This is a deleted scene from Akeelah and the Bee. The scene shows a young girl who is revising her spelling bee practice and sees a photo of her dad and remembers playing Scrabble with him, then she remembers the drama surrounding his death. Musically, we wanted to combine the nostalgia of the scene along with the sadness and the drama. The sound effects and foley in the scene are of a very dramatic nature once we hear the gunshots – there are police radios, sirens, helicopters and so we created a theme that is established at the beginning of the scene in her nice memories of her father. It just starts with the piano and we add in a melatron which is a lovely sound for nostalgia which pairs nicely with the ‘Super 8’ style of filming during the Scrabble memory. Then after the gunshots, the piano remains but with the subby heartbeat nature of the loop. This loop fits with her heavy breathing as the memories overwhelm her and then we bring the theme back in but underneath different bass notes and chords to create a dissonant sound. The moment where her mother collapses is where the bass comes in and the sad minor theme is suddenly stressing itself over a major chord, creating drama in the music itself to reflect the high drama of the scene. As she comes out of the memories and tries to ground herself in the revision again, we gradually slow down the tempo of the repeating piano line as if her heart is now gradually slowing down as she calms and the music fades into nothing as the memories lose their grip.