CCMSAI 2026

Charade (1963): Alternate Edit Film Score for Chamber Orchestra (2026) is a new film score for the eponymous classic 1963 film starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, directed by Stanley Donen. It was commissioned by the Unequal Fifths Composer Collective, of which I am a founding member, and composed for my chamber orchestra, the Martians. This paper employs both technological and analytical methodologies to describe the creative process that went into the composition of Charade: Alternate Edit Film Score. I discuss my use of AI Stem-Splitting technology to isolate the film dialogue from the monaural audio containing the original Henry Mancini score, as well as the more expansive use of various other narrative and technical tools to edit the film, each of which helped to drive my creative process. Charade: Alternate Edit Film Score demonstrates the inherent creative fecundity of the transformation of original video elements from a given film in the public domain, in this case Donen’s film, Charade, as a means of providing a programmatic framework for a new composition. This new framework was the basis upon which the newly-edited film was sequenced and to which the new musical score was composed and synchronized. It is my desire that the resulting audiovisual work provides a new musical meditation on the original film for those audience members who have seen it, while avoiding “giving away” the ending of the film for those who have not and enticing them to seek out the original film and Mancini score.