Director Gabriele Muccino was searching for a uniquely lonely sound for the score of Will Smith vehicle "Seven Pounds." He found it on his brother's iPod, which happened to contain a number of songs written by Venezuelan-born composer Angelo Milli.

Taken from the Mexican film "My Brother's Wife," the sounds were dissonant, mysterious -- exactly what Muccino was looking for. He tracked down the 33-year-old Milli, who had until then worked mostly on Spanish-language movies, and invited him to score his first major Hollywood studio production....