Finneas opened up about pushing his creative limits while composing the score for Alfonso Cuarón limited series, Disclaimer.
The composer and singer-songwriter, no stranger to writing music for films such as No Time to Die from James Bond series and What Was I Made For? From Barbie, admitted he struggled a bit while scoring Disclaimer.
Cuarón, the series creator and director, told Finneas that he wanted something different.
“He sent me a bunch of music that he loved as references, and it was mostly string quartets,” he said. “I was immediately like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to write music for a string quartet’ so I had to learn.”
Explaining the composing process, he said that when he started writing the music, he brought it to composer David Campbell “to notate and write what I had written and then orchestrate it into parts because I don’t know how to write sheet music.”
As he crafted the score, the Grammy winner noted that Cuarón’s films, like Roma and Y Tu Mama Tambien, “don’t have a score,” so the “less is more” approach seemed appropriate.
“There are big montage sequences, like the water rescue, where we knew we needed the momentum of music, and there are moments where the music is a little bit of an inner monologue of character,” he said.
The seven-part series stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
