Cue of the Week: Llamas And The Federal Reserve

The filmmakers of The F-Zone had a challenge on their hands: how to make a long discussion about the abuses of the federal reserve system - something perhaps most idiomatic for a novel - into a watchable scene in a feature film? Their ingenious solution was setting the scene on a llama farm, where closeups of the endearing critters could provide a little humorous buoyancy without unduly distracting the audience from the dialogue.



In scoring the scene, I took my cue from the visuals, and wrote a piece with a South American folk-ethnic flavor. The featured wind instrument is bass recorder, played by the talented multinstrumentalist Jon Clarke. (Jon's also behind the all the oboe and english horn performances elsewhere in the score.) To get a primitive drum sound, we simply stuffed a standard orchestral gran cassa with some blankets. And voila: fake but authentic-sounding indigenous instrumentation!

Llamas And The Federal Reserve