Best of luck...
Doesn't Russ do video work? He might be a good person to pick his brains...
Fun-nest video work I ever did was for a company that had made a video of the aftermath of Hurricane Opal (which badly damaged my area), real low budget, so I brought in my old Ensoniq SQ2 (high tech for it's day!) and a couple of modules, and called up some REALLY complex patches, lots of splits and layers, vel-triggered percussion, that sort of thing, then basically improvised the entire thing in about three or four sections.
No re-takes, no editing, no MIDI, just straight to tape! Talk about pressure!
It came out very well, sold gobs of copies, everyone went away happy (except me, who to this day never got a copy! But I got PAID! Boo-yah!).
Mind you, that's basically the entire music for film and video ethos. It's always the last thing to go on (unless it's a cartoon or musical), the film is basically finished and cut when you get it, so EVERYONE is screaming down your neck to get it done ASAP so they can release it. A VERY high stress/pressure gig. The top composers EARN every penny they make!
Have fun taking your time, but don't think for one minute that will ever happen in real life!