One Week, scored

The film is scored wall to wall: 90 seconds, three cues, with no gap from the first frame to the last. The scored film, printmaster and M&E are in the studio. The picture is untouched and delivered at −16.1 LUFS (web), true peak −1.5 dB.

The film had no soundtrack at all, so there was no old music to remove. The score is its only sound.

The cues

• 1M1, "The Storm Galop" (0:00–0:35.7). A D-minor galop for a pit orchestra, with stride piano and a circling "spinning-top" theme in the violins.
  • All 13 of the cuts and gags I marked land exactly on the grid.
  • The house spinning gets a ratchet and cymbal, each time Buster is flung gets a slapstick crack, and the porch and door swinging past get woodblock and trumpet stabs.
  • Buster spinning alone indoors gets a woozy clarinet with circling xylophone. The crash into the chairs bursts into F major with trumpet.
  • His crawl through the wind is tiptoe woodblock, creeping cellos and a groaning trombone.
  • The wife at the piano gets an actual piano flourish, the curtains fly on a flute run, and a timpani roll leads into the fall.
• 1M2, "The Yard" (0:35.7–1:01.7).
  • The backflip lands on a full tutti crash, with xylophone "stars" circling the dazed heads.
  • Everyone tumbling across the yard plays as a breathless D-minor agitato.
  • At the 54-second cut the music turns into a trudging push against the wind: low strings and trombone in step, with flute gusts.
  • The storm dies down to the first plinks of rain and a C7 that hands off to the next cue.
• 1M3, "The Merry-Go-Round" (1:01.7–end).
  • The drenched father-in-law gets a soggy, pompous trombone waltz with piano raindrops.
  • On the "merry-go-round… hobby-horses" title card the band becomes a carousel: calliope-style piano, flute and xylophone tune, woodblock clip-clops for the horses and a triangle.
  • As the couple walks off, the spinning-top theme returns as a tender waltz and ends on a button chord.

The band: piano and a small theatre orchestra. That's violins (four players), two cellos, double bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone. Percussion is xylophone, timpani, bass drum and cymbal, snare, slapstick, ratchet, woodblock and triangle. The mix uses the close, dry cartoon-studio sound.

What came up short

• 1M1 piano: the first take dropped about 30% of the notes. I re-recorded it; the new take came back complete, but its accuracy check couldn't be run, so give it a listen.
• 1M1 bass drum: the porch-spin hit at about 4 seconds is still missing from the bass drum after one retake. The slapstick, piano and strings still hit it, but the thud isn't there.
• 1M1 balance: I turned the slapstick and ratchet up by hand so the gags read. Because I mixed 1M1 from the separate recordings rather than the score, its volume doesn't swell and fall with the written dynamics the way 1M2 and 1M3 do.
• 1M3 ending: the final chord's last ~2 seconds of ring are cut off by the film's final frame.