Day: August 1, 2023
'Mayfly' Short Film Festival Run Ends At UCLA
The remarkable sci-fi short film 'Mayfly' that I was honoured to be asked to score has recently completed its successful festival run culminating in a screening for UCLA's “Imagining Indigenous Cinema: New Voices, New Visions” program, where we had the privilege of sharing our work with a diverse audience.
My approach for the composition process was to take inspiration from the subject matter and story of the film - the creation of human-like robots with a one-day life-span (the same duration as the Mayfly)
I tried to imagine how it would sound to travel slowly through the interweaving strands of DNA as the "humans" were created - the shifting of time, uncertainty about where one strand ends and the next begins, keen that the music should feel like a tapestry and puzzle of cross-patch networks and systems blending into one another. I also hoped to represent the emotional longing the robots feel as they discover how they and their memories have been artificially created and how that fact impacts their understanding of existence and longing for a soul.
The process involved trying to reflect the technological part of the robots by creating sounds for the score as much as possible from one synthesizer; the Korg Minilogue XD processed through tape machines, then using my piano to layer simple melodies on top to reflect the humanity.
You can hear the score here, mastered by the wonderful Guy Davie:
Spotify:
Bandcamp:
