Studio & Distributor Logos

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Jonathan S
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Studio & Distributor Logos

#1 Post by Jonathan S » Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:22 am

david hare wrote:
Jonathan S wrote:Just to complete the specs, the French-language Optimum UK DVD of Tristana is 1.66:1 anamorphic, and mono.
Does it open with the (Second most recent) floating clouds tweeting birds Canal logo?
The Canal logo is the one with floating clouds and beginning with a noise like someone retching, then loud melodramatic/horror music, then tweeting. Probably the DVD brand logo I hate most (and it's unskippably included twice!) along with Universal's fanfare and drumbeating, though I dislike all non-silent logos, including MoC's whirring and twittering. I have to switch off the volume as soon as I start a disc...

Optimum's Tristana artwork is copyrighted 2006, if that helps.

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manicsounds
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#2 Post by manicsounds » Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:52 pm

Jonathan S wrote:
david hare wrote:
Jonathan S wrote:Just to complete the specs, the French-language Optimum UK DVD of Tristana is 1.66:1 anamorphic, and mono.
Does it open with the (Second most recent) floating clouds tweeting birds Canal logo?
The Canal logo is the one with floating clouds and beginning with a noise like someone retching, then loud melodramatic/horror music, then tweeting. Probably the DVD brand logo I hate most (and it's unskippably included twice!) along with Universal's fanfare and drumbeating, though I dislike all non-silent logos, including MoC's whirring and twittering. I have to switch off the volume as soon as I start a disc...

Optimum's Tristana artwork is copyrighted 2006, if that helps.
Yes, that cloud studiocanal opening is just awful. I'm glad they finally changed it last year. The new opening is great, surprisingly.

peerpee
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#3 Post by peerpee » Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:23 am

Jonathan S wrote:I dislike all non-silent logos, including MoC's whirring and twittering. I have to switch off the volume as soon as I start a disc...
FWIW, I designed the MoC ident in 2004 (which seems an age ago). The idea was to have projector whirr morph into very quiet birdsong as if we're entering a magical dimension each time...

In retrospect, a 3-second still (non-zooming) black and white logo, with no sound whatsoever, would be my preferred choice now. Criterion's is wonderful.

Jonathan S
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#4 Post by Jonathan S » Thu Mar 07, 2013 5:03 am

peerpee wrote:
Jonathan S wrote:I dislike all non-silent logos, including MoC's whirring and twittering. I have to switch off the volume as soon as I start a disc...
FWIW, I designed the MoC ident in 2004 (which seems an age ago). The idea was to have projector whirr morph into very quiet birdsong as if we're entering a magical dimension each time...

In retrospect, a 3-second still (non-zooming) black and white logo, with no sound whatsoever, would be my preferred choice now. Criterion's is wonderful.
I think we agree. The problem (for me) is that even the more pleasant-sounding idents, like MoC's, become irritating after hearing them dozens of times. I find also any kind of sound prior to the beginning of a film detracts from the magic of entering the world of the film itself. A base of silence (or as near as one can ever get to it today) can be very powerful. A looped section of the movie's score played over the menu screen is particularly annoying to me. If I put on a CD of, say, a Beethoven symphony, I wouldn't expect to hear a preview of it before the work itself commences - or some fanfare identifying what I was going to hear as an EMI production or whatever. Of course, studio intros that are part of the original movie are a different matter.

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htshell
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:15 pm

Re: Cohen Film Collection

#5 Post by htshell » Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:15 pm

Interestingly, Criterion have a projector whirr in their Hulu commercial... link

As someone who loves celluloid I think projector noises (similar to reels/sprocket holes in graphic design) are pretty corny in general.

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: Cohen Film Collection

#6 Post by Gregory » Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:26 pm

For me, MoC's intro/logo is so far from the annoying end of the spectrum that I don't mind it a bit. I dislike all the ones that include any kind of flashing lights, "laser" sound effects, explosions, synth music, cheesy fanfares that were supposed to make a company's logo seem really impressive, and so on. I remember this laughably grandiose HBO one from 1983, where we find a huge HBO logo hurtling through space with sparks flying off it, And it went on for almost a minute and a half.
Jonathan S wrote:The Canal logo is the one with floating clouds and beginning with a noise like someone retching, then loud melodramatic/horror music, then tweeting. Probably the DVD brand logo I hate most...
You must mean this one, but I find this one far more grating. What is supposed to be happening? What were they thinking? That first one is really odd too though, the way they put in these brief, quiet little sound effects seemingly at random between about :02 and :11 that one can't quite make out. Distant footsteps and voices or something... it's crazy. Or maybe I am for trying to figure it out.
More often than not, I just leave my receiver turned off until I'm ready to begin the film itself.

