Introduction:
The Score is a short dark-comedy thriller that explores the concept of antagonists and protagonists and how music manipulates the audience…and our characters. Literally. As they attempt to make a shady deal, tension and prejudice reach a crescendo when they realise they can all hear the film’s musical score, and it’s trying to trick them into killing each other. Like any good earworm, you won’t be able to get The Score out of your head.
Inspiration:
Following our previous film (award-winning horror Out at Night) that had no musical score for storytelling purposes, we wanted to look deeper at how film scores enhance the audience experience and manipulate them. We chose crime-thriller due to the double-crossing nature of the genre, as well as the familiar cliches we could subvert. Specifically, that of gender roles. Historically, women in crime films are femme fatales and rarely in positions of authority, and usually villainous if they are, and the global majority characters are often portrayed as criminals simply because heroes are traditionally white males. It’s these preconceptions of gender and race in genre cinema (and media as a whole) that The Score exploits to trick our characters and the audience. It also gave us the opportunity to have excellent actors in roles not traditionally available, in a genre that has consistently typecast and undermined them.
The Process:
The Score was filmed in Bristol over five days in early January 2024; however, due to its importance, the music was composed 2 months in advance to animatics so we could plan our timings, as well as have it available for the actors to react to on set. As we were treating the music as a character, this required detailed discussions to craft the score’s ‘performance’, all done remotely with our amazing composer (and nominee for Best Score) Raphaelle Thibaut, who was then living in Brooklyn and pregnant with her second child.
On set, a favourite moment of ours was on the final night of filming. As the shoot ran long we started to lose crew who had to be up in a few hours for their next jobs, such is the nature of low-budget independent filmmaking, but the passion for the project and strong bonds formed throughout filming saw everyone rally together to help out where they could, with one of our actors gleefully taking over as camera assistant even though they had wrapped.
What It Means to Be a Finalist:
It’s encouraging to know that, after over a year of a very crowded festival run, our film is still being recognised. That it has been so by a body of Worcester Film Festival’s calibre and renown is a huge source of pride to all of us involved with this film.
Where to Watch / Follow:
The Score will be available to stream in 2026. Follow us on Instagram @thescoreshortfilm for updates
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