A Quote by Marco Beltrami

Robert Townson at Varese is a huge fan of film music and has really done a lot to educate audiences about film music and scores. — © Marco Beltrami
Robert Townson at Varese is a huge fan of film music and has really done a lot to educate audiences about film music and scores.
I'm fascinated by film scores, especially film scores for children's movies because they have to be able to entertain an audience that isn't interested in music yet.
For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.
I'm happy to say that I have not been fired off a film. The score is usually the last thing to be done. So a lot lands on the scores shoulders. A lot of problems that seem to have nothing to do with the music gets blamed on the music , because it's relatively cheap to change, where as a reshoot etc is not. Music is often expected to help or fix bad cuts, bad acting, bad filming, bad timing, you name it.
One of the earliest memories I have of feeling the power of film music was watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. That was a really clear epiphany for me, when I realized that each film has its own music, and that there was someone out there who wrote this very specific music for just this one film.
My interest in music tends toward being orchestral music. And the repertoire of music that exists is, to me, far more emotive than what is standardly used in movie scores. That isn't always. I think there've been some excellent movie scores by excellent directors. But for the most part, watching a film, one of today's movies, I think that the emotional undertone of movie scores is pretty poor.
I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical music, and he gave me a lot of inspiration, as well as composers from other countries.
No one's being precious about their music. They want the film to be great. And that was the huge lesson for me along the way to be a filmmaker. And yes, I'm leading the music department kind of thing and that responsibility with the music is with me, but really that job is one of many.
I don't believe in an annual dose of film music for the sake of it being film music. If we program film music, it will be because there is a real artistic reason for doing so.
I've actually done more [music for] films than television. I love the process of writing for a film. I love that you are creating this suite of music for a film, that's all tied together sonically and thematically and hopefully people associate with the film. They all are meaningful to me in different ways.
I'll probably always write film scores. It's the one place where a composer has almost unlimited resources at his beck and call. When music you have written works well in a film, nothing can beat it.
I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.
I'd say for a film composer, 'Star Wars' is kind of like the holy grail of film music. It's probably the best film music ever written.
There was a Yugoslav film about partisans that I've done the music for, and then I've promised to score a French film called 'Biribi' about detention camps at the turn of the century.
Some of the prettiest music I've done was in films that really were not a smash. Your music fares as the film does.
I'm a huge fan of a lot of different genres of music, and I really felt like somehow I had been pigeonholed a little bit - maybe of my own doing - and in a way where I felt like I was sort of falsely defined. What my music was being called wasn't really the music I was always listening to.
When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.
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