Скачать или смотреть Love Is A Gift - film by Phil Beastall (under 3 minutes)

This is my entry (first ever!) for the Indi Film Music Contest, winter 2023. Short film by Phil Beastall, music score by me. I hope you enjoy it!

This is my explanation for what I did:

I started with the part where he listens to his mom’s tapes, with the most emotionally changing content. I identified the piano as a subtle, spaced, and emotional instrument that could accompany the mother’s voice without drawing attention to itself (slightly dark tone piano). I wanted to support her voice and accentuate the different “feels” as she talks, in a very minimalist way. I found there was some kind of underlying slow cadence (in the piano) that later I decided to adjust everything to. I mostly used 2 notes at the time, sometimes neutral, sometimes major, sometimes minor chord, just changing between the 5th and the 3rd plus the root note, depending on the feel of the scene. The tempo is in 5/4 to give it a sense of space and “no-hurry” moment.

For the start of the movie, I didn’t know how to musically identify this modern, cool guy with tattoos, that lives by himself in a very well-taken-care old house. He looks like a normal good and busy guy, that is really looking forward to Christmas to listen to his mom’s tape. Since I didn’t really know how to represent his “everyday” life on screen, I just decided to try an acoustic guitar with simple muted power chords. It’s more about the rhythm than the notes. For the part he’s walking on the street carrying Christmas stuff, I added tapping on my legs. Then, I confess, it reminded me of Ramble On by Led Zeppelin, to me was like waiting for the part of the song where the whole band gets in, the “anticipation”, and I thought it was good feel.

As a result, the guy became the guitar, and the mom became the piano, and the guitar gets more muted especially once the guy is in bed, looking anxious but relieved that tomorrow’s the day. All the guitar parts during the guy’s music are in 4/4, as his life goes normally on.

Next day, the tempo changes to 5/4, the guitar becomes a low pulsing rhythm that listens while the piano speaks. The piano follows the mom’s words as I explained above. By the end, once the mom refers to “the happiest day of her life”, the piano turns up one octave to lift the mood, the tempo changes to 4/4, and the guitar harmonics close the music as the continuation of the guy’s life ahead.