“The room after she leaves. The light is the same. The chair is the same. Something has been removed and the room hasn’t noticed yet.”
Not a screen. A document.
Interior. Apartment, late afternoon. She has gone. He stands in the doorway and does not enter. The room continues without him.
It should feel like loss. But not sad. More like the absence of something. Hold the room. Let the music notice what he can’t.
Margin note — the cue should end before he turns to leave, not after. Music withdraws first.
ATMOSPHERE = Absence; FUNCTION = interior reflection; DENSITY = sparse; TEMPO = 44 rubato; METER = free; HARM = open5/sus4, no resolution; REG = low strings + sub-bass + 1 high harmonic; DYN = ppp→mp; TIMBRE = bowed metal, exhaled brass, felt piano; EXCLUDE = perc, melody, vibrato; END BEFORE motion.
In the language of feeling. Pick an atmosphere, name the function, set the density. Or paste the sentence you said in the room. Either works.
Tempo, meter, harmonic character, register, dynamics, exclusions. A reference cue is rendered so the direction can be heard before a composer’s week is committed.
A document, not a prompt. Printable. Margin-noted. Editable. Designed so the composer’s first response is to start writing, not to start translating.
Leitmotif gives you a vocabulary that travels. The sentence you say becomes a brief they can act on, with a reference cue you can both hear together. The conversation that used to happen two weeks late, in a re-record, happens now — with the room, the chair, and the light still in front of you.
The reference cue is a sketch, and we say so. The exclusions are the director’s, not ours. The musical decisions are yours. What you build above the brief is what gets recorded, and the brief is designed to make sure the first thing you do is reach for the staff paper, not the email reply.