Moonlighters (2025)

Moonlighters is a narrative sci-fi romcom film that explores the all-too human feeling of running out of time—ironically, in the story of two office workers who can stop time itself.

Coby and I had a lots of discussions on the sound of the film before post-production. And what came of those discussions was an 8-minute score heavily inspired by the magic, wonder, and romance brought about by music from the likes of Joe Hisaishi, Tenmon, Radwimps, and an assortment of K-drama theme songs; apart from the original score, Coby also wanted to incorporate emotions of distress and urgency with Edvard Grieg’s classic “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Some annotations and inspirations that made this score possible.

This was my first project where I had to arrange an existing musical piece—and honestly, it wasn’t so bad! Translating sheet music into VSTs and MIDI was a surprisingly intuitive process; it was, on the other hand, the amount of research needed to make musical decisions that challenged me in this project.

There was a chance here to re-arrange Grieg’s piece in the style of Joe Hisaishi’s orchestral pieces with Studio Ghibli. Vis-a-vis the bombastic brass and percussions that shook the hall of the mountain king, Hisaishi prefers the more intimate sounds of the piano, the woodwinds, and the violins. On top of this arrangement, I delved into a lot of research into capturing the sound Coby and I agreed on, eventually landing onto loads of interesting musical theory like quartal harmonies and diminished scales.

Coby also wanted to emphasize the how using the ability to stop time is not without its risks. The real risk of overextending yourself is one; becoming numb to the passage of time is another. These ideas musically translated into simple melody lines that can be repeated ad infinitum.

Very glad to have been a part of this film’s journey. If there’s one thing that scoring this film taught me, then it’d be that the living life is all about making the most out of the little time that we have.