Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmeris a German composer and record producer. Since the 1980s, he has composed music for over 150 films. His works include The Lion King, for which he won Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth12 September 1957
CityFrankfurt, Germany
CountryGermany
I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.
The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.
I'm homeless, in a funny way. My culture I think is completely rooted in German 19th century music I suppose.
The first thing I think about is music, and the last thing I think about is music. I'm like some Monk. I don't see a lot of daylight. I hang out with musicians, I hang out with directors and I just try to spend as much of my life as possible playing music.
America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."
I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.
I think one of the things which always is forgotten in music class, is the first thing you have to do as a musician is you have to learn how to listen.
Wings of a Film: The Music of Hans Zimmer.
when (producers) are going, 'This scene really doesn't work and we need some help here,' and you realize what they're saying is you can make or break this movie.
Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders,
You have to realize I like doing big movies that appear on a big screen. So the visuals and the audio have to be of a certain quality before I start to get excited about the thing.
When movies first came out, maybe they were in black and white and there wasn't any sound and people were saying the theater is still the place to be. But now movies and theater have found their own place in the world. They are each legitimate art forms.
'The Graduate' must be the best use of songs ever in a movie; it adds a layer to the movie you wouldn't ever get from a score.
With animated film, you have to create the sonic world; there's nothing there. You get to color things in more and you're allowed to overreach yourself a little bit more, and it's great fun.