Every year, the Newport Beach Film Festival comes back to the coast to host a variety of sessions over the course of a week, playing their selection of the best films from fresh, new filmmakers and holding spotlight sessions on leading creatives in the industry. For Biolans, the festival has been known to be a place to intern and get industry experience or to watch some of the greatest new projects and hear from rising directors.
For the festival’s 25th annual run on Oct. 17-24, 2024, they held an exclusive event mid-week to highlight one of the music industry’s world-renowned artists, Finneas O’Connell. In a spotlight session held in the newly renovated, iconic Lido Theater in Newport, the festival hosted Chris Willman, Variety’s senior music writer and chief music critic, to interview O’Connell about his experiences in being an extremely successful songwriter, singer and producer.
Despite being acclaimed for co-writing and producing albums for his sister Billie Eilish — along with four albums of his own — O’Connell decided to dabble in a few different composing projects for film. O’Connell co-wrote three songs for Pixar’s “Turning Red,” composed an original score for “The Fallout” and B.J. Novak’s “Vengeance” and co-wrote “No Time to Die” for a James Bond film, as well as “What Was I Made For?” for the “Barbie” movie. Breaking into the television realm of composing, O’Connell recently scored the new Apple TV+ show, “Disclaimer,” by Alfonso Cuarón, which was highlighted in a few clips from the show during the session.
Composing for films and television was never a route O’Connell saw himself going down, but he was attracted to the challenges of the craft.
“I’ve always been a big admirer of the film score medium,” O’Connell said.
As Willman asked him questions about his creative process, the challenges of completing projects for albums and immediately moving onto scoring projects, O’Connell emphasized a lot of trial and error in the process of mastering a new medium. He noted his inspiration from famous composers Thomas Newman, Howard Shore and John Williams, who was also honored in another festival session in a documentary film. Composing came with new difficulties that were very different from his usual set of challenges within his projects in the music industry, mostly having to do with producing and co-writing vulnerable tracks for a large audience. His most recent work on Billie Eilish’s widely acclaimed album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” was a great segue, truly showcasing his complex and unique production style for songs with deep topics.
“There are lines in there that were hard for Billie to admit […] and then you give it to the rest of the world and they go, ‘I feel that way too,’” O’Connell said.
Through transitioning his skills in alternative and pop music to the television world, O’Connell earned the Outstanding Achievement in Music Award for his work in “Disclaimer” at his Newport Beach Film Festival composer spotlight session.
Music and film students can find inspiration from O’Connell’s unwillingness to let fear hold him back from trying a new medium.
