Scoring a Short Film
A cue sheet comes before the music; silence and dialogue placement decide the result.
Tool profile
- Kind
- guide
- Vendor
- 本站
- Form
- 案例
- Platforms
- 通用
- Price
- 不适用
- Jobs
- 影视配乐 · 对白混音 · 母带交付
- Verified
- 2026-10-30
Related
What the brief looks like
A five-to-twenty-minute narrative short needs a cue sheet listing each cue's mood, start and end timecode, and whether it sits under dialogue. The director supplies a rough cut and the music follows it. The film goes to festivals and online, which means two loudness targets. Delivery includes the master, stems, the cue sheet and a licence note, with the film title and version in every file name; miss one and post stalls.
Tool combination
Sketch each cue with Suno or Udio, and use Udio when one theme needs variations. Spitfire or Kontakt supplies acoustic texture and ACE Studio covers sung lines. Lay cues against picture and mix in Pro Tools, Logic Pro or Ableton Live. iZotope RX repairs dialogue, Ozone handles the master. Generation supplies material; decisions at timecode stay human.
Steps
Do a spotting pass with the director and write each cue's in point, out point and mood into the sheet, testing length against a temp track. Generate cue by cue and keep one motif recurring. Place music against picture and move accents to action and lines. Under dialogue, clear 1 to 4 kHz with automation where needed. Mix in three groups: dialogue, music, effects. Master once for festivals and once for online.
Acceptance criteria
Every cue starts and ends within one frame of its timecode. Under dialogue the music sits at least 6 dB below speech and consonants stay clear without phase cancellation in mono. The film keeps its dynamics, with at least 12 dB between the loudest and quietest passages. The festival version is -23 LUFS, the online version -14 LUFS, true peak no higher than -1 dBTP. Stems, cue sheet and licence documents are complete. The licence covers festival submission, screenings and online release.
Common rework causes
The temp track is too good and the director wants it matched. Music runs wall to wall with no silence. Action points are missed and a fight sounds like a scoring exercise. Dialogue is buried and lines are lost. The master is crushed and quiet scenes have no air. The licence covers screenings only and a festival submission is rejected. Stems and master come from different versions, so the client hears two results.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- 影视响度与交付口径，依广播与发行公开规范核对，未抄原文
- cue 表与 spotting 的做法，依影视配乐通识归纳
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.