Two scores for the Indie Film Music Contest
I composed replacement scores for two short films in the IFMC Winter 2025 edition.
Walter, by Lorenzo Fresta, is an animation with no dialogue. When The Clapping Stops, by Cameron Perry, is a live-action drama that runs on conversation.
I wrote both scores in Studio One with Native Instruments Kontakt and orchestral libraries such as Spitfire Audio. Every entrant scores the same films, and the jurors judge storytelling to picture, not the mix. Contest: indiefilmmusiccontest.com
Walter
The music runs without a break from 0:06 to 3:45 and follows Walter from worry over the dying plant to relief when the room fills with seeds. The progression that starts on the wind hitting the window returns on the plant’s final bloom, and xylophone marks each bloom. As he flies off over the town, I thin the score down to a glockenspiel and a single string.
When The Clapping Stops
Matty is June’s home carer, and I kept the music out of the way of their dialogue. The score turns a little warmer after he says “I like you now” and shifts into dark sound design when her seizure starts. A heavy brass and high strings riff comes in as the tension grows. From his decision to go to his grandfather through the montage, the music keeps building as one sequence.
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The juror called this “a really dramatic decision that works very well”. Full review, PDF
