Blog 4: Studio logos
- luhoward
- May 2, 2023
- 3 min read
In the early days of Hollywood, production logos and brands were produced fairly simply, usually put in the title cards and the opening credits. The early Paramount Pictures mountain logo hails featured no special effects at all.
As time developed, more effort was put into their logos, as motion and sound began to be used. MGM and Universal were the first studios to exploit the new technology.
MGM logo: The roaring lion
The first live version of Leo Lion was made by MGM in 1924. Whats funny was the lion Slats did nothing but look around in the logo, making him the only MGM lion not to roar. Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio. Slats was chosen by MGM since 1916, trained by Volney Phifer. There is rumor that Phifer trained the lion to growl on cue, since motion pictures haven't got synchronised sound technology until 1927.
Jackie was the second lion used for the MGM logo and the first MGM lion to audibly roar. He was a wild lion brought from Sudan, and trained by Mel Koontz. Jackie roared three times before fleeing away, recorded four different times after the filming. He appeared on all black-and-white MGM films from 1928 to 1956, replaced the poor Slats who dies only 17 years old.
MGM began experiments with two-strip color short subjects in 1927 and animated cartoons in 1930. Three lions where used to film in this era
The first lion, Bill, was largely considered as the unknown lion. Only a few frames of the logo of bill exist can be found, which is unfortunate.
The second lion, Telly, appeared on color MGM movies between 1928 and 1932, featuring the same roar as Jackie. Coloured version was lost as well.
The third lion, Coffee, who was trained by Mel Koontz, appeared on color films between 1932 and 1934.
In 1934, MGM began producing its first full three-strip Technicolor film, Holland in Tulip Time. need a new lion to replace these outdated openings.
A lion named Tanner was introduced, replacing Telly and Coffee. Tanner was MGM's third longest-lived lion to be used, for a total of 22 years.
His first appeared since 1938, used for a total of 28 years, and the current lion, who has been retained for 66 years. It is this version of the logo that was the most frequently used version throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood, although color did not really become the norm until the 1960s, and even then, many movies were still being made in black-and-white.
Leo, the eighth and current lion, is by far MGM's longest-used, having appeared on most MGM films since 1957. Leo was purchased from animal dealer Henry Trefflich, and trained by Ralph Helfer. In addition to being used as the MGM lion, Leo also appeared in other productions such as the religious epic King of Kings.
Grabbing a bunch of lions and film since a bit crazy for me, especially when MGM uses lion as their logos until now. But the lion does form a symbol for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All the tom and jerry cartoons where all produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The reason why MGM chooses to film so many lions was because of the Iterative technology. The evolution from two-stripe colour to three-stripe, and until full RGB films appeared didn't took long. You always have to keep your opening visual updated as this is what audiences remember you.
The cultural code of lion is usually bravery. You can see the bright gold strips around it. Yellow represent happiness, which implies that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produces happy films. The fact that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced Tom and Jerry, James bond, and Pink panther did approved this point at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talks about fun and entertainment.
Now it's time to show our own logos
THIS IS RIDICULOUS
From the design there's an obvious parody from the design of 老干妈 which is a spicy sauce popular in north region of China.
This fit to our genre as we produce Comedy.
Comments