After school, my mom would pick me up and I would just go to visit my dad in the recording studio, and I would see him working with Mark Hamill or hear him doing the 'Transformers' or a 'G.I. Joe' or the 'Rugrats.'
The challenges I face in the studio pale in comparison to when I'm out in nature.
In the studio, I do try to have a thought in my head, so that it's not like a blank stare.
I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.
I love the magic of the studio.
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.
There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.
I'm portable. I carry a laptop and a little recording studio on my back.
I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.
I would have been content to just do studio work, making it on my own never really entered my mind.
Then, as now, the Disney studio buzzed with activity. You had a strong impression of being at the center of something very exciting.
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.
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.
Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
The key for me is really just to stay in a child-like state in the rehearsal studio. I'm really goofy and really silly and crazy. If I get too serious, I start hitting a wall.
So when bands work with me and it's 10 o'clock, usually you'd have to be getting out of the studio, we could go on until 2 in the morning cause it's my place!
I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.
Some people get on the whole touring circuit for years and years and years on one record. What interests me is sitting down at a piano, writing songs, getting into a studio and exploring new sounds to come up with something I'm really proud of.
I had a recording contract with Capitol Records. I loved recording and being in that studio. I made four albums.
I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I'm a big musical theatre geek.
I can handle a lot of work. I've always been able to. I'm a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it's kind of laser focus on whatever I'm working on. There aren't really any distractions or anything.
It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.
I just want to be in the studio 24/7. Even if I'm not working on a song right then, just sit in the studio. That's what I love.
I'm no diva but I can be annoying in a recording studio. Of course I try to be a diva in terms of confidence of performance and owning a song but I've never behaved like one in terms of the negative connotations of the word.
Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought.
Which is why I felt I was truly blessed this year, with leads in two nice films, and also the luxury of being able to do a studio film and an independent afterwards was fantastic.
I'm working on a snow scene right now, and it's summer. It's hot, and I will get chilly. I'll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it's 95 degrees in the studio. I know it's nutty, but it's a projection you have where you step into the painting.
Berry Gordy turned his house into a studio and discovered over 30 acts in the city. And we're famous all over the world.
And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.
I have my own studio down in Miami.
I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.
Even in China. Children there, next to the Great Wall, who had never seen Mickey Mouse responded. So the studio did have that skill to communicate with images.
I've certainly auditioned for big budget studio films. I don't know if it's because there's so much money involved, but a lot of times the pressure overwhelms me and engulfs me. I end up falling apart in the audition.
