Alexandre Desplat
My training in music has been very eclectic - as first a flute player from classical chamber music to jazz, Greek, Brazilian and African music to contemporary concert music.Collection: Music
Because I work so much, people think that I have a team writing for me, but that's not why I chose to write music for films. I chose to write music because I like to write music. So every single note that comes out of my studio is written by me, and I wouldn't be able to do two movies at the same time.Collection: Movies
It's most difficult to score a comedy. Where are the limits? When does music become gimmicky or stupidly funny?
When you work on animation, the music has a great task: to create a sound and melodies and mood and atmosphere and energy dedicated to these extraordinary characters.
The goal is to make the music really a part of the skin of the film, and not be detached.
I just write from dawn to dusk.
I'm there to tailor something very precisely and something very subtly to dialogue and the actor's energy. I'm there to bring out something that isn't spoken. 'King's Speech' is the perfect film to do it.
The first thing is, you can't write movie music if you don't know how to write quickly.
It's not unusual to have only three weeks to score a picture. And that's three weeks from signing on to finishing the last recording session. That's how I did 'The Queen' and, more recently, it's how I did 'The Imitation Game.'
Well I think usually I would do six or even 10 scores a year. Some are big films and some are not.
In my early teens, I started collecting soundtrack albums.
I always tend to think that composing is not playing an instrument, composing is having something in your head that's steaming and it has to go out. It has to become sounds and be written. It's an emotion that you can't repress.
I wanted to be a film composer because I heard scores that could stand alone, from 'Vertigo' to 'Star Wars' to 'La Dolce Vita,' because this music has so much history. They're weighed with the history of music. They come from somewhere, they have a past.
When synthesizers appeared everyone was a composer suddenly.
Composing is to think. It is to have your mind trying to find what is the best sound that the movie is going for: the best melody, the best texture, the best structure and dramaturgic arc for the film. Then you discuss that with the director. He's the leader. He's the one showing you the path to follow to find the soul of the film.
When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.
In a time when directors did not fear composers with a strong voice, Morricone wrote scores like operas or symphonies, with passion, scope, bravura and intelligence.
We will always hear the vibrations of Ennio's music and feel it in our hearts.
The great directors, I've learned, have a great sense of rhythm.
Godzilla' took two months because it required a two-hour-plus score. 'Imitation Game' was three weeks.
The main difference I'd say is that European cinema has always used less music than American cinema for historical reasons.
A film is a film and it has to be good to be inspired. That's number one. It can be Italian, French, German, American. It's moving images in front of you and with a strong director who injects his point of view and artistry.
I don't think I would deliver the best work if I would do several projects at the same time. So it's one at a time, but I work a lot. I work nonstop actually, but that's what I like.
I've been very lucky early on to be surrounded when I was a child by music from various countries. My parents would listen to a lot of music coming from other universes.
You need to be in danger; otherwise, you get old.
I've always been a film lover - that's why I've always wanted to write music for films.
I have no favorite museum, but it could be the National Gallery in London; it could be the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Every city has a great museum.
Some films that I love, I love them also because of the music. 'Vertigo,' for example, is a movie where the music is doing 70 percent of the job.
I saw the finished version of 'The French Dispatch' quite a while ago, and it's just amazing. It's so incredibly strong and different... the way that Wes is expanding his talents to another dimension with each film is just wow.
Even when he transposes Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox,' he injects so much of his own personality and his own world that it becomes a Wes Anderson story, and you forget that Roald Dahl is behind the story. That's the proof of great directors to be able to digest and recreate sometimes a classic.
On 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' I must insist that the sounds of the instrumentation are crucial to reflect what the movie should convey in terms of energy and emotion. It's not just the melody or the tune.
I liked 'The Darjeeling Limited' very much. There was a melancholy about that film that I liked.
Music has to deal with silence. Music has to deal with time.
That's the main lesson I've learned from working in the theater: respect the dramaturgy. I don't want to overwhelm everything with music.
If I wanted an open space, I could do a documentary about fishes. Then I would have an open space to play my music. That's not how I visualize the work I'm doing.
I played the piccolo in the 'Ides of March' and 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' score.
For me, comic scores always have to have some melancholy in the background.
As a child brought up in Paris, I dreamed of America, that lost world my parents had left behind - it was in my genes. Plus, American music has always been close to my own aesthetic, because of the mix of symphonic music with jazz.
Music is never inherently funny!
In 'Secret Life of Pets,' it's a huge orchestra - really, really big.
There's a quality to the sound of a trumpet that you can really twist for any kind of sound and mood that you want to create.
I'm being offered great movies by great directors and that's what I love, that's what I've dreamed to do, and that's what I do all day long. So I have to do it.
Well I never play back my music, just so you know, it's there sitting in my drawers and what I remember is that, what I can say is that there are steps, you know, moments in my life where I know that one score was a new chapter. I can say that 'Read My Lips,' by Jacques Audiard, 'Sur Mes Levres' was a chapter.
Some directors can become concerned when it comes to music, because it's the end of the process and they're tired. They're worried that the music will intrude or waste something, that a composer will overwhelm the story.
I've never been into monster movies, not my cup of tea.
Every film is a human encounter. It's people trying to collaborate and create something together.
Yea, there is no way you can get away from critics. It's all over the net. Sometimes it's useful to read things, good or bad. Sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it stupid because they say stupid things.
I don't know if I would write an opera, maybe because of the words. But yes, I would be really excited to do it. I would certainly write a ballet or... I've done a lot of stage before.
I lived in the Caribbean when I was a teenager, so I learned about Salsa and Cha-Cha and all these Latin Afro-Cuban music like Gillespie and Duke Ellington, also bridged with Jazz. But my mother is Greek, and so I've also listened a lot to Greek music. And through the years to Balcanic music to Arabic music because my father loved music from Egypt.
Certainly 'Zero Dark Thirty' is not for children!