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
What are you going to do when you are not saving the world.
A violin is nothing more than a piece of wood and a dead cat. But it's a piece of technology. So when computers came along, in the '70s, I suddenly thought, hang on a second, this is interesting. These things can become an instrument. So I just became very interested in them, and started, playing with electronics.
Having the great opportunity on a daily basis to sit in front of a blank page is terrifying, and at the same time really exciting. I can't actually get better at my job, because every time you finish something you start with a blank page, with nothing.
I've never had a real job in my life. I didn't learn anything, I was terrible at school. It was just this thing. Music was all I wanted to do.
All music is based in one way or the other, or influenced through the ages, on technology.
I've spent my life trying to make things simpler..
The honest truth is that it was just traumatizing with the piano, with the authority of the piano teacher, getting rapped across the knuckles, and so whenever you put a piece of music in front of me, there's a Pavlovian reaction where it starts off.
The lack of education means, the lack of having something I can pull out of a drawer, means I have to find something in any movie I work on that is intensely personal.
I have to give credit to Giorgio Moroder ; among the first to make us realize the importance of music in film.
I loved this idea of always being a foreigner. There's this thing where people bring cultures, bring the music together. I love it when the music, when the cultures collide and something sort of new comes out of it.
Information is floating around really fast. I write something, or a piece of my music comes out and I see people writing about it on the Internet as if I'm having a conversation with them. We've never met, but somehow, my music is communicating something to them. Very often, it really makes them feel something.
Hollywood allows you to go and express yourself.
I try to communicate with the musicians the way I communicate with the filmmakers. I'm not going to say to them, can we be a little bit more presto here. Hang on, this should be a bit more exciting, or I try to explain the scene to them, or I try to explain the context the notes are supposed to live in.
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.