Last week I was contacted by director Rowland Jobson and producer Zoe Webster from Seefood Films who had some music that wasn't working by another composer for a film they had made for the homeless charity Shelter (this kind of thing happens all the time to all composers including me and is no reflection on this persons work). The film is a powerful and raw story of how a family lose their home and are forced into living in one room of a shabby hotel with little hope of being rehoused and all the inherent tension and despair that comes with such a situation. I chose to see the film without their original score as I didn't want to be influenced by the earlier attempt and it was apparent that without the right music a film would be tough to watch. While the score needed to support the emotional content of the performances it also needed to offer the audience some ray of hope. Because time was short I didn't score to picture but improvised some guitar and piano pieces and created some atmospheres and sent them off to Zoe and Rowland to drop into their edit. I haven't seen the finished film yet but they seem to be very happy with the music.