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triodelover
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#7 Post by triodelover » Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:51 pm

Gregory wrote:For me, MoC's intro/logo is so far from the annoying end of the spectrum that I don't mind it a bit.
I'll go farther. I actually look forward to it and would miss it if it weren't there. It reminds me of Saturday matinees as a child and the excitement of going to the "picture show". I always expect the Wacky C to do something similar and find the silence disappointing. The rest of 'em, however...

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MichaelB
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#8 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 08, 2013 10:28 am

Gregory wrote:For me, MoC's intro/logo is so far from the annoying end of the spectrum that I don't mind it a bit. I dislike all the ones that include any kind of flashing lights, "laser" sound effects, explosions, synth music, cheesy fanfares that were supposed to make a company's logo seem really impressive, and so on. I remember this laughably grandiose HBO one from 1983, where we find a huge HBO logo hurtling through space with sparks flying off it, And it went on for almost a minute and a half.
A few years ago, I interviewed graphic designer Martin Lambie-Nairn, who revolutionised British TV idents in the 1980s when he came up with the original Channel 4 ident (here), and he said he was highly amused by the number of rivals who clearly thought "wow, computer graphics!" without stopping to think about why his original ident worked so well: it was simple, brief, conceptually coherent (the notion of Channel 4 as a composite of several building blocks, representing various independent production companies) and consequently highly memorable.

By contrast, most of the rivals went on to produce idents that were insanely over-elaborate, flashy and self-consciously "impressive", and completely missed these key points. Lambie-Nairn said that even the fact that he used CGI was completely incidental - he wasn't trying to show off the latest technology for the sake of it, it's just that it was the most effective way of realising the 3-D spinning blocks idea.

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Drucker
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#9 Post by Drucker » Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:44 am

Maybe I'm totally missing the point, but I always got the impression that the purpose of these was to make sure your audio was working correctly (kind of like audio color bars). The MOC whirs in both speakers very nicely and independently of each other.

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Emak-Bakia
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#10 Post by Emak-Bakia » Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:57 am

That's the impression I always had, too, Drucker. I also assumed that Criterion's Wacky C at the start of films is to be used as a final check to be sure that the aspect ratio is set properly on the player and TV (the Wacky C circle being stretched if settings are incorrect.)

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EddieLarkin
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#11 Post by EddieLarkin » Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:11 pm

Also, the motion of the Wacky C as the words pass through it was the first indicator I noticed that my TV had that dreaded 24p Smooth Motion bullshit turned on. As the words hit the C they become blocky and mangled, whilst being perfectly resolved when the smoothing is off.

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RossyG
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#12 Post by RossyG » Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:22 pm

I can tolerate the MoC one.

But the Studio Canal abomination dropped straight from Satan's arse. It doesn't help that they insist it's played at the beginning of everything licensed from them. On Network's Scotland Yard box set it plays once when you load one of the seven discs and every time you play one of the 39 short films.

So that's 46 times in one set. All for films they had absolutely to do with other than buying them decades after the event.

Branding at its most insane: as if people who want these give a fuck whether Canal own them or not. But they'll learn to hate them and their ghastly logo.

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repeat
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#13 Post by repeat » Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:31 pm

Studio Canal takes the cake certainly, but personally I also have an intense hatred for the "ominous/majestic" synth hum/chord/whatever idents, such as the Optimum one (can't think of the others now, but it seems like every other distributor has one of those)

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triodelover
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#14 Post by triodelover » Fri Mar 08, 2013 1:47 pm

If it ever was in doubt, this thread confirms it. There's absolutely nothing we won't bitch about. [-X :)

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TMDaines
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#15 Post by TMDaines » Fri Mar 08, 2013 2:04 pm

triodelover wrote:If it ever was in doubt, this thread confirms it. There's absolutely nothing we won't bitch about. [-X :)
I was thinking the same. Christ, I'll moan about a lot of things, but the MoC logo?! People actually take evasive action to not hear the noise of production companies' idents?
Last edited by TMDaines on Fri Mar 08, 2013 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Jonathan S
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#16 Post by Jonathan S » Fri Mar 08, 2013 3:02 pm

Well, one man's "bitching" is another man's expression of preference! Personally, I can never understand all the fuss on various forums about cover art, which holds no interest whatsoever for me.

Nobody singled out the MoC ident for criticism; in my original post (previously part of another thread) I simply included it as a best-case example to show that I'd prefer silence at the start of all discs, not just the ones with really unpleasant idents. So yes, I do take "evasive action". But since even the man who created the MoC ident says, "in retrospect... no sound whatsoever, would be my preferred choice now" is there any particular need to defend it or be so incredulous that someone might share his current preference?

For me, a brief period of silence before a film (or a musical work, which films often are too) is the aural equivalent of the curtains being pulled back to reveal the image on the screen.

