Marco Beltrami quotes:

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 started out coming from more of a concert music background. It just turns out that 20th-century music techniques lend themselves to scary movies and horror movies.

I sort of enjoy being able to hear what other composers are doing and how they might score something differently than me. I enjoy that part.

The thing that struck me most after first viewing 'The Sessions' was the charm of Mark O'Brien and the intimacy that the director, Ben Lewin, manages to capture perfectly on screen. I did not feel forced or cajoled in any way into believing the story.

I think of each movie as a puzzle. The fun is in solving the puzzle: finding a musical identity for the picture, however that can be summed up.

I usually start from the most general to the more specific. I'll get an emotional overview for the film as a whole, trying to pinpoint what the musical identity is and come up with thematic ideas - any ideas that identify as succinctly as possible what the film is.

I like the scene in the first 'Scream' movie where Sidney gets up, and dusk is falling, and she's looking out at the hills of Santa Rosa, there where it was filmed, and that's where you sort of hear her theme being played out. I always liked that moment because, to me, it became more than just a horror movie.

If it's a real bad score, then it can ruin a movie for me, or, at least, it will draw a lot of my attention to the score.

I am inspired just by the way a scene can be interpreted by the actors. It can make a huge difference on the type of music that you write. It's best for me if I don't work at all on a project until the movie is shot and I have some sort of edit in front of me.

Film has the potential of allowing me to explore my own ideas, which I find very attractive.