SCORE: A Film Music Documentary — The Interviews

by Matt Schrader

The world's finest film composers uncover the secrets behind film music, from crafting emotions and making it in Hollywood, to the tricks of giving an audience goosebumps.

Composers Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Inception), Quincy Jones (The Color Purple, The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood), Randy Newman (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., The Natural), Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Seven), Trent Reznor (The Social Network, Gone Girl, Nine Inch Nails), Tom Holkenborg (Mad Fury Road, Batman v. Superman) and more. Plus, hear rare insight from director James Cameron and the legacy of James Horner, along with one of the final interviews conducted with legendary director Garry Marshall.

Modern maestros reveal their creative secrets.
Goosebumps and exploring music’s cutting edge.
Inspiration and film music’s worldwide impact across languages.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Corinna Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of interviews! It’s really interesting to see how differently people can approach the same tasks. People seem to very enthusiastically divide themselves into the camps of “music manipulates the audience!” and “music should never manipulate the audience!” The individual interviews were interesting, but to me the main value came from seeing such an array of different perspectives. Super interesting! Although, I must say I particularly enjoyed Rachel Portman’s interview. I also love the score she wrote for Chocolát. Never seen the movie, but damn that’s a good soundtrack.

Some of these interviews leave you a tad deflated, people like Randy Newman (Randy Newman! From Pixar! From Toy Story and Monsters Inc!) seem to really not care very much and just do it for the paycheck. HOW someone like him can write such incredible scores with an equally incredible lack of passion (at least how I perceived the interview) is amazing to me. But most of the others left me happy and inspired. Most people really love this art form and have very unique ways of creating the most magic they can.

I also gained a whole lot of respect for Hans Zimmer through these interviews. His own thoughts were cool, but I had no idea about the company he created and how he’d basically created a village for mentoring and educating aspiring film composers. The man really has made a huge impact on film scoring way beyond his own music and I respect that a lot. He was apparently instrumental (ha) in the careers of John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon) and Henry Gregson-Williams (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), who have amazing careers and wrote two of my favorite film scores of all time. So the whole thing is just really cool.

[Daniela Villalobos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy interesante, las diferentes formas en que estos compositores lograron involucrarse dentro de este mundo. Diversas e increíbles opiniones, consejos y perspectivas respecto a el mundo que la música es capaz de crear.

[Sher · Rating 5 out of 5]

love it. a great read.

[Lord · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8

[Matt Whitby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting read but no one - NO ONE - proofread it. I've never read a book with more errors in than this.

[Randall Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful interviews,insightful and fantastic