  Since its conception, the computer has found applications to accompany human
creativity. Today, the debate about computers and creativity involves several
challenges, such as understanding human creativity, modeling the creative
process, and programming the computer to exhibit behavior that appears to be
creative to some extent. In this paper, we are interested in how the computer
can be used as a tool to promote creativity in a musical composition. We
automatically extracted the brightness curve from a silent movie and then used
it to compose a piece of music to accompany the movie. We extracted several
parameters from the brightness curve, and applied compositional rules from
these parameters to write the instrumental music for the film. The final
composition has a synchronicity and aesthetic fit with the film that are
surprising. This compositional process also allowed for a degree of aesthetic
freedom that would otherwise have been impossible.
