The story behind Hollywood's all-powerful studio logos as Netflix, streaming services force change
They're synonymous with some of our most memorable moments in film.
The lights go down, conversations recede to the sounds of opening confectionary wrappers and a logo familiar to theatre audiences for more than 100 years appears loud and proud on the screen.
Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros (WB), Disney, and 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox) — some of these production logos have been around since the 1910s to 30s, reflecting both the dominance of Hollywood and, in more recent times, its acquiescence to streaming.
University of Sydney Film Studies associate professor Bruce Isaacs said the early classical Hollywood studios had a very "strong sense of themselves as a brand in the movies", ensuring their logo took pride of place during a screening.
"Cinema was bigger overseas in Europe before it was as big in America, so this was a way of identifying how big the cinema could be," Dr Isaacs said.
He said the early so-called big five studios, which included Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), RKO, as well Paramount, WB, and 20th Century Fox, functioned "like oligarchies".
Loading...They made the films and determined the branding, the marketing, promotion, audience outreach, and owned the cinemas as well — unlike in Europe where studios tended to just be places where companies made their films.
"The American studio system for me is the uber-capitalist symbol because it takes a big company that then connects it to things like culture," Dr Isaacs said.
"Culture becomes a commodity and an industry in Hollywood, much more so than in Europe."
Enforced change
Flinders University associate professor Mike Walsh said their "equity ownership in every stage of the process" changed in the 1940s when antitrust laws forced studios to divest themselves of movie theatres.
Associate professor Mike Walsh says distribution companies held the real power in the film industry. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Malcolm Sutton)
Up until then, they were churning out films, typically playing them for a week before another replaced it, and knowing precisely how many they needed to maintain a strong cinema audience.
"From the 1950s onwards, they needed fewer films but larger scale films because they had to provide something that you couldn't get from staying home watching television," Dr Walsh said.
The big studios, which by then had been joined by United Artists, Universal, and Columbia Pictures, were also distributors or investors for films made by other companies, meaning their production logos remained at the start of films.
"Distribution companies are still where the real power in the film industry lies," Dr Walsh said.
"They have global distribution networks that can deliver films to screens all around the world.
"They also have revolving lines of credit with banks, so that they can advance producers hundreds of millions of dollars for blockbusters."
Logos evolve with special effects
As movie practices evolved with technology, so too did the logos.
Disney, for example, was among those using cell animation for its logo from the 1940s through to the 60s, until special effects started growing and becoming "more central to the studio system" during the 1970s.
"Then it just absolutely explodes during the 1980s and you start to see major special effects work with the logos," Dr Isaacs said.
Studios also became less rigid over the use of their logos.
The WB logo in the 1990s was used heavily in marketing for the Batman franchise — even morphing with the character's symbol at the start of the third and fourth instalments.
"That film [Batman] became by far the most hyper-marketed film in the history of all of Hollywood and the logo was front and centre of that," Dr Isaacs said.
Dr Isaac's favourite example of logos being manipulated to suit a film was The Matrix. (YouTube: @WarnerBrosLogo)
Paramount Pictures too allowed the mountain in its logo to dissolve into a real mountain in the first instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise, to a mountain etched into a gong in the second, and to a rocky outcrop in the third.
"By the time of the fourth one, the joke is that the dissolve is to a mountain-shaped molehill," Dr Walsh said.
Lining up for credit
Studio logos from the 1980s to 1990s were also being followed by an increasing number of logos for production companies and funding entities.
"Often times, the most entertaining part of a film is watching the one or two minutes of logos at the start," Dr Walsh said.
"After all, a film is a bundle of rights and increasingly now different companies will acquire different rights, so that's a part of the funding mix."
In the 2010s, as streaming services led by Netflix took off (and home theatre set-ups became better and cheaper), the big Hollywood studios started taking significant hits.
More people were opting to watch films in the comfort of their own homes, and big-budget television series were also becoming increasingly popular.
"The profit centre for most of the studios has for some time been in paid television, and paid television has kind of moved from established channels to streaming services," Dr Walsh said.
"The great thing about feature films is that they generate a lot of publicity when they first appear in cinemas, but then they cascade down to all the other platforms.
"That model is now under threat with so much content premiering on, or moving straight to, streaming services."
Changing of the guard
As if to signify a changing of the guard, the ever-omnipotent production logos from the big studios have gone missing from some major productions.
Streaming services are creating and financing a huge amount of productions for television. (Supplied)
Their place is instead being taken by streaming companies distributing their own content.
"And the really interesting thing in the power of these long-established Hollywood companies is having to accommodate itself to the rise of streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon, which are really making a lot of content," Dr Walsh said.
"If you look at Disney, while they're making few films for theatrical release, they are still having to both make and acquire an enormous amount for their streaming service because that's where the action has moved to."
A24's approach has struck a chord so strong with some they have tattooed its logo on their skin. (Instagram: @joe_george)
Dr Isaacs said a relatively new and highly visible logo was also emerging for independent entertainment company A24, which had a reputation for supporting unique and original ideas.
It has attracted a passionate fanbase proud of A24's independent mantra.
"What I've found astonishing, and which I've never encountered with other logos, there are audiences around the world currently tattooing themselves with the A24 logo as a signature of a new kind of studio mentality," Dr Isaacs said.
"It's a really new era."