So as you know from yesterday’s post, I had left my laptop charger at Warner Brothers. The only other thing you need to know, before I share my “series of fortunate events”, is that I had a chance meeting with Oscar-nominated composer Javier Navarrete (Pan’s Labyrinth) yesterday at the scoring session to The Reaping, when he popped by briefly with his agent.
This morning I needed to get some photographic elements for the Zimmer website I’m building, and so I went over to the studio to take some pictures. Composer Nick Glennie-Smith was working in the room, and as he was there last week when I took photos, he was quite used to me shooting around him. I got what I needed, then headed home to finish up the mockup, which was then sent out for approval.
My laptop was still dead, and I needed to get it working today, so I then went back up to Burbank, to Warner Brothers. Instead of just turning around and going back home (a waste of a trip to the valley), I instead stayed at the scoring stage, where they are mixing Shooter. Since I covered the scoring session this past week, I decided to write up and finish my article (featured photo essay) while there, and I’m glad I did since I had a few questions for those who worked on the score. I sent it off to Paramount Publicity for approval, and then called up my friend Sean who works at Disney, to see if he wanted to get coffee.
I then drove over to the Walt Disney Studios, to meet Sean for coffee. As we were walking from his office to the Starbucks on the lot, I saw someone ahead who looked familiar: Nick Glennie-Smith. How funny! Even more ironic, he was talking with Hans Zimmer, so I went over to say hi to them both. (Apparently Hans saw the mockup I’d finished this morning, and likes it – yay!) Then later on, as Sean and I were having coffee, I saw someone who looked familiar go into the Starbucks. Lo and behold, it was Javier Navarrete, who has been bouncing from studio to studio with meetings. (Getting an Oscar nomination will do that, you know!) He joined us for coffee, and we spent the next 45-minutes or so talking with him about all manner of things.
Before I knew it, it was 5:45pm, and Sean still had to go back to work – as did I! My trip to the valley (which I had expected to take no more than 2 hours) ended up taking 4.5 hours. But now I have a feature article finished (waiting for approval), a new composer interview to do (with Navarrete), and satisfaction in knowing my mockup was well received. All in all, a series of fortunate events indeed.