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, Paramount's mountain, Warner Bros' shield, MGM's Leo the Lion, Columbia's Torch Lady, Disney's castle, and TriStar's Pegasus. Logos for smaller companies are sometimes (with tongue-in-cheek) called vanity logos. A movie studio is a controlled environment for the making of a film. ... Production company refers to a company responsible for the development and physical production of a film or television program. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A television movie (also known as a TV film, TV movie, TV-movie, feature-length drama, made-for-TV movie, movie of the week (MOTW or MOW), single drama, telemovie, telefilm, or two-hour-long drama) is a film that is produced for and originally distributed by a television network. ... Fox Plaza, the company headquarters. ... The current Universal Studios logo Universal Studios (sometimes called Universal Pictures or Universal City Studios), a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is one of the major American film studios that has production studios and offices located at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California, an unincorporated area of Los... Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. ... The WB Shield, used from 2001 to late 2003. ... A shield is a protective device, meant to intercept attacks. ... For alternate meanings of MGM, see MGM (disambiguation). ... Leo the Lion (1957 - present) in the MGM logo. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Walt Disney Pictures is an American movie studio, with off-shoot studios in Japan and other sites in the United States. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Pegasus and Bellerophon, Attic red-figure In Greek mythology, Pegasus (Greek name: ) was a winged horse that was the son of Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and the Gorgon Medusa. ...

Unlike logos for most other media, production logos can take advantage of motion and synchronized sound, and almost always do. Motion involves change in position, such as this perspective of rapidly leaving Yongsan Station In physics, motion means a continuous change in the position of a body relative to a reference point, as measured by a particular observer in a particular frame of reference. ... A sound film (or talkie) is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent movie. ...

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 (often claimed to be Utah's Ben Lomond 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. ... Printing is an industrial process for reproducing copies of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. ... In motion pictures, an intertitle is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i. ... In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgement of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense. ... Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. ... Ben Lomond Peak near Ogden, Utah is probably the most famous of the northern Wasatch peaks. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into articles entitled Sound, Sound pressure and Sound pressure level, accessible from a disambiguation page. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The current Universal Studios logo Universal Studios (sometimes called Universal Pictures or Universal City Studios), a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is one of the major American film studios that has production studios and offices located at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California, an unincorporated area of Los... A globe This article is on a planet-representation device. ... The classic logo of RKO Radio Pictures. ... The Eiffel Tower Fire-observation watchtower in Kostroma, Russia. ... 1922 Chart of the Morse Code Letters and Numerals Morse code is a method for transmitting information, using standardized sequences of short and long marks or pulses — commonly known as dots and dashes — for the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a message. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Twentieth Century Pictures was a Hollywood motion picture production company created in 1932 by Joseph Schenck, the former president of United Artists, Darryl F. Zanuck from Warner Brothers, and William Goetz from Fox Films. ... Edisons classical searchlight cart. ... The Fox Film Corporation was an American company which produced motion pictures, formed in 1915 when founder William Fox merged two companies he had established in 1913: Greater New York Film Rental, a distribution firm, which was part of the Independents; and Fox (or Box, depending on the source) Office... Sparklers are popular fireworks for children. ...

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. The 1950s was the decade spanning from the 1st of January, 1950 to the 31st December, 1959. ... Traditional animation, sometimes also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation, is the oldest and historically the most popular form of animation. ... Desilu Productions was a company jointly owned by American actors Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. ... Mark VII Limited was Jack Webbs TV production company that existed from 1951 to 1979. ... Revue Studios was founded in 1943 by MCA to produce live shows. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... Look up universal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Note: broadcasting is also the old term for hand sowing. ... Scanimate is the name for an analog computer animation system developed from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. ...

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. WGBH still uses variants of its "Flash of Doom" logo introduced in 1978. Electronic music is a term for music created using electronic devices. ... Black square by Kazimir Malevich Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses color and form in a non-representational or subjective way. ... An analog synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog computer techniques to generate sound electronically. ... Screen Gems is an American subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainments Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation. ... Viacom (NYSE: VIA) (NYSE: VIAb) is an American media conglomerate with various worldwide interests in cable and satellite television networks (MTV Networks and BET), and movie production and distribution (the Paramount Pictures movie studio and DreamWorks). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The following is a summary of media conglomerate Viacoms closing logos. ... WGBH is an established public television and public radio broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. ...

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). Warner Bros. ... Matte or matt can be used to describe a non-glossy finish on a surface; it can also be used to denote the surface surrounding a framed picture, between the picture itself and the frame; usually made from coloured card. ... 2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models (such as 2D geometric models, text, and digital images) and by techniques specific to them. ... A 3D rendering with raytracing and ambient occlusion using Blender and Yafray 3D computer graphics are works of graphic art that were created with the aid of digital computers and specialized 3D software. ... This article is about the year. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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. 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mutant Enemy is the name of the television production company set up by Joss Whedon to oversee production of his television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and later Firefly. ... Before the camcorder. ... Piece of Letter paper Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and to a large degree by fiber entanglement. ... South Park is a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning American animated television series about four fourth grade school boys who live in the small town of South Park, Colorado. ... One of many different airplane livery designs of Braniff International Airlines. ... Namcos Pac-Man was a hit, and became a cultural phenomenon. ... The Nintendo GameCube is an example of a popular video game console. ... Sega Corporation ) is an international video game software and hardware developing company, and a former home computer and console manufacturer. ... The original PlayStation was produced in a light grey colour; the more recent PSOne redesign sports a smaller more rounded case. ... In computing, firmware is software that is embedded in a hardware device. ...

External links

• You’re so vain: TV vanity cards (MSNBC)