These Shining lives

by Melanie Marnich. Produced by Mira Costa College. Directed by Eric Bishop. Composition by Paul Durso.

Early in the production of These Shining Lives, the director mentioned the music of Claude Debussy, much of which is based around parallel movement of complex chords. As my compositions were to be used as underscore and not the main focal point, I chose to write parallel movement with minimal, simplified chords and single, fragile melodic lines on piano.

A main theme of the story is the passage of time and its qualities. To enforce this theme, I took recordings of my piano performances and processed them with time-based effects, and sent the result through extreme time-stretch software which gave a mysterious, ambient quality to the sound and melodic movement. The script has many instances of numbers denoting time, so I took those numbers and built chords out of them.

For the scenes with a period-specific radio jingle sung live, I composed and arranged a three-part harmony for the women to sing.