Sound designers make BBC Euros trailer 'big and powerful'

The sound designers behind the "arcade noise" in the BBC's Euro 2024 trailer have said they hope their work will see it remembered as the "pinball year".

BBC Creative's trail, which is visually based on a football-themed pinball machine and soundtracked by rock band Nothing But Thieves, has been underpinned by sound design by GAS Music

The Salford firm, which was Bafta-nominated for its work on BBC's 2022 Winter Olympics theme, spent about 50 hours adding the arcade effects to the short film.

Creative director Greg Owens said their work showed music was "not always the star of the show".

TV title sequences have become an important part of major football events in the last few decades, coming to the fore in 1990, when Luciano Pavarotti's version of Nessun Dorma soundtracked the BBC's World Cup coverage.

• How to follow Uefa Euro 2024 on the BBC

GAS Music managing director Gary Hilton said such sequences had become "iconic" and he hoped the latest one would eventually be thought about in the same way.

"I would vouch that the same level of work, if not more, goes into every one of them," he said.

He added that being asked to be involved with the trailer was "quite humbling".

"A lot of the time, a lot of this work's done in London and what we're trying to do is fly the flag for this great Northern empire," he said.

Senior producer Aaron Bentley said as the art direction and the visuals of the trailer were "so important, we wanted to make sure the sound complemented that".

"We wanted to make sure it felt immersive and like you were travelling through the [pinball] machine," he said.

He said under an instrumental version of Nothing But Thieves's Welcome To The DCC, the firm had added "so many different layers" of audio, including "plasticky sounds to make it feel more like a pinball machine" and "arcade noise" to invoke memories of 1980s video games.

"It makes it feel big and powerful," he added.

Mr Owens said the end product showed that music was "not always the star of the show".

"It gets plenty of time to be that, but I think we'll be remembering in the future 2024 was the pinball year for the Euros," he added.

BBC Creative's executive creative director Rasmus Smith Bech said the 40-second film, which was based on bespoke 2D illustrations from Spanish illustrator Kristina Doraura, summed up the tournament brilliantly.

“With all its action, emotion and unexpected previous winners, the Euros is more unpredictable than most international tournaments," he said.

"A giant, mad Euros pinball machine felt like the appropriate canvas to bring that beautiful excitement to life."