Original music · Film
No loop to hide behind.
Game music can repeat until the player moves on. A film cue cannot: it starts where the edit says, ends where the edit says, and every second in between belongs to a scene that is already finished. Six cues for a short film, 2024.
Six cues, in order.
Each excerpt runs a minute, cut at the loudest sustained passage rather than at the opening bar. The full length of every cue is printed next to it.
Writing to a cut, not to a system
In a game the music waits for the player. In a film it waits for nobody. The cut is fixed, and the cue either lands on it or fights it. That changes how a piece is built: an arrival has to be written backwards from the moment it is needed, and every bar before it exists to make that moment arrive on time.
It also changes what a cue is allowed to do. A game loop must survive being heard a hundred times; a film cue is heard once, which means it can commit. A gesture that would wear out in a level is exactly right in a scene.
Six, not one
A short film is short, and the temptation is to write one theme and stretch it. These are six separate cues with shared material instead: the same intervals and the same instrument family, arranged differently for each scene, so the score has continuity without the audience hearing the same piece again.
Got a cut that needs music?
Send the edit, even a rough one. The first useful conversation is about where the music should start and, more importantly, where it should not.