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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#17 Post by Props55 » Fri Mar 08, 2013 3:14 pm

I can take most of these studio/corporate fanfare/logos pretty well given I have a head's up to mute the sound. I can even tolerate the early Studio Canal with the lasers and the weird synth, faux-Morricone vocal exclamations if I'm about to watch something cheesy like CIRCUS OF HORRORS. But by far the most hideous and excruciating precredit horror is that awful anti-piracy "warning" that Fox started using about 2005 which I first noticed about midway into the Fox Noir series. It's all dark greenishblue with flash cuts of what appear to be alleyways full of teenage runaways trading pirated discs in order to support their heroin habit and it's "scored" with what has to be the loudest, most thundering, obnoxiously grinding grunge track ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience for 70 year old library titles. It absolutely drives me homocidal. After hearing it the first time all the way through (failing to circumvent it with the remote and find the tuner control soon enough to mute the volume) I quite literally wanted give the parties responsible a 12-guage colonoscopy. Even now when I come across it "pre-muted" (I'm now familiar with all my Fox titles so affected) my blood-pressure rises if I glimpse the visuals. I believe it was discontinued within a year possibly due to consumer complaints (or death threats) but it remains the single most insultling "fuck you" to the law-abiding, paying consumer ever perpetrated by a major studio.

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zedz
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Re: Cohen Film Collection

#18 Post by zedz » Fri Mar 08, 2013 4:11 pm

MichaelB wrote:By contrast, most of the rivals went on to produce idents that were insanely over-elaborate, flashy and self-consciously "impressive", and completely missed these key points.
I suppose somebody has to be the first person to post this.

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Gregory
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#19 Post by Gregory » Fri Mar 08, 2013 4:54 pm

triodelover wrote:If it ever was in doubt, this thread confirms it. There's absolutely nothing we won't bitch about. [-X :)
I realize you meant this in a spirit of good-natured teasing, but it seems like that was also your response on a couple of occasions recently after some were frustrated to see yellow subtitles rear their ugly heads on a blu-ray of a silent film. A lot of us hate the yellow subtitles and have for a long time, so issues like this will probably continue to come up from time to time. Of course it's trivial in the grand scheme of things—after all, it's a movie discussion forum, where people mainly discuss releases of old films, and technical qualities thereof, rather than the films themselves. You may not agree with a given instance of so-called bitching, but how about a little forbearance? As long as we all try not to be too repetitive? The same exact complaints over and over are what irk me a bit (How 'bout those Twilight Time prices!). [-X :)

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triodelover
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#20 Post by triodelover » Fri Mar 08, 2013 5:28 pm

Gregory,
It was meant as good-natured ribbing. After all, I included myself in the "we". For the record, I don't like yellow subs (but in the the particular case that brought the discussion up, it seemed a bit over the top), nor do I care for the repetitive and loud logo intros. (Remember, I've designed and built all my electronics and I eschew remote circuitry in favor of simplicity, so when I forget and leave the volume too high, I have to bound across the room before my speakers blow.)

I guess what I respond to is that we have this embarrassment of riches at our fingertips in the comfort of our own homes yet in the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something. I like to bitch and whinge as much as the next guy (and being a picky SOB I have a long list covering a variety of subjects I can go on about) but sometimes I do wonder [hyperbole]is anybody actually enjoying watching these things? [/hyperbole]

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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#21 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 08, 2013 5:57 pm

I agree with Props55 about those piracy ads. I usually forget that it starts off with a really loud bang that always surprises me!

I quite liked the modern logo for Gaumont, though that also ends with a strange electronic whine. Presumably Jean Claude Van Damme didn't like the ending either, as he stopped it in its tracks when it played before his film!

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RossyG
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#22 Post by RossyG » Fri Mar 08, 2013 6:11 pm

triodelover wrote:If it ever was in doubt, this thread confirms it. There's absolutely nothing we won't bitch about. [-X :)
Like bitching about other people's bitching.

...which I'm now bitching about.

Shit, I think I've just created a recursive loop.

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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#23 Post by peerpee » Sat Mar 09, 2013 3:04 am

I particularly hate the plinky plonk pointless Warner Bros piano trill ident which sounds like it was created on a digital piano circa 1993.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#24 Post by Cold Bishop » Sat Mar 09, 2013 3:50 am

I'd like to go on record and state that I still wish every Paramount film opened with a funky drum break.

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MichaelB
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Re: Studio & Distributor Logos

#25 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 09, 2013 6:14 am

The Rank ident would be a bit silly if played silently*.

But that's a classic example of the simple-but-effective approach.

(*although it was actually shot silently, with a muscleman banging the gong on camera, but a professional percussionist doing the sonic honours later...)

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