JJ Abrams at TED

I am a TED Head. I love the lec­tures at the TED Con­fer­ence. What began as a small con­fer­ence in Cal­i­for­nia has grown to a global com­mu­nity, many mil­lion strong, focused on exchang­ing and spread­ing ideas. If you have seen some of their lec­tures, please do so, it’s an eye open­ing experience.

Any­one who is inter­ested in com­mu­ni­cat­ing and get­ting peo­ple to pay atten­tion to ways to build sus­pense in your audi­ence should watch JJ Abrams’ (cre­ator of Lost, the New Star Trek, Alias and so on) great lec­ture The Mys­tery Box at the 2007 TED con­fer­ence. For writ­ers, film mak­ers, design­ers or any­one who has to give a pre­sen­ta­tion his ideas on how to get the audi­ence to want more is defi­antly worth check­ing out.

18 Great Film Studio Logo Openings

Going to the cin­ema has always been mag­i­cal for me. Per­haps the The­atre is truly the abode of the divine Diony­sus. As a child, my fam­ily would take my sis­ters, assorted friends and myself to this mag­i­cal cel­lu­loid realm. We would get some pop­corn and wait impa­tiently for the film to begin. Even­tu­ally, I would start play­ing a game, I would squint my eyes slowly to mimic the effect of the lights dim­ming. I would do this over and over, pre­tend­ing the movie was start­ing. I still do this, except, now I keep them shut, mostly so I can ignore the annoy­ing pre-show adver­tise­ments that plague the cin­e­mas like gum under the seats.

Even­tu­ally the lights would actu­ally dim, and (not to sound like a grumpy old man) in my day the cur­tains would part reveal­ing a large white rec­tan­gle where a culture’s dreams, hopes, fears and fan­tasies were pro­jected at 24 frames a sec­ond. But first there were the trail­ers, often times the best part of the movie going expe­ri­ence, then at the cin­e­matic event hori­zon, when the film would actu­ally start, you are treated to the film stu­dio and dis­trib­u­tors iden­ti­fi­ca­tion spot. I love this, when you see the Twen­thy Cen­tury Fox logo with it’s brassy fan­fare it gives me chills. It is impor­tant to note that these often are changed with dif­fer­ent musi­cal and col­oration or spe­cial effects, this helps set the mood for the upcom­ing film. I’ve noted some of these.

Here is a list of some great film stu­dio logo open­ings. I know I’ve left a bunch off, let me know what ones you like.

New Line Cinema

I like the use of the cin­ema logo falling into place with the swelling music.

Para­mount Pic­tures

This is a clas­sic one. I only wish I could find the one for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Mor­gan Creek Productions

I’ve always enjoyed the ani­mated curves on this one.

DNA Films

A newer one, and it shows, that it makes great use of mod­ern com­puter ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er­ing the stu­dio makes hor­ror and intense films it is very fit­ting.

Mar­vel Comics

A very excit­ing one that sets the audi­ence up for a ride. Plus I love designs that harken back to some sort of his­tor­i­cal roots. The use of halftone dots, flip­ping pages and close ups of char­ac­ters and thought bub­bles is fan­tas­tic.

Warner Bros. Pic­tures (matrix variation)

This is one of my favorite ver­sions of a stu­dio logo that aids the style of the film. Com­pare to the Reg­u­lar & Looney Tunes vari­a­tions.

Warner Bros. Pic­tures Reg­u­lar ver­sion (1997):

Com­pare the Matrix Ver­sion to this and you can see how much more effec­tive it was in stet­ting the tone of the film than if they would have used this much more pro­saic ver­sion.

Warner Bros. / Looney Tunes variation

Another great riff on the WB

RKO Radio Pic­tures (1930’s version)

This is a great logo. So disct­inc­tive and telling. It makes me feel so nos­tal­gic for King Kong, and the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, where Dr. Frankenfurther’s mon­ster Rocky climbs up a 35 foot RKO Radio Tower, in heels no less!

Lions Gate Films

I like the Lions Gate Logo because it’s is great to see the Lion’s Gates of Agamemnon’s Palace at Myce­nae live again. Plus I like the clock work that is resides behind the magic of film. It is the most colb­o­rate of the arts, and the ani­mated logo hints at this fact. That the great and pow­er­ful Oz of Hol­ly­wood is a big machine behind the curt­ian. This one is from the hor­ri­ficly bad Saw fran­chise, but it does set the tone.

Lions Gate Films

Com­pare the Saw ver­sion to this nor­mal ver­sion and you can see how the Saw fla­vors the movie with dread from the first frame:

MGM
In a list like this you have to include the famous lion!

MTV Films Logo

A very clever use of the astro­naut and the ima­gry of the movie the­atre.

Pixar
Whimsy that harken’s back to the dawn of Pixar and the com­puter ani­ma­tion rev­o­lu­tion.

Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures (1930’s Version)

The older logos, like RCA & Para­mount are icons.

Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures: a con­tem­po­rary version

This one always seems to get my cin­e­matic juices flow­ing when I see a Uni­ver­sal film. It’s so clas­sicly Hol­ly­wood, using a globe to high­lght the uni­ver­sal lanu­gae of film and the film stu­dios narcissism.

