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Start with the heart
That is how Christopher Nolan approaches film scores, and it explains his 20-year partnership with composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is a minimalist composer with maximalist production values: the sound is very big, and the ideas behind it are very simple. That leaves Nolan space to work as a filmmaker between the notes.
To keep the heart of a movie intact, Nolan types up a one-page summary of the film's vision before shooting. He returns to it repeatedly, so he never loses the heart of the movie in the chaos of production.
How can simple music sound enormous?
Minimalism in music, associated with composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, builds long passages from short repeating patterns that change slowly. A simple pattern can be scaled up by layering many instruments or synthesizers, so the sound becomes huge without the idea becoming complicated. That leaves room in a film for dialogue and images. Hans Zimmer was a keyboardist with the band the Buggles before he moved into film scores.
How do directors keep a vision during a shoot?
A production makes hundreds of decisions every day, and films are commonly shot out of story order to fit locations and cast schedules. Directors often rely on reference documents such as look books or tone statements to keep every department aiming at the same target. A short written statement is easy to reread when exhaustion or pressure sets in. Films are usually shot in an order that suits logistics and not the story.
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