Interview with film composer, James Newton Howard

Описание: AYS Creative Fellow, Alexander Mansour interviews film composer, James Newton Howard to hear his process for film scoring, advice for young musicians, and exciting upcoming projects!

1:58 - Question 1: What has it been like to score huge movies from a much more challenging social community?

5:30 - Question 2: When you were composing "News of the World", which is a character piece and smaller instrumentation and highly emotional, were you thinking of that at all as the characters were experiencing forces of nature and thinking about the significance of our own moment as you were hearing that music played back remotely?

8:18 - Question 3: Was having the recordings of the winds, brass, and strings separate, creatively helpful in terms of the control it gave you in mix and other creative stuff? Does that occur ever outside of the pandemic in terms of giving the studio and editors more ability to play with different variations, or is that pretty unheard of because you want the 70 people all in the same room and for it to feel like a symphonic performance?

9:44 - Question 4: How do you think about spotting from a thematic perspective? Does your spotting inclinations ever conflict with what else is happening in the narrative in terms of sound design or dialogue?

15:30 - Question 5: Because your demos are so well thought out, does that mean that there are no surprises in modern scoring, or do you find that there are still changes as you meet with the musicians and director?

17:15 - Question 6: What is your process for writing your demos when given a film for the first time, and how often do you play into your sequencer and improvising as opposed to the more traditional approach of sketching music out? Also, how do you compose in a way where you don't let the demo process dictate your musical choices?

27:46 - Question 7: What tactics do you use to get out of a rut when composing to ensure you are doing the best you can?

32:48 - Question 8: How do you think about instrumentation?

36:10 - Question 9: How often do you bring in a soloist for your scores?

39:57 - Question 10: Do you have any advice for what makes a strong film session musician?

45:10 - Question 11: What advice or words of wisdom would you tell yourself as a young player and composer just getting started?