Creating the new Production Logo

During out AS coursework, we had to design and produce a production logo for our thriller opening, Parallel. Here is our initial logo.

Here's a link to last years logo post:
http://danielshippeysmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/eden-pictures-production-logo.html 

To follow trailer conventions, this year we decided to change the logo slightly, so that it's quick and different but still recognised as 'Eden Pictures'. We were inspired by different  Hollywood production companies that tend to do something different to their logos celebrating a '100th anniversary', for example Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures. Therefore we thought it would be good to celebrate a 'one year anniversary'. Heres the 'Superbad' trailer- foucs on the introduction/ how the institutions are presented. It's quick and reflects the film, which is what we also want.

In making the appearance different, we thought it would be interesting to change the main subject slightly; being the flower. It was originally an apple blossom, something that matched the connotations of 'Eden', and so this time we wanted something to reflect darkness of our trailer, because roses are red which can symbolise blood and danger, while also keeping the beauty in place. Here's the rose that we copied from and a design sketch.

We used Serif Draw Plus to produce the new logo. We took a picture of the sketch idea, and opened it in the software. We used drawing tools to capture the outline of the text 'EDEN' and added text for '1 year anniversary'. For the rose, we collected images from the internet to copy from in order to create a realistic looking rose. Our first attempt wasn't very good, and we felt it would be really difficult to make it look like the picture. But we tried again, and this time from paying attention to detail (adding tone through editing the brightness and shadows/ drawing more smoothly) and taking our time, when we had finished it, it looked much better. Then we added the simple green stems and allocated certain colours to the design. For example, we changed the bronze font colour from the last logo, to a clean cut silver to add sophistication. Then we added a small glow to the '1 year anniversary' so that it was more visible and important.  We saved this image and it was ready for our trailer.

We thought the design this time was more complex and sophisticated, which was good because we were aiming to better the logo all together since we thought out initial logo was quite child-like and innocent; again something that our trailer idea isn't. Heres a link to a video capturing the making of the new logo.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TJAYwPO54k 

In terms of movement, we decided not to have any so that the logo could just flash up like in some trailers. Instead we relied on the editing processes to bring it to life on Premier Element 9. Through adding a quick fade to white a the beginning of the picture, it matched the sound of thunder that we added over it. This created a thunder and lightening effect, using a metonym to foreshadow the dangerous nature of our film idea.

Overall, this was a quick task we carried out before we broke up in our AS year, ready for when we post produce the trailer. I'm glad that we developed and refined the logo, like a real Hollywood company might.