Netflix’s “thin thin” sound that plays before an original movie is fairly well known, but to spice it up a bit for movies that get theatrical releases, the streamer has partnered with composer Hans Zimmer.
The sound, which can be heard in the video below, does not have much in common with the short “ta-dum” sound that I am used to hearing. It’s, well, incredible Hans Zimmer; orchestral, intense, loud. The “ta-dum”, as it existed on Netflix, was too short for theaters, and the company knew it would take a little longer to play in theaters. Netflix’s brand design lead Tanya Kumar told Dallas Taylor, creator and host of the Twenty thousand Hertz podcast, that Netflix knew how to work with someone who had deep ties to cinema, but in the past also worked with Netflix. Enter Zimmer.
The Netflix “ta-dum” soundtrack is one of the loudest grits, but does not work so well in a theater because it is only 3 seconds long.
That Netflix commissioned Hans Zimmer to expand it to theaters and … it’s … so … good.pic.twitter.com/RGw26vCAGY
– Siqi Chen (@blader) August 9, 2020
Zimmer worked with Netflix The crown, and the score has a “simplicity and elegance that we thought was perfect to bring into our market as well,” Kumar said. The challenge was to find a way to keep Netflix’s “to-stupid” audio, but to make it bigger and much more cinematic, Taylor explained.
The goal was to make Zimmer’s version better, more intense – something people might expect to hear in a theater. Think of the iconic THX siren as the fanfare of the 20th century. All of this had to be done in a way that explicitly made Netflix feel, and, somehow, contrary to the intent of the team with the original “ta-dum” that had to be short.
“First off, and probably most importantly, it had to be really short,” said Todd Yellin, vice president of product at Netflix. “In our age of clicking and playing, you come to Netflix, you want to be able to click, and there’s no patience, you just want to get to what you’re watching.”
Considering Netflix’s ‘ta-dum’ that was launched just five years ago in 2015, it’s kind of wild to see how much it’s changed because Netflix is adapting to the industry in which it is . Netflix movies a few years ago did not even go to theaters, really, but now the studio spends time every year to ensure that its Oscar hopefuls get some time to play on the big screen.
