Vanity Plate

A vanity plate is a logo used by movie studios and television production companies to brand what they produce. Vanity plates 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 vanity plates have become famous over the years, such as the 20th Century Fox's searchlights, Anchor Bay's sailboat, Desilu Productions merging circles,Lorimar's Line of Doom, Universal Studios' globe, Paramount Pictures's mountain, The Weinstein Company's flashlights, Warner Bros.' shield, Lionsgate Entertainment's gate/lion, MGM's Leo the Lion, Columbia's Torch Lady, Nordisk Film's polar bear, the architectural style of Sleeping Beauty Castle and Cinderella Castle for Walt Disney Pictures, TriStar's Pegasus, MTM's Mimsie the Cat, Screen Gems' S from Heaven, United Artists' UA letters (and the Transamerica "T" in the 1970s),Viacom's V of Doom and Orion Pictures' constellation. Logos for smaller companies are sometimes informally referred to as "vanity cards", "vanity logos" or "vogos".

Unlike logos for most other media, vanity plates can take advantage of motion and synchronized sound, and almost always do.

History

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. The Paramount Pictures mountain 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 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.

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.

PBS logo seen at the end of its programs from October 4, 1971 to September 30, 1984

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 computerised (the mountain backdrop is a model). 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.

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 and unrestricted essay or observation in small type which changes each week and requires pausing with a recording device to read. Even video games have taken on production logos as their capabilities have increased, and most modern game consoles (notably Sega's models and the PlayStation series) have startup logos in their firmware. As well as the games themselves having (sometimes elaborate) startup logos, of the companies that produce the games as well as the ones who develop them.

"Scary" logos

Among enthusiasts of closing logos, a peculiar recurring theme is that some logos are perceived to be unsettling or frightening. This can be due to their brevity, crude logo animation, overly flat geometric designs, and/or loud or dissonant musical themes. "Scary" logos seem to have been more prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, when simple cel animation and analog synthesizers were commonly employed to produce logos. Classic scary logos include those for Viacom (aka "the V of Doom"), PBS, ITC Entertainment, Screen Gems (aka "the S from Hell") and Paramount Television (aka "the Closet Killer"). Many believe the logo for VID is among the scariest.

See also

• Opening credits
• Closing credits
• Billing

External links

• CLG Wiki – a Wiki directory of closing logos
• You’re so vain: TV vanity cards (MSNBC)