Steve sat back with a hearty sigh.
“I,” he said, “don’t have an answer. Don’t have any inspiration either. The series is finished. This was a guaranteed BAFTA winner; the camerawork’s exquisite, for once the animals mostly behaved, the narration… well, I don’t need to add anything there, the man’s a legend. There’s just that one little problem, and I…”
“I know,” Jennifer interrupted. “This isn’t a disaster quite yet, but it’s close. So, what are you going to do? I mean, we can’t have titles with no music, let alone that footage… which you’re right, is beautiful, and kudos to the team for it… but you’ve got some budget left, yeah?”
“Not enough to get what I wanted.”
“Which is?”
“Sweeping orchestral soundscapes. Think Hans Zimmer, but…”
“Yes?”
“What we’ve got left is enough to fund something that’s more Zimmer frame.”
“Oh. How much?” she asked, resting her elbows on the desk and rubbing her temples gently.
“You don’t want to know.”
“What’s the alternatives then?”
“Well,” he replied, hesitating. “We could use stock, but…”
“But it’s like the Wilhelm Scream, everyone knows it, and we can’t have that for something this grandiose.”
“Agreed. We could ask you-know-who if he’d be willing to do the work for an… appropriate percentage of the aftersales?”
“He’s never done that in the past, doesn’t trust that sort of arrangement.”
“Even for something like this?” Steve was outraged.
“Even this. Any other options? I mean, thinking about it, even if we got him to write something, who would play it? The Symphony Orchestra and Choir still need Union rates for rehearsal, performance, and a cut afterwards – can we even pay the upfronts?”
“No.”
“Shit,” Jennifer exhaled. “We don’t even have that much? Where the hell did the budget go then?”
“The kit isn’t cheap. Chartering boats and flights, local fixers… that situation that Nige got himself into wasn’t just resolved by gentle diplomacy, we had to grease some palms. The usual expenses, you know, and then there’s…”
Jennifer held up her hands. When he’d finished muttering, she started ticking off things on her fingers.
“Ok. Back to the problem in hand. We can’t get you-know-who, and even if we could, we can’t pay the musicians. We can’t use stock because everyone uses it. What else is left? Can we run a competition to get someone to score it and sort them out that way? Can we do something completely unusual and actually just go with the recorded sounds?”
Steve thought for a moment. “Actually, that first idea isn’t too bad. We can’t not have music, no one wants to listen to the chopper over the visual of a sweeping forest-scape, but that might have legs…”
“How long have we got before it needs to be delivered?” she asked.
“Three weeks.”
“Bugger. Not enough time. Only one choice for it then.”
“Which is?”
“I have a friend in a German language Nineties-influenced techno-metal band who owes me a favour.”
“Dear God.”
