Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of writing the score for Lumens, an animated silent film by Manuel Moreno Lee.
The short film follows the efforts of a lone woman carrying fire and light from one town to the next in a world that lives in unending darkness. Sometimes she arrives in a town, lights their lanterns, and finds she’s too late. The townsfolk are dead. But other times, she carries the light into a town still holding on to life, and those moments make her long journey worth it. After a lifetime of travel, she succumbs to weariness and dies, but the path she’s walked is sparkling with light behind her.
It’s a poignant short with no dialogue and very minimal sound design, so the music needed to carry the weight of all these moments. It was both an exciting and daunting task, but it gave me the opportunity to develop a very simple theme over the course of its 5 minutes of running time (something you don’t often get to do in a short).
I was grateful for the strong emotions already on display in the animation, and for the opportunity to have my score be its own little torch, carried from scene to scene, and illuminating each moment for the audience.
I hope you enjoy this lovely piece of music.
I certainly enjoyed writing it.
- Matthew
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