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"In Tim's films, more than most, if you miss the tone, you don't get the film."
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"How speak about an art which no one recognizes as an art? I know that a great deal has already been written about the "art of the cinema". One can read about it most every day in the newspapers & the magazines. But it is not the art of the cinema which you will find discussed therein--it is rather dire, botched embryo as it now stands revealed before our eyes, the still-birth which was mangled in the womb by the obstetricians of art."

"Film gives us a second chance at a first impression."

"Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums."

"Everyone starts a film thinking that it would be a big hit. But sometimes it goes haywire."

"I am hoping to film another ad in the summer for Carte Noire."
Explore more quotes by Danny Elfman

"I can't get that live and I don't have the time to take the tape, after I've finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound."

"The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action."

"Oh see, first off you gotta realize - everything for me is a reconstruction or deconstruction. I would actually say deconstruction. Mission: Impossible would be the exception. That would be a reconstruction- deconstruction."

"Doing Tim's film is always going to be the most pleasure. Let me just put it that way. So, without drawing favorites one way or the other, getting back with him and doing Mars Attacks! was certainly a special treat."

"I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium."

"It's just hard. I wish the studios felt there was more value in these themes and these pieces of material - that they're worth protecting more. Because then it just wouldn't happen. If the studios cared, the stuff would be stopped in a second."

"The beauty of a main title is that you establish your main theme and maybe a bit of your secondary theme. You plant the seed that you're going to go water later in the score. And so, having that removed just made it so much more difficult."

"In some types of music I'm working out all the chords one bar at a time - the whole structure, because it's about that. And there are other pieces which are really about - okay, the melody is going to start here and play through to here."

"There's kind of a cool feel that happens every now and then. I guess that feel is the thing that makes the score its own score. But, I don't know exactly what that is. So, it's hard for me to answer that question."
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