Howard Shore Quotes

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

If I'm in something funny, I like to try and find some kind of serious line in it that people can relate to.

I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

That's what I love about those old movies - the music is like a constant companion. Even in scenes that aren't particularly dramatic, like a woman checking her watch, you hear the music as a comment on that action.

The more secrets and twists in a character, the better.

I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren't, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them.

If you want to reach any kind of poignancy or meaning a lot of times, coming from comedy is the best way to get there.

I'm not interested in going and doing a big, action-adventure romp with nothing to say about being a human being.

I have the feeling that all stories travel with an understory.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'

If you use music boldly at the front of a scene, it creates another level.

More than influences, my music is based on instincts. I make music to match the script and the world of the film.

I feel music-making is more like a psychological game; each film has its own colour that needs to be identified and addressed.

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.

I like things that are funny and have a lot else in them besides that - ideas, for example.

The experience of a film is immersive, and music is supposed to underline and help that experience.

I love to musicalize things. You do employ a whole level of gravity. You use the emotional heft of music.

I'm a big believer in supporting the action on film with the appropriate music. It covers a multitude of sins. It's gotten me out of a lot of jams, over the years. So, music for me is a very big thing in films and I use it unashamedly.

Brad Bird is fond of saying that music is the easiest thing that can derail a film because if it slightly goes a degree off track it will take the viewer in the wrong emotional direction. To work with people who actually care about that is a good thing.

I know that my only chance at any kind of depth or profundity is to linger within the story, trying to make it distinguish itself.

I think music is just a wonderful ingredient that helps us understand a scene better. And certainly you can overuse music, and you can use the wrong music. I probably have been guilty of these things over time. But if you use music correctly as a friend of the theme, a friend of the narrative, ou can lend some terrific connective tissue to a film.

You rarely get a tentpole that has this much emotional depth, this much character to dive into.

To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story.