What you need to know
- Apple TV+ picked up some top composers for all of its shows.
- Big names like Carter Burwell and Michael Brook were brought on board.
- Variety looks at how that turned out.
Apple TV+ launched in November of 2019 but long before then someone made a decision. They wanted to bring on board some of the biggest and brightest composers available and that's exactly what it did. As highlighted by a new report Apple's move to make sure the music matched the content, that might have been the best move Apple TV+ made before launch.
While some of these names might not be very well known to most people, that's not the case in Hollywood.
For a new streaming service, Apple TV Plus made some pretty sharp music choices from the start, tapping Carter Burwell to score "The Morning Show," Atli Örvarsson for "Defending Jacob," Michael Brook for "Little America" and Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist for "Dickinson."
A great example of the importance of audio in TV is "Defending Jacob", scored by Atli Örvarsson. They say that the music is all about showing how the family is coping with the unusual situation they found themselves in.
"The music is really a study in a family falling apart, and the sadness and loneliness that comes with that, more than driving the plot or thriller aspects of it," he notes. Örvarsson played the piano, added the electronics, and recorded a string group that ranged from three to 25 players.
Apparently the show needed up to 40 minutes of music each and every episode. That's way more than I would have thought, but Örvarsson says it was more like "scoring a movie a week for eight weeks straight".
Be sure to check out the fill Variety piece for the lowdown on some of Apple TV+'s biggest shows and how music helps to tell the story. It's a fascinating read indeed.
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