Sisenta! follows Cora’s journey of reconnection and self-discovery in the sixtieth chapter of her life. After a chance meeting with her old high school friend Gina, Cora and Gina navigate the complexities of nostalgia, age, and the hope in a romance they once thought was already lost to time.

As its composer, Sisenta! became my first project go up on the big screen! I was tasked to make seven minutes of score that explore the question:

How does a budding romance shaped by time sound like?

The idea of a queer romcom story between two senior citizens opens the music up to a lot of unique opportunities. With Sisenta!’s premise in mind, I could not imagine the score to be anything else than the music of Cora and Gina’s youth mixed with the sounds of Filipino romcom of recent memory.

The Background

I did the math. In the film, Cora had just turned sixty sometime in 2014. She and Gina would’ve been born in 1954, and would have spent her youth listening to doo-wop, rock n’ roll, R&B, ballad, Manila sound, and Original Pilipino Music. On the other hand, their romance was rekindled in 2014—a time when romcom movies like Got 2 Believe,  My First Romance, Forevermore, You Changed My Life, and more were fresh in popular memory.

Cora and Gina’s story is A Very Special Love (pun intended) that’s as modern as it is classic. With such a broad amount of musical material to work with, I spent two weeks deep-diving Spotify playlists full of Manila sound, ballad, and romcom songs. And I looped these playlists so much that my friends and family started getting annoyed hearing VST & Company and Rey Valera again and again for the nth time. _{(last song syndrome really does exist…)}

When I got the go-signal, I narrowed down my inspirations to a few key songs: “Panalangin” by APO Hiking Society, “Maybe This Time” by Sarah Geronimo, and “Mabagal” by Daniel Padilla and Moira Dela Torre.

Clockwise from the left image: Apo Hiking Society, Sarah Geronimo (and Coco Martin), Daniel Padilla & Moira Dela Torre.

“Panalangin” for a nostalgic, dynamic, and multi-genre vibe; “Maybe This Time” for the gentle drama mixed with hopeful optimism; and a dash of “Mabagal” to get a feel for how the 21^st century ear interprets classic doo-wop motifs. These three songs were also quite intuitive to blend together owing to their similarities in chord progressions (variations of IV-iv-I and ii-V-I) and rhythm (jazz and swing inspired beats).

The Intent

Here’s an fun fact: I composed the film’s theme song demo way before I got the go-signal to even start working. I based my ideas solely on the vibes and emotions I felt from reading the script:

• getting older with time,
• uncertainty from societal pressure,
• heartwarming family dynamics,
• being true to yourself, and
• hope in a romance that seemed already too late.

Everything else came afterwards as varying expressions of these emotions. An awkward elevator jazz playing while waiting for iced tea; Gymnopédie-adjacent piano solo at a cathartic dinner date; a flute and violin gently lifting up a mother and a son’s conversation about coming out of the closet.

That just reading Sisenta!’s script already made me feel how it should sound speaks volumes on how much this film resonated with me. Panalong panalo talaga!

The Techniques

Compositionally, this wide range of themes and emotions made the score fairly dynamic across its seven cues. The theme song is written in 6/8 and takes its instrumentation cues from “Panalangin” with a soundscape of trumpets, bass guitar, piano, drums, and some dreamy 70s synths. This became the anchoring sonic profile for the other cues like the awkward elevator jazz, the dreamy kilig moments that sounds unapologetically like “True” by Spandau Ballet, and the many romcom motifs played in the rest of the film.

The main theme in Cakewalk.

Under the hood, you’d see the roots of my digital process at work. The score was fully programmed in Cakewalk with MIDI using sample-based virtual instrument libraries from Orchestral Tools, Spitfire LABS, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Native Instruments’ Komplete Start. A bit of mixing polish came in the form of some light compression, EQ, and reverb, and then it was all off to the races—or cinemas—from then on.

The Reception

credits: Official Sisenta! Facebook page

Color me not surprised, then, when I heard all about how Sisenta! bagged the Audience Choice Award at the 2nd Puregold CinePanalo Film Festival! I’m truly grateful that I played a part in bringing this love team to life. To me, Sisenta! was my very first opportunity to have my music up on the big screen—and I’m proud to call this project one of my earliest steps into this interesting journey as a film scorer.

Love always finds us—and it comes when we least expect it. That much is certain if Sisenta! is anything to go by. So in the meantime, let’s play, laugh, and dance until love visits us in our own restaurants one day. Or in the car while playing “Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko” on repeat.