Movies - Production logo

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	Movies - Production logo

A production logo is used by movie studios and television production companies to brand what they produce. Production logos are usually seen at the beginning of a theatrical movie (an opening logo), or at the end of a television program or TV movie (a closing logo). Several production logos have become famous over the years, such as the 20th Century Fox Tower, Universal Studios' Globe, MGM's Leo the Lion, and Columbia's Torch Lady. Logos for smaller companies are sometimes (with tongue-in-cheek) called vanity logos.

Unlike logos for most other media, production logos can take advantage of motion and synchronized sound, and almost always do.

History

In the early days of Hollywood, production logos and brands were simple and very much like their print counterparts, usually showing up on title cards and in the opening credits. The Paramount Pictures mountain hails from this era, and featured no special effects at all at first. As the studios grew, more effort was put into their identities, and motion and sound began to be used. MGM and Universal were the first studios to take advantage of the new medium's possibilities, MGM first using Leo the Lion in 1924 and Universal debuting their globe around the same time. RKO Radio Pictures used their rotating globe and radio transmission tower with a Morse code beeping soundtrack as early as 1929. In the 1930s, 20th Century Pictures introduced their futuristic "tower" logo, which had moving searchlights; it was carried over when they merged with Fox Film Corporation and became 20th Century Fox. Columbia's first version of the Torch Lady used a sparkler to represent her torch, and Universal's globes could rotate.

The advent of television in the 1950s also opened the door to cel animation in production logos. Most studios had used cels for their animation department's logos for some time by this point, but the demand for animation on TV, both as programming and for advertising, made more effects available for less money. TV itself started using logos on its programming; Desilu, Mark VII Productions and Revue Studios all had distinctive logotypes by the end of the decade, and Desilu's and Revue's were animated. By 1976, all of the major studios except Universal had switched their logos over to cel animation, and logos for smaller concerns and broadcasters were beginning to enter the computer age, using machines like Scanimate.

One of the consequences of the 1970s move to cel animation and electronic music was the potential for shocking people who were not used to the new school of design. Logos of the era made heavy use of abstract art motifs and music generated by analog synthesizers, creating an unfamiliar look and sound that, while modern, was bombastic and often scared children. Most of the logos fondly (or, for some people, not so fondly) remembered by TV viewers come from this era; examples include the Screen Gems and Viacom logos, dubbed by online logo enthusiasts the "S from Hell" and the "V of Doom," respectively.

With the 1980s came a return to less extreme, more natural-looking logo designs. Warner Bros., one of the first studios to switch to a cel-animated abstract logo, brought back their classic Shield logo as a matte painting in 1984. TV logos began switching from cels and 2D computer graphics to 3D computer graphics around the same time, and by the end of the decade, the quality of 3D animation had improved to the point that cinema quality was possible. For its 75th anniversary in 1990, Universal introduced a new logo that was completely digitally rendered, the first of the major studios to make the move; Paramount had a digital-looking logo earlier, in 1987, but only the foreground animation in their logo was computerised (the mountain backdrop is a model).

As of 2005, almost all production logos are produced (or at least edited) on computers, and have reached a level of sophistication equivalent to that of the best special effects. There are some exceptions; the Mutant Enemy "grr, argh" ID was shot using a camcorder and paper models, and the producers of South Park even recycled footage from an old Braniff Airlines ad for their "vanity" logo. Even video games have taken on production logos as their capabilities have increased, and most modern game consoles (notably Sega's models and the Sony PlayStation series) have startup logos in their firmware.

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