Tracking Pacific Walrus, scored

The film is scored and delivered at web loudness. Final level is −16 LUFS with peaks at −1.5 dBTP.

What was there before: quiet stock music playing under 93% of the film, beneath the narration almost the whole way. I removed it and kept the narration and the natural sound (water, ice, walrus calls) exactly as they were.

The score: two cues for piano and a string section (violins, violas, cellos, basses), all in D major.

• 1M1, 0:00–0:47 — "Wonder on the ice." The piano plays a small rising theme alone over the logo and the black frames. When the first walrus fades in at 0:07, the strings come in, and the piano settles into a soft eighth-note pulse under the narration. The harmony lifts gently as the herd fills the frame at 0:19. The fullest moment is at 0:35, on the close-up of the walruses piled together: the violins climb to their high point and the cellos and basses swell. The cue then thins and ends unresolved, leading into the title.
• 1M2, 0:47–1:18 — "Title and map." The piano plays the theme once more, alone and quietly, over the title. It then drops to sparse chords with a very soft string bed under the map and the last lines of narration, and ends on a resolved D chord. I set this cue 4 dB below the first, as you asked.

Keeping the narration clear: the music already sits back in the mix, and it also dips under every line. It plays about 8 dB below the voice while anyone is speaking.

What was approximated:

• The basses in 1M1 didn't play reliably in the section recording, so I swapped in a single player's take. It sits quietly under the cellos and I couldn't run the automatic note check on it, so give it a listen.
• The 1M2 piano dropped a few of its softest chord attacks. The rest of the cue held up, so I kept that take rather than re-record it note by note.
• The end of 1M2 runs about 1.4 s past the last frame and is cut there.