{"id":2132857,"date":"2025-11-03T18:22:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T18:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2132857"},"modified":"2025-11-03T18:22:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T18:22:47","slug":"finneas-on-creating-the-new-mnemonic-intro-for-apple-tv-film-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/finneas-on-creating-the-new-mnemonic-intro-for-apple-tv-film-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Finneas on Creating the New Mnemonic Intro for Apple TV\/Film Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tIf brevity is the soul of a hit, Finneas<\/a> may be about to have his biggest hit ever. Apple commissioned the multiple-Oscar\/Grammy winner to write a theme so short that it\u2019s not even being called a theme, but a \u201cmnemonic\u201d \u2014 the short series of sounds that will precede every Apple Original show and film going forward. It won\u2019t get him the attention or name recognition that being the co-creator of smashes like \u201cBirds of a Feather\u201d has. But in the long run, should it stick around for years, it might become his most widely heard piece of music, as well as his shortest.<\/p>\n

\n\tMnemonic<\/em>, Finneas says, \u201cis sort of a beautiful word for a logo\u201d accompanied by sound. \u201cThe things that I think of as real classic mnemonics are NBC \u2014 you can hear that in your head \u2014 or HBO has its static.\u201d Finneas is well aware of how modern streaming consumption might make this especially ubiquitous, household by household. \u201cIf you\u2019re binge-ing the whole season of \u2018Ted Lasso\u2019 or \u2018Severance\u2019 or \u2018Disclaimer’\u201d (the last of those being the limited series that he composed the score for himself), \u201cyou\u2019re going to hear the mnemonic 10 times in one day. So it\u2019s gotta be something that\u2019s like the bite of ginger between rolls or something, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tHe says he was approached by David Taylor, Apple\u2019s Head of Music, with the brief for this assignment to do something very brief. \u201cThey were talking about the future of Apple TV<\/a> and how they were, to some degree, simplifying it, starting with it no longer being Apple TV+. They had this new logo graphic and they needed a new piece of music to go with it. That\u2019s such a short amount of time to have something be effective, but also be sort of memorable, and so that was the challenge and also the fun part here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are actually three versions of the mnemonic, all of them definitely fitting into the \u201cminimalist\u201d camp, to varyingly extreme degrees. \u201cThere\u2019s like the main version, which is five seconds, which is what you hear before episodes of a television show. There\u2019s a one-second version that is just a sting, that might play when you see a movie trailer and they just show the production company. And then there is a longer-form version [of about 12 seconds] which you\u2019ll see it in a movie theater at the start of an Apple studios original film, like \u2018Killers of the Flower Moon.\u2019 I tried to make sure that that one felt a little more cinematic and a little grander, because it had more seconds to get from A to B, but it also just felt like it was a different environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSays Taylor in a statement, \u201cFinneas was the perfect creative partner to create our new sound because his relationship with Apple is deeply authentic, beginning from his early days of him producing music and most recently his incredible score for \u2018Disclaimer.\u2019 When we set out to create a mnemonic that would represent Apple Originals<\/a>, we wanted to work with someone who truly understands our brand\u2019s emphasis on creativity and storytelling and would approach the process in a beautiful and emotional way. He delivered a completely original sound that feels cinematic and magical, serving as a welcoming invitation for viewers to enter the world of Apple Originals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking via Zoom from his home studio, Finneas points to the piano behind him as a starting point for a fleeting piece of music whose instrumentation isn\u2019t easy to pin down before it\u2019s gone in one ear and out the other at the start of a viewing experience. \u201cI have my upright piano back here, so I sat and started there. I\u2019m always more able to make something quickly on a real instrument than I am with software. I played a chord that felt kind of hopeful and kind of optimistic, but had gravity to it and hopefully had a little bit of an enigmatic, mysterious quality. And so I had this chord thing happening and then I started building the sounds around it. I had these pieces of zinc and I was hitting them and then reversing the audio, and I was playing real piano and then reversing that, and playing these bass synthesizers and then pitching those up and gliding them down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt may be silly to wonder if, for a piece (or pieces) this short, he \u201cscored to picture\u201d \u2014 but, as a matter of fact, it\u2019s not such a ridiculous question. \u201cI had the ability here to work to picture as I was making this piece of music, watching the logo over and over, and the logo had a lot of motion in it, and so that inspired the piece of music, super directly. I would never have come up with exactly what I came up with if I were making it without getting to see on screen what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFinneas says he didn\u2019t labor over the mnemonic in any kind of laborious way that was disproportionate to how long it was, initially spending just a few hours on it, pre-tweaks. \u201cBecause it was so short, I initially thought, \u2018Well, maybe I\u2019ll make like 10 of these. I\u2019ll make a bunch of options, and then they\u2019ll like something in the 10, or even if they don\u2019t like something in the 10, they\u2019ll give me good feedback and I\u2019ll make another one.\u2019 But as I started working on this one and started pouring more and more layers into it and more and more dimensionality, it felt rich enough that I was like, \u2018I really think this is the one that I want them to hear. I love this one. I don\u2019t even want to give them two other options because I want them to just hear this one and think that\u2019s the right one.\u2019 And then they had great little tweaks, and the visual changed a little bit, so we nudged it here and here and there, but I think it was effective for them to just have the correct version\u201d from the start.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinneas feels loyal to Apple as a company he feels enabled him to become a creative, first of all, and then for their early support of his and sister\/co-creator Billie Eilish\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey were the first big supporter, I would say; when Billie did the Apple Up Next campaign in September 2017, that was a huge deal for us. Part of that campaign was you get to do James Corden, and Billie sat down and talked to Zane Lowe, which was a meaningful vote of support in the very beginning of Billie\u2019s career. And then they\u2019ve given Billie Artist of the Year now twice and been huge supporters of ours. But we\u2019ve always been very much part of their family from a buyer standpoint. I always say that I credit having a career as a producer or songwriter with being born when I was born and being able to get myself an iMac \u2014 and then, when the price of Logic Pro dropped from $800 to $200, being able to buy Logic Pro and teach myself how to use it. So I feel very kind of indebted to their products existence from a creative standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf not many Apple Originals viewers know he\u2019s the man behind the passing hum, he\u2019s good with that. \u201cI love to be an invisible part of something. My favorite compliment ever is when somebody goes, \u2018Dude, I was listening to this song by this artist and I looked up their credits and I saw your name. I had no idea you worked on that thing.\u2019 The reason that they had no idea, I hope, is that it doesn\u2019t sound like me or like Billie or something. I want to always be of service to the art itself. So I guess like what\u2019s exciting to me is like, I hope people aren\u2019t even thinking about it \u2014 I hope they\u2019re seeing the Apple logo and they\u2019re seeing the animatic and they\u2019re hearing what I hope is the perfect way that sounds in their brain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If brevity is the soul of a hit, Finneas may be about to have his biggest hit ever. Apple commissioned the multiple-Oscar\/Grammy winner to write a theme so short that it\u2019s not even being called a theme, but a \u201cmnemonic\u201d \u2014 the short series of sounds that will precede every Apple Original show and film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2132858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[405962,25317,44289],"class_list":["post-2132857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-apple-originals","tag-apple-tv","tag-finneas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Finneas-on-Creating-the-New-Mnemonic-Intro-for-Apple-TVFilm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132859,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132857\/revisions\/2132859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2132858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}