Walt Dis­ney (New Logo)

If any film stu­dio logo open­ing sums up the ideals of a stu­dio bet­ter than this one I can’t think of it. It’s so full of imag­i­na­tion and child like won­der, plus it sells the iconag­ra­phy of the stu­dio like no other. Not only is it an trade­mark for the com­pany, it’s also ad for the theme parks. It is also an homage to Peter Pan; note the third star to the right in the open­ing shot and Hook (or is it Jack Sparrow’s) Pirate ship on the river

Twenty Cen­tury Fox

I’m sav­ing the best for last, maybe because I was such a fan of Star Wars, this will always be the quis­sential movie open­ing for me.

More Faux-Nostalgia

It is very fit­ting that I saw an arti­cle on Boing Boing about a new issue of Steam­punk Mag­a­zine being released after my last post on the work of Bruce McCall. Noth­ing says Faux-Nostalgia like Steam Punk; that is the achingly sen­ti­men­tal yearn­ing for a future that never hap­pened. In case you don’t know Steam­punk is a genre where mod­ern inven­tions like com­put­ers and the infor­ma­tion age hap­pened in the age of Steam, dur­ing the height of the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion. Check it out, it’s a really great magazine.

Lon­don Rooftops, by Raphael-Lacoste

This is a genre that I have liked, mainly because Vic­to­rian Lon­don is such a rich place for the mod­ern imag­i­na­tion to play. From Marry Pop­pins to From Hell the place is a fas­ci­nat­ing place. Coal dark­ened skies cast long shad­ows on cob­ble stone streets lit by flick­er­ing gaslight. Every twist in the street could lead to a knife wield­ing bar­ber or into the com­fort­ing embrace of  the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs, Fidelity Fidu­ciary Bank, only Tup­pence required as entry.

In my imag­i­na­tion Vic­to­rian Lon­don is a place of squalor on one side and great wealth and absurd tra­di­tion on the other. A place on the cusp of moder­nity, where aris­to­crats and plu­to­crats ruled over squalid slums. Not in exces­sive greed, more with exces­sive pomp and a cer­ti­tude of their own right­eous­ness. A time that seemed the sun would never set on the British Empire, then the trenches, artillery and machine guns of Ver­dun wiped that world away in one fell swoop. It was a tragic period in many ways, as the immor­tal works of Dick­ens and Shaw remind us, the dis­tance between us and then is long enough for a bit of roman­ti­cism to flour­ish. And you can read more of that in Steampunk.

• Steam Punk Mag­a­zine Link
• More infor­ma­tion on Steam­punk Link

Nostalgia for a Future that Never Happened: The Work of Bruce McCall

Bruce McCall says in this hilar­i­ous and very inter­est­ing TED pre­sen­ta­tion that Nos­tal­gia is the most utterly use­less human emo­tion. I don’t totally agree but I see the point. Nos­tal­gia if taken to extreme becomes a mild case of depres­sion and self-deception. The past is never as great or as bad as it seems and nor will the future be as won­der­ful or as ter­ri­ble as we can imag­ine. Set­ting that aside, please check out this amaz­ing lec­ture, McCall is a very witty and gifted artist.

I am fas­ci­nated by McCall’s style of art, it touches on many of my pas­sions, sci­ence fic­tion, mid-century design and art that doesn’t take itself too seri­ously. It’s a mix­ture of the low-brow art move­ment with a dash of Nor­man Rock­wel­lesque technique.

Here are the descrip­tions of his made-up but won­der­ful terms, these are things that design­ers and sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers can and should use when it is appro­pri­ate to their work:

• 

  Tomor­row­land Retro-Futurism: from Wikipedia

  Retro-futurism: Look­ing back to see how yes­ter­day saw tomor­row… and they are always hilar­i­ously wrong. Peeked in the 1930’s. Auto­mo­tive retro-futurism is a big com­po­nent of his work, the way the past saw cars look­ing in the future… fins galore!

• Techno-Archaeology: Dig­ging back and find­ing past mir­a­cles that never hap­pened, usu­ally for good rea­son, that is they wouldn’t have worked or been a dis­as­ter… fly­ing cars.
• Faux-Nostalgia: Achingly sen­ti­men­tal yearn­ing for a time that never happened.
• Hyper­bolic Overkill: A way of tak­ing exag­ger­a­tion to the absolute ulti­mate limit just for the fun of it.
• Shame­lessly Cheap: A joke that has no mean­ing but is strangely funny in and of itself.
• Urban-Absurdism: Mak­ing life in New York (and city life in gen­eral) even weirder than it is.

The most impor­tant thing that McCall said about this style of art (and lit­er­a­ture I assume) is that authen­tic­ity adds immea­sur­ably to seri­ous non­sense. That is the world pre­sented in Faux-Nostalgia has to look and feel real. The machin­ery, char­ac­ters, gen­eral look and world have to breathe. In this vein Alan Moore and the many artists he works with do this bet­ter than any one else, to see what I mean check out The League of Extra­or­di­nary Gen­tle­men (though please skip the film). Other things that fall in to this same gen­eral category:

• 

  The world of Bruce McCall

  Check out McCall’s great work, All Meat Looks Like South Amer­ica Link

• The “new” Tom­morow­land at the Dis­ney theme parks. Link
• The once defunct and highly under appre­ci­ated RPG from Game Designer’s Work­shop: Space: 1889 Link
• Bruce McCall’s Web­site Link