Chapter 19

Airic spent the next two weeks composing. At first he thought to create a song on Reynor, but as time went by, he found that he knew very little about life on Reynor. After all, he had only been there for less than three weeks. Then he looked at the image of Reynor for inspiration and as he looked at the Oceanic areas he remembered the little mermaid.

He remembered the Disney version and then the version from tales of the Grimm brothers. The song that came to mind was 'under the sea' and as a child he loved to sing along to the song and dance with his mum as it was catchy and fun, but he felt it was a children's song so he decided against that as inspiration, then he looked at the other version and felt it was too dark to look for inspiration- not just that there were no songs done for the original version of the fairytale.

The only positive to his dilemma was that it helped cement his decision to have it focused on life with the sea.

He spent hours pouring over travel notes of travellers under and on the sea, or in mostly Oceanic planets. As he did so he had listened to tropical sounds and used the digital synthesizer which had allowed him to use different instruments- past and present- to create a sound that he was happy with.

It took days to come up with something that could pass as a song, countless efforts that sounded like noise, creating the lyrics and adjusting them to the sound he created, making it come together.

The song that came out was beautiful.

Airic loved it. It was perfect to listen to while stationary as well as perfect for a dance club, energetic and filled with beats that made one want to get up and move.

It took him the full two weeks to write the song he promised to present, as he had to go to the company in another 2 hours.

***********

The reactions to the song where mixed.

The producers were excited to listen to music created using nature sounds and instruments, while the executives had concerns over the marketability of this new type of music.

However, most of the power to decide was left to the CEO, Lunario Banning, who had a blank face throughout the discussions happening. It made Airic nervous.

Then after a prolonged silence on his side, the cacophony of sounds diminished as everyone turned towards him, awaiting judgement. Then rising from his chair, Lunario replayed the song, closed his eyes, and opened them with a smile.

"Beautiful," he said. "the sounds complement each other, bringing on a new sensation as you listen to the music. I think it will be popular as its both playful and cheerful yet it also seems like it tells a deep story, and that is without the lyrics. I love it and I think others will as well."

"Thank you," Airic said, "it means a lot coming from you. Would it be possible to do an ocean-themed music video of this as well, both within and out of the ocean? I used inspiration from it and the sound at a beach to come up with this song... I was thinking of a story of a sea goddess, maybe even a local legend of a sea creature if I can find one that resonates with the song, that is."

" I can sea that," Lunario said, a smile on his face and laughter in his eyes. It took a while for the joke to register, then Airic groaned and covered his face with a hand, refusing to look at the pale man which caused him to burst out laughing at the bad pun. The rest of the room looking on in resignation.

"I rarely get that reaction from people now, it was nice to be able to do so once more. The missus has basically forbidden me from using them around her. You wouldn't blame an old man would you?"

"You're not that old sir." said the rest of the people in the room, in a very eerie deadpan.

Lunario laughed it off.

Feeling a bit unnerved, Airic attempted to get things back on track.

"Where shall the video be filmed, any recommendations?" Airic said.

As he said this it seemed like he had said something wrong as everyone looked at him incredulously. Then, Lunario explained that the videos are shot in a holographic room that looked realistic along with a lot of post-production. Airic felt like he was an antique. A break was called by the directors to allow everyone to move around from their seats and order a drink, but Airic used this time to watch a music video to analyse the difference to music videos from his time period.

Shockingly, the videos were worse than he expected. From what he could see by doing it in a simulated area, the post-production teams focused on making everything seem as lifelike as possible with a fake environment, meaning the usual post-production edits were ignored to keep the realism.

Inspired by the incredible realism though, he decided to talk to one of the production staff about editing the video that he uploaded as he shot to fame, Golden mist for a comparison. The staff were amused and decided to do so for fun, but stopped as they realised that the video that came out was better than the usual holo-videos. As they did not have to make sure everything looked real, as it was already real, they could improve some other things in the video to create a much more mystical video that still was packed with realism.

They were all excited as they went over the video, even adding some more realistic special effects for fun. At some point, they drew a crowd with how animated they were in this discovery, as it had become normal to use simulated environments to create both movies and music videos. This had dragged down the quality unknowingly, and as it was normal no-one had thought to do any different before Airic did so.

The break was over shortly after, and this time with the help of the production staff, Airic was able to present his reason for looking at a live recording. There were arguments for the cost of the video, but again some argued that this could be an experiment to gain more profits from quality videos.

After extensive arguments, Lunario suggested a solution, which was voted and agreed on.

As he always strove to be fair, he proposed to do the video both ways and compare the views and sales of the video. Then next was the planet or area of Reynor to host the music video as well as the actors to tell the story, once the storyboard team had given a story for the video, and other things to talk about regarding the video creation.

"We'll be here all day..." Lunario said with a sigh, as he geared himself for the next round of arguments and mediations.