How Music Makes Your Action Sequence Feel Bigger
One of the most powerful tools a composer brings to your film is the ability to make the stakes feel like they're constantly rising without a single line of dialogue or a single additional frame.
When I was brought on to score this action-packed short for Zach King, featuring Jake Carlini as the villainous Red Dude, the creative challenge was clear: how do you make a fast-moving, cartoon-y chase feel genuinely epic? How do you keep the audience on the edge of their seat when the tone is fun, but the tension needs to be real?
The answer was in how the score expands. As Zach leaps into the comic book he's drawing, the music opens up. The low end drops deeper, the high end climbs higher, and suddenly the world feels larger. It's the sonic equivalent of the camera pulling back to reveal a bigger picture. That sense of scale wasn't in the visuals alone; the music created it.
From there, the score continues to build and release in waves, pulling back just enough to reset before expanding again, each time feeling bigger than before. That push and pull is what keeps audiences unconsciously gripped, even in a short-form piece like this.
This is what a purposefully composed original score can do for your project: it doesn't just accompany the action, it shapes how your audience experiences it.
If you're a filmmaker looking for a composer who thinks about music as a storytelling tool, I'd love to talk about your next project.
Enjoy this brief walkthrough of how to make an action short film sound bigger through music composition. I definitely enjoyed writing the original soundtrack for this crazy short film!