I was asked to create a computer generated score for a short film a friend had shot some years earlier. Collaborating with a sound designer I wrote a program that generated notes based on the film itself.
The footage was shot on Kodak Ektachrome 100d Super 8 film at Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in July, 2012. The castle was reportedly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's classic novel Count Dracula. The title of the short film, Bram's Lullaby, is an allusion to both the Bram Stoker connection and the use of Brahms' Lullaby as an element in the score.
In June of 2016, I was invited to create code to analyze brightness patterns in the footage. The data points generated by this analysis were then applied to two octaves of an F minor scale, creating a sine wave melody which synced up with the film. A sound designer collaborating on the project then composed an ambient score to harmonize with the digitally derived melody using the chord structure of Brahms' Lullaby. The resulting score places the data-derived melody in the role of a jazz solo. The film's soundtrack challenges viewers not only to experience how the music evokes the images it accompanies, but also inspires them to question how what they hear is very closely linked with what they see when it appears to be improvisational.