The Hollywood Reporter hosted a Roundtable discussion with 2014’s most accomplished film composers. Trent Reznor discusses his approach to composing film music at the 37 minute mark in the video. Trent’s usually approaches film composing by getting inside the head of the characters, reading with the script to become intimate with the spirit of the story then spending time with the director (David Fincher) to understand what kind of film he’s trying to make. Essentially Trent works from the feeling he gets in the world of the film, then hones in what instruments and techniques best fit the feeling he gets. This is followed by Trent going into an unconscious flow of writing music quickly to produce lots of draft material for the director, editor and sound designer to give feedback on what does and doesn’t work for the film. Trent further discusses how this approach intersects with whatever he is inspired by at that time.

http://thequietus.com/articles/07784-john-carpenter-interview

John Carpenter is an American film director, producer, and composer best known for directing horror and science fiction films from the 1970s and 1980s like Halloween,The Thing and Escape from New York. John has composed on most of the films he’s directed and his scores are well known for being electronic, adopting a range of synthesizer sounds. In an interview with John Carpenter, he discusses various aspects of film composition. When asked about how he sets about creating scores for his films, John Carpenter responded with ‘For me scoring is all improvisational. After the movie is cut, I synch my synthesizer to the cut footage and just start playing. Mostly I play all the parts. Sometimes I get a line based on a sound I hear driving to work. Sometimes the tempo of the temp music track inspires me.’ (Burnett, 2012). Furthermore ‘Most of my scores are simple …The secret of scoring music for movies is to unify images, movement and sounds. And, yes, I have full reign to explore…’ (Burnett, 2012). In essence, John improvises when composing his simplistic scores, and sometimes draws that from whatever he’s influenced by at that moment.

Both composers adopt different techniques to begin improvising and their influences/inspirations at the time have an effect on how they compose.

I will adopt various aspects of both composers approaches when scoring the music for Alien. From Trent, I’ll get inside the head of the characters, work from the feelings evoked in the scene and choose instruments that best suite that, and get into an unconscious flow of producing several tracks which David will give feedback on. From John, I’ll focus on improvising an electronic score with a simple composing style. My reference material is the key inspiration/influence towards my music composition.