Film scores
Film scores that follow the cut, not the clock.
Custom scores for independent short films and indie feature productions — drafted against your picture lock, signed off by a composer, and delivered as broadcast-ready stems you can hand straight to your post-sound mixer. Built for filmmakers who want a score that earns the runtime, not one that fills it.
Emotional arc · sync-to-picture · festival & broadcast ready · stems included
Emotional arc
Scoring the arc, not just the cues
A short film breathes — a cold open sits in one place, the midpoint pulls in another direction entirely, and the closing beat resolves what the first ten minutes set up. ScoreDesk writes the score against your picture lock so the emotional arc lands in the body of the film, not just at the top of each cue. Drafted by AI, then read and signed off by a composer before it ever reaches your timeline.
Every cue is mapped to the cut: timecodes, alternate takes for temp-track moments, and an open ending that lets the post-sound mixer extend or trim without breaking the arc. The score travels with the picture through festival resubmits and broadcast colour-grades without losing its shape.
Sync to picture
Sync to picture, hit the timecodes
Sync matters. A cue that lands a beat early or a frame late breaks the take — and on a short film with no temp-track budget, the score carries the rhythm of the edit. ScoreDesk works to your picture lock (or your latest cut, if the lock is still moving) and ships timecoded stems so the post-sound mixer can drop them into Pro Tools, Logic, or Reaper without re-conforming.
When the lock moves — a scene you trimmed, a beat you held — the cue follows. Two revision rounds ship with the score for re-cuts, alternate takes, and the kind of small adjustments that happen on the way to a festival DCP. No separate invoice, no “out of scope” on a cue that's already paid for.
Festival & broadcast
Festival & broadcast readiness, baked in
A short film's first screening is rarely the last — it goes from the festival DCP to a regional broadcast window to a streaming pickup, and each platform expects a different deliverable. ScoreDesk delivers the score broadcast-ready: 48 kHz WAV with stems split for dialogue M&E, music, and FX, plus an optional Atmos / 7.1 surround export when the platform or the festival asks for it.
When the festival programmer asks for a clean M&E track because they're building a sizzle reel, it's already in the delivery folder. When the streaming platform wants loudness reports at −23 LUFS, they're in the delivery folder. The score ships in the format the next stop on the festival circuit expects, not the format the timeline happened to be in.
Example cue
Hear it on the page
A 30-second spot from a recent short — the kind of cue that opens the cold scene, sets the temperature, and hands off to the dialogue. Timecoded to picture, mixed at broadcast loudness, the way it lands in the final cut.
Example cue — a 30s spot from a recent short
Short Film Score · TIER-02 · standard deliverables
What lands in your delivery folder.
Scored for picture, not for shelf-life.
- Timecoded spots & alternate cues
- Stems: dialogue M&E bed, music, FX
- Broadcast-ready WAV + stems at 48 kHz
- Optional Atmos / 7.1 surround export
- Duration cap
- Up to 25 min runtime
- Revisions
- 3 revision rounds
- Turnaround
- ~10 working days
Open the studio
Send the cut. The composer scores to it.
Tell ScoreDesk about the picture — runtime, picture-lock status, festival path, broadcast deliverables — and the studio comes back with a score drafted to your cut, signed off by a composer, and ready for the post-sound mixer.
scoredesk@polsia.app