Sky Cinema Idents
Client: SATV Music/Sky Creative
Roles: Music Composition
Category: Idents
Year: 2018
Molecular Sound composed the theme for the Sky Cinema idents, working with Sky Creative and the design studio The Mill. It was recorded with an 80-piece orchestra, the City of Prague Philharmonic, and a 20-piece choir, London Contemporary Voices, and built to capture the moment the lights go down and the film is about to start. It has fronted Sky Cinema since 2018 and is still on air. Composed by Dave Connolly.
The Brief
In 2016 Sky rebranded its film channels as Sky Cinema, and it needed a set of idents to match. The job for the music was a big one: catch the exact moment the lights go down and the film is about to start, that lift of anticipation, and do it at the scale of the movies themselves. Epic and cinematic, drawing on the history of film music.
How We Made It
There was only one way to get the scale this needed, which was to record it properly. We wrote the theme for an 80-piece orchestra, the City of Prague Philharmonic, with a 20-piece choir, London Contemporary Voices, on top. No samples standing in for the real thing.
We developed it hand in hand with The Mill, whose visuals the idents are built on. That meant a lot of edits, the score and the picture growing together rather than one being finished and handed over to the other, so music and image hit their peaks in the same moment.
The whole thing builds, and it lands on a three-note motif right at the end. That is the signature: the part that tells you, in three notes, that you're watching Sky Cinema.
Deliverables
The main hero theme is only the start of it. From that we built a large family of versions, different lengths and edits for different moments, right through to a dedicated Sky Cinema Disney theme. One identity, cut to fit everywhere the channel needs it. The three-note motif runs through all of them, the fixed signature that carries across every version.
Listen
The idents have fronted Sky Cinema since 2018, and they are still on air. For a channel identity, that longevity is the result: years of one consistent sound, rather than a rebrand every couple of seasons. And the channel it opens is the biggest dedicated movie subscription service in Europe, running a new premiere every day.
