of have to be inside of your work and play the scene. And tell the story every day. Tell the story. Tell the story. Regardless of how people are responding, I'm going to tell the story.

Billy Porter

If you're a film composer, you have the music tell the story of the character.

Ludwig Goransson

A lot of times I don't know if I trust the director to tell that film's story. Or I think it's inappropriate for a male director to tell a female story, or a white director to tell a black story. Everyone walks away from a movie differently, because you're relating it to your own life.

Kiersey Clemons

It's very dangerous for a storyteller to walk into a situation with a political agenda because you end up telling a story about issues instead of telling a story about people.

Peter Landesman

I approach film no differently than I approach a role. I want to make sure the movie is right, the characters are right, I can really bring something to it as a visionary, a storyteller. It's great to point a camera, but can you tell a story?

Larenz Tate

I'm a music storyteller and collaborator. I hear character, location, and story as music. For me a score is there to both heighten the story and to actually tell the story with the unique emotional and narrative powers of music.