Most of the time, when you are in the studio, you are revealing yourself; you're a bit naked. You can express your weaknesses, your awkward way of approaching sound. Sharing these intimate moments is like inviting somebody into your private room.
I have a romantic vision of the beautiful delineation between TV and film that existed for so many years. I romanticize the studio system and movie stars as a whole, but obviously that's just anachronistic and probably a non-reality.
Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.
What I will say - one thing that is attractive about getting a real film made within the studio system is that studio systems, with their marketing and distribution, have real power.
Records have never really been my strong suit. I've always been a much better live act. I didn't understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft - it's just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album.
Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.
Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.
Due to the hectic, non-stop nature of my work, I'm always using my BlackBerry to stay in touch with my studio, wherever I am.
When I come up with a melody in my head, it could be anywhere: in the shower, on the plane, in bed - often when I'm on the go. I'll record it on my phone with my own voice, humming. When I get to the studio, I check which melodies work.
I love being in the studio. Expressing myself that way is really cool.
With rap, you go in the studio, you make music, you put the music out, then all of a sudden, you're a star: you have a big record on the radio, and you're on stage, and you've never done it before. Let's say your first show is 'Summer Jam,' and you're in front of 60,000 people, and you've never played an arena, ever. You're gonna suck.
Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics in anyplace, but I work a lot in the studio. So I collect little bits of lyrics. I go through the box of lyrics I have and see if something fits.
I enter my studio at 9 a.m. I have lunch here, I return right away to my work and I go out to dinner at 8 p.m. My daily tasks vary very much.
One of the more surreal days I've ever had in the recording studio was Martin Fry teaching Hugh Grant his old dance moves. Showing him how to do the hair-flip and the point, and all these sort of trademark moves of his.
It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time. But in the end you have a great sense of personal dissatisfaction.
When you record an album and it goes platinum... yeah, you're in the studio and you work hard for months, but it's not like your whole body hurts. Maybe you get a little hoarse and tired. But on 'Dancing With the Stars,' everything hurts.
I do real paintings, you know. I'm a little messy in the studio, so I'm a bit of a danger. But I just adore it.
I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.
Let me tell you something about Tunechi - about that boy. That boy comes to the studio every day and grind as if he doesn't have a dollar in his pocket.
Once we get them in the studio, you interview a person the same way you would interview another. You ask them a question. You let them answer. You try to listen closely and then ask a follow-up.
When you do a studio picture, all the paperwork and legal stuff is already taken care of!
I acted in theater and I took film classes when I was 12 and just obsessed over it. I loved it and spent hours and hours in the film studio learning and watching.
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television - you have air dates to meet.
I'm a studio rat. I like going in there as producer.
It's really cool to hear your stuff in things like TV shows. It's a pretty cool feeling to hear what you did in the studio and then to hear it in places like that. It's definitely surreal.
Music is my work, writing songs is my work, touring is my work, going into the studio is my work.
It was the late '70s when my parents met. My dad was a lighting director for a soap opera, and my mom was a temp at the studio. They moved into a house in The Valley in L.A., to a neighborhood that was leafy and affordable.
We're teaming up with a major Hollywood studio, and we're making a movie called 'Copper.' It's set on Mars in the 24th century. By then we've got 27 billion people in the world, copper is the world's most valuable metal because everything runs on electricity, and there's no more burning of hydrocarbons.
It's much easier to have a diversified career as an electronic musician than it is as a drummer. Nothing against drummers. If you're a drummer, you just wait around for people to ask you to play drums. But if you have your own studio and can make music, you have the ability to approach music a lot differently.
I don't think that Simon and Garfunkel as a live act compares to Simon and Garfunkel as a studio act.
That's why you have the long hours in the studio and on sets: so you can come out and see the fans. To see the smiles you put on people's faces.
I just feel like with independent movies... they're really free to do whatever they want. They're not afraid to make a statement about anything, and there's not a huge studio behind them making sure that everything is wholesome and politically correct and all that.
My ideas come when I least expect it, so I've always got to have a studio nearby or close by somewhere.
An interesting insight into the ruthlessness of studio executives: I was having a conversation with Alex Gansa, a creator of 'Homeland,' and I said, 'So you guys must have seen 'Life' and liked me in it, right? That's the most recent thing I've done over here.' And he went, 'No, Damian. You actually nearly didn't get the job because of 'Life.'
I was probably 15 when I started going to the studio with the older cats in my neighborhood. They heard me rap outside one time; I was just freestyling. And they invited me to the studio. It's good when you're accepted, no matter what crowd. That's the first step of believing you can do whatever you feel like putting your mind to.
I realized I liked being in the studio and working on translating the ideas into recordings.
