There’s this index that tallies up how much your movies have made, and if they haven’t grossed a certain amount, then you’re not bankable. I know I’m not Will Smith but, you know, my ranking’s pretty low. The only studio picture I’ve done is ‘Zodiac,’ and that didn’t perform that well.
It was exactly what was released two months later with the exception of a couple of reaction shots which we went back in to get. I liked the movie very much and asked him what the studio’s problem was. I felt that he was at a point where they might have worn him down.
Back 20 years ago, I was recording with Bruce Springsteen, and his producer called me and said I had to be in the studio the next day to finish the sessions, and I couldn’t. I had to be in court, in California. All this took like 10 years out of my life.
I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.
When you are in the studio, you don’t have anybody to feed off of; meanwhile, when you are playing live, you interact with people and you feel the energy in the room. When the crowd is going crazy, that definitely impacts your vocal performance. I prefer to sing live.
All my writing, I always do it in the studio, ’cause everything sounds good. The piano’s there, the keyboards; if you want to put strings on something… And everything sounds good when it’s in the cans; it sounds killer.
I have no philosophy, my favourite thing is sitting in the studio.
What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.
It was rehearsing in the studio, at which point they were setting up the sound, and once we’d got the thing together they’d actually record it, without us knowing sometimes!
By the time The Band did The Last Waltz, the chemistry had changed, and it wasn’t a thrill anymore to live that studio kind of life.
‘Black Hole Sun’ was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.
I just like to do covers, every once in a while. If someone pays me to go into the studio, I’ll do it.
Then in college, besides economics, I also majored in studio art and got involved in photography and making short films and acting. But I didn’t know you could make a living that way.
I don’t want to spend a month and a half in a studio with music I don’t like, and fortunately I don’t have to.
I’ve been in enough films where the studio wanted that extra little cuteness to make it sellable.
Every time I get in the studio, I feel like I wanna have some fun. My fun is not doing the easy work. My fun is doing what’s me.
I guess I’ll just slip into the studio after the next time with the Muses, and then just keel over and die.
I’ve been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.
I thought I was attractive when I shot ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding.’ Studio executives and movie reviewers let me know I had a confidence in my looks that was not shared by them.
I hate going out for lunch during a workday because it slows down my pace and ruins my rhythm. I prefer to eat at my desk. Actually, I wander around the design studio with a plate in my hand as I dine on, for example, salmon sashimi and a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella. I often have a bit of dark chocolate after lunch.
I thought I was going to be a rapper as a kid and used to hop the train down to Jazzy Jeff’s studio for, like, six months straight waiting outside of the studio for the big break, and one day we got in the studio and played our demo for Will and Jeff and quickly learned that we weren’t that good.
I always used to develop a cold going into the studio.
Today, it’s very tempting to create songs by cutting and pasting in the studio.
I love to go into the studio on days when I’m not even doing anything. It’s like my senior club. Some people go to senior centers, well I go to my senior center.
In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand – this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama – and what’s the point of independent film if you don’t get to experiment?
Plus, we spend most of our time writing music. Most of the time is spent in the studio in my house.
‘The Golden Compass’ became a bad experience because the studio didn’t have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it’s one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion out of it and tried to turn it into a popcorn movie.
When I was 15, 16, I studied with Stella Adler at the Conservatory of Acting, then I stopped again and went to the Actors Studio when I was 18.
I feel like when I’m on stage, when I’m writing songs, singing songs, I’m in the studio, I’m shooting videos, I kind of get to become this character, and I can make that whatever I want to make that.
In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture.
The ‘Aladdin’ thing – that’s not work; that’s just fun. Three days in the recording studio going mad, then the animators do all the work. Not a bad way to cash a large check, my friend.
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.
There is some sampling on my records and a lot of what I call replays, where I’d have musicians come in the studio and replay the sample from the original record. But mainly, we’d come up with our own music.
I always gravitate towards the independent side of things, just because those are the stories I always fall in love with, but you don’t really get paid, and living in Los Angeles is expensive, and I have a mortgage to pay. So it’s good to jump onto a studio film and then in all my other time do small passion projects.
I’m old fashioned. I really think you should know how to draw before you start painting. I use charcoal and graphite; I put a skylight in. In my house, I turned the garage into an art studio. So I’m awash in art studios.
I’ve got my own studio, and I’ve got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I’ve got stuff that’s electronic, orchestral, jazz, I’ve got rock, I’ve got metal, you know, I don’t have polka.
We’re the Tom Tom Club and our studio is the Clubhouse. It a way of making it a little more personal.
I’m getting in the studio with everybody I’ve always wanted to work with. That’s the amazing thing.
The plain truth is, ‘Fruitvale Station’ was made totally outside the Hollywood studio system, and every ounce of the picture feels authentic. The lives of the people involved in the movie will never be the same.
I was at the end of the studio system so when I walked into movies, I had a magnificent suite in which I had a living room and a kitchen and a complete makeup room. I had everything just for me. With the independents, you’re kind of roughing it, literally.
One of the things I like enormously about Bob Weinstein is that that he’s the only studio head I have ever known who will change his mind and say he was wrong.
I’ve always said I’m not the kind of designer who likes to lock himself away in a studio and let the rest of the company deal with it. I work very closely with everyone on the team.
We used to go to Studio 54 – an amazing place.
Choreography is mentally draining, but there’s a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
Dore Schary was then head of the studio and he wanted to change my name.
When I sit down to write a song, it’s a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do.
Success is created in studio apartments and garages, at kitchen tables, and in classrooms across the nation, not in government conference rooms in Washington.
I consider the recording studio where I was born.
I realised that the only time I really enjoyed music was when I was in the studio writing. So even though it was a six album deal, they saw quite early on that I wasn’t enjoying it as I should be. I didn’t feel there was anything behind it.
I was about 11 when my mother brought me this karaoke machine and I was really into it back then, but about 4 or 5 years ago is when I started printing up my own music, going to the studio and doing my own thing.
When we finish this tour we are going to begin writing and go into the studio to hopefully have a brand new Foreigner album out in early spring next year. This will be the first Foreigner album out in about ten years.
I believe a great performer is someone who sounds just as great live as they do in the studio and vice versa. They should know how to work the stage.
The studio part, to me, can be pretty laborious. You’re inside for hours on end and can be pretty frustrating to get the sound you hear in your head to come out of those speakers.
I can make everything I do come from my laptop. Even when I go to a big studio, all I do is to plug in my laptops. That’s they way I do it.
