A film score is written twice: once against the script, and once against the cut. At DeepSound Audio the second pass is the one that matters, because a cue that ignores the picture is only a piece of music looking for a home.
Starting at the spotting session
No score begins with a tempo. It begins with a table and a timeline. We sit with the director and the editor, run the film, and mark every place where music should do work: an opening that has to establish a world, a turn that needs to be felt before it is understood, a montage that carries time, and an ending that has to land without saying too much.
The output is a spotting plan. It lists each cue with an approximate in and out, a note on what it has to accomplish, and a first guess at the ensemble. Directors use it to argue with us early, which is exactly the point.
Themes before cues
We write the themes first. A feature usually carries three or four: one for the lead, one for the central relationship or place, one for the pressure the story applies, and a final idea that appears once and is not reused. Themes are short on purpose. They have to survive being fragmented, inverted and stretched across two hours without wearing out.
We deliver these as piano sketches early. It costs almost nothing to change a theme at that stage and almost everything to change it after the orchestra is booked.
The palette
A score's palette is a budget decision as much as an artistic one. A chamber drama may want a string quartet with a solo cello and one wind colour. A period piece may want gut strings and a harpsichord. A hybrid thriller may want low brass, processed percussion and a prepared piano. We choose the palette from the story and then confirm it against what can be recorded well, so the score never promises more than the sessions can deliver.
Sync, cuts and the moving target
Films keep moving while the score is written. We keep every cue aligned to the current picture and timestamp the version it was written to, so an edit that shifts a scene by a few frames does not silently pull the music out of phase. When a scene is re-cut, we re-time the affected cues rather than starting over.
Delivery to the dub stage
A finished cue is not the end of the road. The score has to sit under dialogue and effects, so we deliver a full mix and separated stems: strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, voices and any synthetic layers kept apart. That lets the re-recording mixer lift or duck a single layer without asking the studio to re-render an entire piece.
What a film commission includes
- Spotting plan and cue list for the current cut.
- Theme sketches delivered for reaction.
- Orchestration sized to the recording budget.
- Live sessions for the sections the score needs.
- A mix for picture plus stems, cue sheet and licence.
If the production is animated, see animation scoring; if it is a returning series, see episodic music. To start a film score, send a brief.
Working with the edit, not against it
A film is rarely still while its score is written. We ask for a locked picture as a target, then work in the knowledge that scenes will shift. Each cue is labelled with the version of the cut it was written to, so when the editor trims four frames from a doorway the studio knows precisely which cue to re-time and which to leave alone. The result is a score that stays with the picture instead of drifting behind it.
We also keep an eye on the mix that will follow. A cue written to leave a hole for dialogue is worth more than a beautiful cue that fights every line, and we would rather hand the dub stage a score with room in it than a masterpiece that has to be carved up.