The purpose of this book is to explore different aspects of contemporary film music through a combination of interviews with important film composers and essays about particular features of those composers’ work. In the interviews the focus is on the practical considerations of film composition, the relationships each composer has with the moving image, technical considerations, personal motivations in composing, the relationships composers have with their directors, and their own creative processes. The essays are written by fellow composers, musicologists and film academics, and explore particular elements of a composer’s output.

The Introduction provides a context for the following chapters by discussing how film composition has evolved in the twenty-first century into a period of both repetition and intense experimentation during an eccentric time in the history of the cinema. Seminal works of this period, such as the scores of The Social Network (2010) and The Dark Knight (2008), are used as point of departure for an account of wider trends as a transition to many full electronic/ambient scores in mainstream cinema, overorchestration, the influence of franchises on music, and the present ubiquity of film music well outside of the context of the film itself in other media, or even social media.