Personally, I prefer this serene solo piano music for accompaniment when filming swans, much as I fondly recall melancholy flute music for CBC's Hinterland Shorts. The trick is to MIX the site audio with the accompaniment and using the faders to modulate the mix. In other words, either the site recording, or the accompaniment predominates at any one moment in the production, therefore providing a give-and-take, a shifting balance to suit the bird behaviour. A third channel on the mixer allows for your narration, when needed, without gating everything else on the score. Nature shorts generally don't need foley, so then all you would need is three audio channels. My gut reaction is that no one audio component should predominate for too long because of the steep profile of attention saturation, which leads to a short attention span. Change in audio keeps it fresh and therefore helps support the change in characters appearing on the screen. Even in the movies, different actors get different music. We always know when Darth Vader is about to enter the picture by the prelude. Who would be the Darth Vader of waterfowl? I don't rightly know. OMG, that's it ... a black swan! Quick, go find Casting. I'm so excited.
