Oscar-winning composer and award-winning songwriter Finneas isn’t any stranger to writing music for movie. The composer and songwriter received Oscars — together with his celebrity sister Billie Eilish — for “No Time to Die” from the James Bond movie of the identical identify, and “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” in 2024. He has received Grammys and has a solo profession in addition to multiplatinum music with Eilish. He’s a songwriter of all trades, however when it got here to writing music for AppleTV+’s restricted sequence “Disclaimer,” the sequence creator and director Alfonso Cuarón needed one thing completely different from him.
Regardless of Finneas’ intensive resume, he had by no means scored TV, however Cuarón was a fan. Though the musician was on board throughout filming, it wasn’t till post-production that the work actually started. “He despatched me a bunch of music that he cherished as references, and it was principally string quartets,” Finneas says. “I used to be instantly like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how one can write music for a string quartet’ so I needed to study.”
The seven-part sequence stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The present follows acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett), who constructed her fame revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown creator, she is horrified to comprehend she is now the primary character in a narrative that exposes her darkest secrets and techniques.
Finneas began writing the music and introduced on composer David Campbell “to notate and write what I had written after which orchestrate it into components — as a result of I don’t know how one can write sheet music.” It was Campbell who really useful the Attacca Quartet, and since Cuarón was a string quartet buff, he already knew the celebrated group of musicians.
In approaching the rating, Finneas notes that the majority of Cuarón’s movies, like “Roma” and “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “don’t have a rating,” so the “much less is extra” strategy appeared applicable. “There are huge montage sequences, just like the water rescue, the place we knew we would have liked the momentum of music, and there are moments the place the music is slightly little bit of an internal monologue of character,” he says.
Episode 7 reveals Catherine’s secret. Jonathan, the younger man she had met on vacation and rescued her son from drowning, would later return to her room and assault her. Cuarón gave Finneas a chunk of music for the scene. He says, “I believed it was tremendous haunting, and it simply felt like the precise horrible factor to play” underneath the conclusion that the narrative that had unfolded and destroyed Catherine’s life was unfaithful. With that realization, all of the fantasy music that had come earlier than needed to shift with the narrative.
When it got here to devices, he gave Catherine a cello theme that may very well be heard early in Episode 1. He additionally created a household suite. Catherine’s son, Nicholas (Smit-McPhee) “is usually listening to rap, grime and drill,” and that’s a bit at odds with the remaining, “so that you hear that with the cello, married with synths that you simply hear with [husband] Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen).”
Elsewhere, he created completely different themes together with a love theme for Steven (Kevin Kline) and his late spouse Nancy (Lesley Manville) who seems in flashbacks.
As for his expertise scoring for TV, Finneas says he didn’t work in a linear approach. “I’d work on cues from Episode 6 after which 2,” and soar round, “which was satisfying.”
He provides, “If I had been to do extra tv, I’d hope I’d get to try this once more, as a result of, you understand, it’s interesting to do it that approach.”
