Score · first pass
Scored to your V2 cut. Two minutes thirty-two, written against the picture rather than to length, so the music arrives where the film does.
Every cue is placed against a specific moment in your edit. If the picture changes, send the new cut and the music moves with it.
Sustained low strings in F minor, held deliberately under the opening. Nothing competes with the first line.
Low piano enters on I learned how to turn darkness into strength.
Harmony opens from minor toward major, on This is where Return to Light was born.
This is the pivot the whole cue is built around.
Top end opens over the doves. Lighter, thinner through the low mids.
Building across the gold-leaf and sacred-geometry canvases.
The peak lands on This is my return to light.
Everything before it is lead-up.
Decayed to stillness under the end card.
The two things you flagged on the first drafts, and what changed.
“A bit too ethnic sounding.”
Gone. This is written diatonically, with no modal colouring and no regional instrumentation. Piano, strings and choir pad only. The film says it is not about politics or religion, so the score does not place it anywhere.
“Too fast paced where there should be more of a lead-up.”
Rebuilt around that. It opens close to silence and takes two minutes to arrive, with the loudest moment held back to 2:10 rather than spent early. The dynamic range is roughly twice that of the first drafts.