Production logo

Paramount mountain logo, c.1940

In the early days of Hollywood, production logos and brands were simple and very much like their print counterparts, usually appearing on title cards and in the opening credits.^[1] The Paramount Pictures mountain logo hails from this era and originally featured no special effects. 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, adapted from Goldwyn Pictures, 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.^[2] In the 1930s, Twentieth Century Pictures introduced their futuristic "tower" logo, which had moving searchlights; it was carried over when they merged with Fox Film Corporation in 1935 and became 20th Century-Fox. The first version of Columbia's mascot used a sparkler to represent her torch, and Universal's globes could rotate.

The live-action lion mascot of Goldwyn Pictures from 1917, later Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)

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 departments' 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.

With the 1980s came a return to the older style of logos. Warner Bros., one of the first studios to switch to a cel-animated abstract logo, brought back their WB 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. Paramount had introduced a digital-looking logo in late 1986, but only the foreground animation in their logo was computerized (the mountain backdrop was originally commissioned as a painting by the company, then a physical model made for the finished version). Universal's 1990 logo, introduced for its 75th anniversary, was pre-visualized with CG, but the actual logo was created using motion-control models. Throughout the 1990s, fully computer-generated logos increased in frequency. Disney and MGM were two of the last major studios to re-design their logos with computer animation; Disney debuted the 3D rendition of its castle logo with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest in 2006,^[3] while MGM touched up its 1957 logo in 2012,^[4] before switching to a completely computer-animated rendition by 2021.^[5] Photorealistic CGI was also used in production logos, beginning with Warner Bros.' updated logo in 2021, which shows a realistic rendering of its studio lot including the iconic water tower.^[6]

By 2007, almost all production logos have become produced (or 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. Producer Chuck Lorre uses his production card to post a long essay or observation in small type which changes each week and requires pausing with a recording device to read.^[7]

Video games have taken on production logos as their capabilities have increased, and most modern game consoles have startup logos in their firmware. In addition, games themselves now feature (sometimes elaborate) startup logos of both the companies that produce the games as well as the ones who develop them. Video game startup logos also frequently feature the logos of game engines or other middleware used in the games. As with films, the production logos are also used in trailers and commercials for the video games.

Many automobile manufacturers also use startup logos for their in car entertainment systems.

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Credit (creative arts)

Credit (creative arts)

In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgment of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global. It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924, and based in Beverly Hills, California.

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures is an American film production and distribution company owned by Comcast through the NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment division of NBCUniversal.

Leo the Lion (MGM)

Leo the Lion (MGM)

Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures, featured in the studio's production logo, which was created by the Paramount Pictures art director Lionel S. Reiss.

Morse code

Morse code

Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph.

Twentieth Century Pictures

Twentieth Century Pictures

Twentieth Century Pictures, Inc. was an independent Hollywood motion picture production company created in 1933 by Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck from Warner Bros. Financial backing came from Schenck's younger brother Nicholas Schenck, president of Loew's, the theater chain that owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who wanted a position for his son-in-law, William Goetz, Bank of America and Herbert J. Yates owner of the film processing laboratory Consolidated Film Industries, who later founded Republic Pictures Corporation in 1935. . The company product was distributed by United Artists (UA), and leased space at Samuel Goldwyn Studios.

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony.

Mark VII Limited

Mark VII Limited

Mark VII Limited was the production company of actor and filmmaker Jack Webb, and was active from 1951 to his death in 1982. Many of its series were produced in association with Universal Television; most of them aired on the NBC television network in the U.S. Coincidentally, NBC and Universal are today part of the same company.

Broadcasting

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum, in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began with AM radio, which came into popular use around 1920 with the spread of vacuum tube radio transmitters and receivers. Before this, most implementations of electronic communication were one-to-one, with the message intended for a single recipient. The term broadcasting evolved from its use as the agricultural method of sowing seeds in a field by casting them broadly about. It was later adopted for describing the widespread distribution of information by printed materials or by telegraph. Examples applying it to "one-to-many" radio transmissions of an individual station to multiple listeners appeared as early as 1898.

Scanimate

Scanimate

Scanimate is an analog computer animation system developed from the late 1960s to the 1980s by Computer Image Corporation of Denver, Colorado.

Matte painting

Matte painting

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