Scoring a One-Minute Film

A one-minute score that locks to picture, carries the emotional turn and arrives as files an editor can use.

Tool profile

Kind

guide

Vendor

本站

Form

流程

Platforms

通用

Price

不适用

Jobs

流程

Verified

2026-10-30

Related

CueSynchronization LicenseRomantic

What you have to hand over

A one-minute score locked to picture: same start as the film, aligned to the project frame rate, running to the last frame. Deliver a stereo mix, stems split by group (strings, winds, percussion, synth), a thirty-second cutdown, and a cue sheet listing tempo, key, hit points and the purpose of each cue. Use 48 kHz and 24 bit, aligned to the project zero; supply a separate version with two frames of handle at each end so the editor has a clean edge.

Three steps

Spot the picture first. Read the cut, mark every edit, transition, line of dialogue and the frame where the title appears, and put those timecodes into the session. Decide where music is needed and where silence must stay. Second, write the theme: a four-to-eight-bar motif with one emotional turn placed late in the film; leave air before transitions instead of filling them. Third, mock it up and print it, check the start frame by frame, export stems and mix, then mute the reference and watch the film again.

Tools and pages

A DAW with a video track is enough. Read the site pages Introduction to Film Scoring and Leitmotif in Film first. Use a reference score to set density, never to borrow its melody. When handing over to a mixer, follow the naming and equal-length rules in Delivering Stems. Deliver to the loudness target you were given; if there is none, send an unlimited mix plus a -14 LUFS reference. The beat before the title often matters more than the whole cue.

Acceptance checks

The music starts and ends on the agreed frames. Main hit points are within two frames. Music drops 2–3 dB under dialogue. Stems sum to the mix. The thirty-second cutdown works on its own. The cue sheet timecodes match the session. No version clips or cuts off a reverb tail.

Why work gets sent back

The cue starts at 0:00 without checking picture. The emotion stays at one level and transitions have no landing. Music covers dialogue. Only a stereo mix is delivered, so the mixer cannot rebalance. Stems start at different points and do not sum. No tempo map exists, so a new picture cut means starting over. A reference melody is copied and the rights problem appears at release.

Sources

• 短片配乐的贴片、hit point 与 stems 交付做法，依影视配乐通识核查，未抄文本
• 配乐与画面同步、帧率与响度目标的处理，依后期制作通识核查，未抄文本

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.