Every movie starts not with its title but with the introduction clip(s) of movie studio instead, which I bet all movie-goers could take that few seconds to enjoy the creative, memorable, and inspiring logos. Maybe it’s not just me who always feel excited to guess ‘What studio is it?’ when those opening trademarks start flying into the screen 😀 While Spyglass, Lakeshore, New Line Cinema look unique and easy to recognize; the jumping lamp of Pixar is indeed so cute; and the lightning logo of Icons, Dark Castle will associate with horror films, the colorful logo of Marvey scans through their all-times-famous heroes; the logos of WaltDisney, DreamWorks are very lovely; the logo of THX will have special hum in background … Believe it or not, behind each of those logos you saw lies a story, some are WoW trivia 🙂
So far I haven’t come across any post containing many movie studio logos, hence I decided to collect and post myself. I’ve spent my day collecting those famous logos below; their stories will be updated in time, if any. For now let’s scroll down to meet the eyes Hope the curiosty could lead you to dig more on their incredible histories behind.
20th Century Fox: the Searchlight
DC Comics: DC = Detective Comics
Columbia Pictures: the Torch Lady – did anyone ever wonder who is this goddess ❓
Columbia Tristar Entertainment: I favor Tristar the day I saw Legends of the Fall, even I admit the logo looks a bit lame
Dimension Films
Digital Factory
DreamWorks SGK: Boy on the Crescent Moon – any Vietnamese feel familiar yet 😀 Indeed SGK stands for names of 3 founders of DreamWorks: Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. And the fishing boy is William, son of Robert Hunt – who painted the logo 🙂
Focus Features
Hollywood Pictures: a blue moon glows then reveals the famous Egyptian sphinx.
Lionsgate
Jerry Bruckheimer Films: this trademark associates with good action movies like: Armagenddon, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Pirates of the Caribbean, King Arthur …
LucasFilm
Europa Corp: if you forgot the last time you saw this angel, try Transporter 3 as an example.
Studio Canal
MGM: Leo the Lion. You might want to know that MGM has changed its logo several times since 1916, each featured a different lion namely Slats, Jackie, Tanner, and Leo (from 1957 till now). And the slogan “Ars Gratia Artis” means “Art for Art’s Sake” ^^
Miramax Films
New Line Cinema
Overture Films: an example product from Overture is Traitor – an amazing film about Muslim world, I got inspired from this movie and almost at the same time I was reading From Beirut to Zerusalem (by Thomas Friedman), there will be a post on that topic, just not today 😛
Paramount: the Majestic Mountain with 22 stars representing company’s 22 offices across the U.S.
Paramount Vantage
Working Title
Sony Pictures Classic
Pathé
Pixar: once owned by Steve Jobs – my Apple’s legend. Pixar always sinks my heart with their animated short films 😀
Buena Vista International: as much as the logo appears boring to us, its product doesn’t. The Live Of Others (2007) – Oscar Winner for International Films – is worth a mention.
Spyglass Entertainment
Castle Rock Entertainment: it’s been a while we haven’t seen Castle Rock logo around, with the light house and the sun’s rising … This studio rolled out the best movie of all times – The Shawshank Redemption 😡
Warner Independent Pictures: interestingly enough, Warner Independent was the studio produced Slumdog Millionaire (co-production with Pathé, Celador Films and FilmFour). But then the studio was closed, hence the movie sold to Fox Searchlight Pictures before making it way to 2009 Oscar Winner of Best Picture ❗
Warner Bros Pictures: the WB shield
The Weinstein Company: check out Awake (2007) film then you will meet this trademark, that one is highly recommended 7.5/10 movie 😀
WaltDisney Pictures: the castle in dream, still
Village Roadshow Pictures
Universal: light spreads all over the Earth. The logo reminds me of the story I heard about Pizza Hut wanted to advertise on the Moon ❗ they dream to make a giant banner on the Moon so that on full moon day, everyone on Eearth could eventually look up and see Pizza Hut from the Moon 😆
Touchstone Pictures
Ah I should not forget to mention, in order to stress the movie’s tone, nowadays Hollywood tend to tune the opening logos a bit. In fact many of them became even more impressive with adaptive transitions. You could recall how they employ the storm effect in Harry Potter, or distruction effect in Terminator 4: Salvation, or racing engine bumping in Death Race, or BW filter in V for Vendetta and so on.
*****
LucasFilm was established by George Lucas, the father of LucasArts, Indiana Jones, Star Wars… and being operated by Micheline Chau, a Singaporean woman..
Wow, a Singaporean owns LucasFilm – rare thing happens 😀 Will we see ‘I not stupid III’ from Lucas any year down the line ?!
Last year I lead the effort to restore the historic MGM logo to the pristine state this icon so richly deserves. While the over all look is the same, very subtle changes were made. The most obvious is that we dropped the “www” from our URL. Secondly we changed the mask to gold, dropping the red/black one. One subtle change is that when Leo turns his head, the tips of his right ear (screen left) crosses in front of the film loop, instead of behind. The color and texture of the various elements were also adjusted. However we used the same exact lion, Leo, who has been on the logo since 1957.
If the author of this piece would like further information, I can be contacted at MGM.
@ Ed Vigdor: when posting this article, I knew there will be wow story behind each logo. Now I know MGM’s one is even double wow. Your latest logo in gold theme is undoubtly the best one, the visual is rich and I, as an audience, feel more ‘comfortable’ than looking at the BW one. It’s great to know you lead the team in remaking that ^^
Thank you for dropping by and share the details 🙂
Toàn tiếng Anh chẳng hỉu j 😀
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You forget Legendary Pictures, Summit Entertainmet and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Very interesting post thank you for sharing I have added your site to my favorites and will be back.
To tell the truth, I am speechless. The Shawshank Redemption is exceptional. I’am quite young movie fanatic, in point of fact, this film came out whenI was very young, and thence I am to a greater extent accustomed films with unbelievable special effects, edge-of-your-seat action, et cetera. This film has no of that, and yet, it appeals me really much . Way Frank Darabont applies the story of Red to drive on the story, the beauty of the soundtrack applied (note the harmonica used merely before Red finding the letter at the end). The entire film, from start to closing, from actions to music, is a lighthouse of desire, judgement, and redemption. The cast is pure, Morgan Freeman(Red) actually brings about a refreshing feel to the story, and that is precisely what the movie is, what a movie should be. Really recommended for each film fan.
công nhận khó hiểu ^^
tôi rất thích xem phim của những hãng phim có logo trên, tuy nhiên tôi không có nhiều thời gian lắm
I love movie so much!, That’s interesting