Sky Atlantic Idents

Sky Atlantic is Sky's home for its biggest, most cinematic drama, so the sound had to carry that weight without slipping into trailer-music cliché. The harder part was the picture. The new ident is built on a twisting, morphing animation, and the music couldn't just sit under it. It had to move with it, catching the turns so sound and image read as one thing rather than two.

The core is a solo violin, played by John Mills. We wanted something expressive and intimate rather than the scale of a full orchestra: one instrument, close enough that you can hear the bow on the string. Mills is a virtuoso who's credits include sThe Batman, Thor: Love and Thunder and Disney's live-action Little Mermaid & Knives Out. This is the opposite of anything produced from a keyboard or a sample library. From there the work was in the sync, shaping the phrasing so the violin follows every twist of the animation, landing on the movement rather than sitting beneath it. Sound design underneath gives the motion its weight, so the ident feels physical and not just scored.