Seiko: The Gift of Time - Scoring the Space Between

The Creative Brief

The Gift of Time is a short film in which some of Japan's leading cultural figures — architect Kengo Kuma, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, composer Shunichi Tokura, and singer MISIA — explore Japan's singular relationship with time. It's built around an idea that runs through Seiko's own framing: that time is our most precious resource, and that life's greatest luxury is spending it meaningfully.

What the director (Paula Chowles) wanted me to understand from the start was that this film necessitates contrast. There had to be moments that felt loud and fast: the rapid forward motion of time and progress, fitting for a company that has measured time for 140 years. But there also had to be moments of true reflection, where you're fully present and time slows to a crawl. The visual treatment for the film explored this directly: light and shadow, old and new, fleeting and forever. The musical references ranged just as widely, from meditative ambient jazz to stately neoclassical, and my task was to fold all of it into a score that kept the film's emotional heart front and center.

Developing the Concept

The instrumental palette was wide: from quiet ambient piano, to full orchestral arrangement and minimal synth / sound design cues. What unites all of these approaches is a deep reverence and respect for the artists interviewed in the film and for time itself.

For the quieter passages (Sharing Tea), I drew on my love of ambient music to translate the film's locations and slower pacing into a meditative space. I leaned on both acoustic and electric piano played spaciously, letting the phrasing weave in and out of the dialogue in conversation with the artists as they spoke. My approach for these moments was to improvised long segments with no click track, editing precisely to picture afterward so that the human feel of the performance came first.

In contrast, scenes like the bullet train sequence (The March of Time) demanded precision and forward momentum. These I wrote track by track, locked to tempo, finding the right instrumentation as I slowly built up the arrangement. March of Time was the most complex arrangement written this way, which included a full orchestral wind and string section in addition to synth bass and taiko drums.

Iterating to Picture

For this project, there were many iterations. Runtimes changed, scenes moved, and the pacing evolved from cut to cut, so the music had to keep shifting along with it. For example, the sequence with Kengo Kuma speaking about wood, the director told me the early passes felt too slow and were not frenetic enough. So with each version we moved closer to the energy that the scene needed. The opening cue also provided challengeing: pulling the audience in fast, then giving them room to breathe before building back up. Ultimately we found that balance only through careful and continued effort and revision. All told, the score went through at least nine rounds before we landed on the right emotional feel and pacing.

Takeaways

This project felt deeply personal, because it forced me to slow down and consider my own relationship with time. It arrived just as I was diving deeper into my practice as an ambient musician and the film called for that slower sensibility. Patience and space were my guiding principles, giving the music room to support the story without overpowering it. I got to lean into my strengths as a keyboard player while guiding that playing toward something that served the film. This film asked me to be present with my own process and to think about how time is so crucial to our understanding of life and music. It was an opportunity to dive deeper as a composer and I left the project feeling deeply grateful for the time I have here on Earth.