This thesis consists of an original composition portfolio and a commentary. There are ostensibly two works here, both re-scores of early Chinese films: a re-scoring of the seventy four minutes long Chinese silent film The Goddess (1934) and a re-scoring of the Princess Iron Fan (1941), the first Chinese full-length animated film which is seventy three minutes long. My research has centred on the question: is there another viable approach to re-scoring a silent film besides what Kevin Donnelly1 sets out as either ‘purist’ (i.e. historically informed) or ‘novel’ (radically different to the film)? I place my own method between these two extremes, formulating what I call a ‘mixed model approach’ and through it I can explore and develop my own musical identity drawing on an eclectic and diverse range of musical styles, using a leitmotivic strategy within the architecture of both scores.