Forevertown (short narrative film)

This short film was directed by Oona Garthwaite. Production was in late 2022. Picture locked in March or April of 2023. Before the picture was locked I met with Oona to discuss the film, the type of music she was looking for in the score and how the music could help set the tone of the film. Oona and I did a spotting session together where we identified scenes in the film that I would compose a score for and what the tone of the score in those scenes would be. Oona gave me a couple of musical references, including the score for the film Drive (Cliff Martinez, composer) and I came up with a sound palette that was synth based. After sending her a sample set to a scene in the film, she approved the sound palette. I each cue to get her feedback and then revised it if/as needed. We repeated this collaborative process for each cue until we got to the final versions. I then exported a stereo mix and stems with a cue sheet. One of the biggest challenges of this film and many short films is trying to complete a musical idea in a very short amount of time with scenes and the transitions between scenes being very short. Setting the tone musically for each micro scene in a short film can actually be more challenging that composing music for longer scenes in full length features. The video here is act 2 of the film and you’ll see how fast the scenes, transitions and cues move.
See the full film here: