MRH: I guess what temp tracks allow directors to do is, if they're unable to articulate specific emotions, even in a musical way, they can say ‘Here's a piece of music I like,' and I guess that allows you to ask ‘Okay. What qualities of this cue appeal to you,' which, for example, helps you understand whether a director likes strings, or long melodies, etc.

EC: Exactly. It's very helpful. I did one project this year with a friend of mine. He's a music editor and was temping the whole movie. [Because] he spent so much time with the director, when the time came and I started work on the movie, he could tell me all the details of why the director liked this piece of music, why the producers didn't like this piece of music… so he was laying out everything so easily for me.

MRH: For the two films you scored for the After Dark Horrorfest, were they offered to you simultaneously, or did one sort of happen to follow the other?

EC: The Deaths of Ian Stone I did at the beginning of this year… and Tooth & Nail I finished just before the festival, so they were not connected at all.

MRH: Even though some films in the After Dark series weren't specifically made for the festival, they had modest budgets, and I wonder if it's sometimes difficult to meet a director's demands, or has technology helped augment a score that's supposed to have a large scope within tight budgetary confines?

EC: Well, yes and no. I would say technology definitely gives me more tools, but I wouldn't say technology makes it easier; I think it slows the process down because I think it's much easier to write for the orchestra, knowing that I have a small amount of electronica, rather then the other way around.

MRH: You raise an interesting point. Because of your experience in writing for orchestra, you've a better idea of how things will sound; it's very instinctive: you write it, you group the instruments, you rehearse the musicians, and you record it. With electronics, it seems to require a lot of searching and finding and testing and refining, and you keep fiddling around until you get something that sounds close.

EC: That's absolutely correct. When I'm writing, I'm writing directly to computer using my orchestra samples to imitate the orchestra sounds, so in the end, I'm basically close as to how it's going to sound with an orchestra. Even if I can hear it in my head, for the purpose of demo-ing for producers and for the director… I can present pretty close to the orchestra's sound, so they have an idea how it will be.

With electronica, you're fiddling and fiddling and changing and processing and editing, and it takes forever to get something original. I'm either developing completely original sounds, or if it's existing in a library I heavily process the sounds – mangle them beyond recognition.

MRH: Directors tend to spend months editing and refining their films, and when they're at the mixing stage and they get to watch their film with original music for the first time, their movie suddenly comes to life again.

EC: In my experience, all directors are really surprised and thankful for what I brought – the emotional part of the movie …Even after it was previewed and demoed so many times in my studio together with picture, when they see it mixed on the stage with a real orchestra, they say ‘Wow, that's fantastic,' and of course that's part of my reward: to see my work supporting the movie and the director's ideas.