Today's video is a long one (more than two-and-a-half hours!), but if you are interested in how orchestral recordings are made today, or in how composers approach writing music for TV or film, it is completely engrossing.

Composer Christian Henson wrote the score for ITV's latest period drama Tutankhamun earlier this year and the orchestral sections were recorded in two three-hour sessions. The music itself was written, arranged, orchestrated and copied in the two weeks that led up to these sessions. All of the musicians are, of course, sight-reading and given the beauty of the sound that they produce, it is no wonder that film and TV companies travel from far and wide to use London-based musicians and orchestras. These sessions took place at AIR Studios in London.

Henson says of the video: 'You’ll see that I start by feeding them material we can get through quickly, and that it is similar in style and theme, so that we can warm up, but also get a few cues under our belts before attacking the real "meat and taters" about half way in the session (at about 1h 30mins). I have an impossible number of cues to get through, so as we go on we start working our way through cues that I would have been "happy" to just use samples on. As we near the end I get Ben to print out two cues I had no intention of recording.... will we make it to the end and get everything done??!!'

For more information about this video, visit: spitfireaudio.com. The soundtrack album has been released by Sony Classical.