One of the most important shots of a film is the first.
That first shot sets up the story.
It creates the mood, and introduces us to the world we’re stepping into.
Or even its vast universe.
Sometimes the first shot
will be a clue to a puzzle film,
or it’ll match almost exactly the final shot.
But the thing about the first shot
is that it’s never the first.
Well, Peter, the movie’s already begun.
The first shot of a film
belongs to the production companies and distributors.
If that might sound boring,
you must remember that a great film company logo can set up a story
create a mood, introduce us to the world we’re stepping into,
or even its vast universe.
Sometimes the company logo will be a clue to a puzzle film...
...You get the idea.
If designing a logo was a recipe, you could easily work out the key ingredients
by looking at the emblems that endure to this day and draw conclusions
based on the characteristics they share.
A good place to start is our own planet.
Now, if a logo needs to be more specific than a celestial body orbiting a star,
a mountain is a solid choice.
And if you’re feeling adventurous, you can add an extra spark with fireworks,
or perhaps their natural counterpart, lightning.
Animals lend their ferociousness to some of the most
memorable company logos in film history.
But not all animal logos were created equal.
While Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Leo the Lion is still the king of the film logo jungle...
(Ugh, Jesus...)
...other animal logos have failed to leave their mark.
[Fart noise]
Elsewhere there are winged horses,
regular horses,
tigers,
donkeys
and every sort of bird you can imagine.
An Olive Branch goes so far as to include a fish, a bird and a worm.
One logo, three animals.
A more obvious choice is the universal signifier for movie making,
the classic film stock with sprocket holes.
Film stock can be accompanied to great effect
by the whirring of a projector.
Another film specific element is the cogwheel.
And like you can see here, most studio logos
can be accompanied by a cloudy backdrop.
And you can’t escape those often physics-defying light sources.
If making a great logo was an exact science, the best ever would be
the production company behind the Best Foreign Language Film of 1991.
Check, Check, check, and check.
Fortunately, that’s not the case.
Memorable logos sometimes come from outside-the-box thinking.
And you can’t get much further from the box than a middle-aged man
accompanied by circus music, party hats, high heels, a thong and a juggling toddler.
Sometimes it’s sound that makes a logo great.
George Lucas knew he’d made it
when his company logo showed up in a Simpsons episode.
“Turn it up! Turn it up!”
But whether it features clowns, lions or mountains,
what sets apart a memorable film company logo
is its ability to evolve without losing its identity.
In the design world, it’s quite common for a company to go through a complete visual overhaul,
from car manufacturers to drinks companies to electronics.
But MGM, Warner Bros, Universal, Paramount...
each has undergone only slight modifications.
Legend tells that W.W. Hodkinson drew Paramount’s timeless combination
of mountain with a cloudy backdrop on a napkin.
One hundred years later, the studio retains that core identity.
An even better example is this design by Emil Kosa Jr, created in 1933.
The Czech painter was brought on to work on a new emblem following the merger
of 20th Century Pictures and Fox Film Corporation.
The same year Alfred Newman composed the iconic fanfare
of percussion and brass that accompanies the logo.
Bar some adjustments in colour, texture and lighting,
and these few extra seconds,
which were added to the score in 1953 for Cinemascope,
the logo has remained practically the same for almost 90 years.
(Well, that is until recently...)
Matt Groening was the first to convince the company to drastically change its logo for Futurama.
At first, Fox denied his request, so Groening funded the animation himself.
When it was done, he showed it to the studio and they finally yielded.
P.S. They gave him back his money.
[“Shut up and take my money!”]
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Columbia.
Unlike Fox, Columbia has never taken its logo too seriously.
They’ve even gone so far as to allow filmmakers to violently denigrate their trademark,
as seen in Straight Jacket from 1964,
about a woman who has spent 20 years in a psychiatric hospital
for decapitating her husband with an axe.
We also have the hilarious The Mouse That Roared,
which took it four limbs further.
But there’s a middle ground between Fox and Columbia.
It’s Paramount for a logo to adapt while also maintaining its identity.
There are a number of great examples.
Like the Universal logo in the video game-inspired Scott Pilgrim vs The World,
as well as Walt Disney’s sequel to Tron and DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda.
You need only to watch the animation to Wall-E’s Pixar logo
to learn everything you need to know about our robot protagonist.
The Caravan Pictures logo is the best thing about 1999’s Inspector Gadget.
[Sings Inspector Gadget theme music]
[Clears throat]
We can’t forget the films which incorporate their production company logo
within the fabric of the film, using them to smoothly segue from the credits
into the beginning of the narrative.
A great example is 2005’s Serenity,
as well as the balls-to-the-wall match dissolve in Van Helsing.
But my personal favourite is another dissolve,
this one playing beautifully with the scale of Paramount Pictures’ logo.
We’re getting off track.
Let’s Focus.
While it might be fun to Marvel at these motifs,
they can sometimes be distracting.
Too concerned with being Legendary,
instead of just setting the tone for the Screen Gems you’ve sat down to watch.
The company that best walks this tightrope is Warner Bros.
Yet another company that seems to have gone crazy
the past couple of weeks and is trying to destroy...
[Sighs]
For the longest time, Warner Bros has encouraged filmmakers
to tailor its logo to individual films.
It’s a tradition dating back to the heyday of classical Hollywood
with The Adventures of Robin Hood.
In the Harry Potter series, the logo gets progressively darker with each film
as the story veers away from the christmassy sanctuary of Hogwarts
in a seamless integration of logo and storytelling.
There’s over 200 variants of the Warner Bros logo.
Among them: the green-tinted hues for The Matrix;
the buttons dropping in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button;
the hand drawings of Where The Wild Things Are;
the Legos in The Lego Movie.
Yet for the most part,
these playful iterations manage to keep the integrity of the original logo
The biggest departure came in 1972 with Saul Bass’ red-and-black design,
which was used until 1984 and has recently been revived by films like Argo,
Magic Mike and Joker.
This phenomenon is perhaps the key to why you remember certain logos
and forget others.
And it’s not a new one.
1965’s Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
(a solid title)
used 20th Century Fox’s 1935 black-and-white logo.
My guess as to why director Ken Annakin
(solid name)
went with a 30-year-old logo is two-fold.
First, the obvious reason: to set-up the film as a period piece,
as in the 1970s-set Zodiac, with these two old-timey logos,
or the period crime caper The Nice Guys.
The second reason explains why certain logos become ingrained in our minds:
Nostalgia.
When Steven Soderbergh was asked why the present-day Magic Mike
opened with Saul Bass’ design, he said:
The logos that remain with us are the ones from our past,
those 10 or 20 seconds of film are burned into our memories at a young age.
So, if you tell me your favourite logos, I bet I can tell you your favourite films.