Now that we’ve got the basics of filmmaking down, we have to look at something outside film, but still related to it – namely, studios and their logos. Studio logos are important for helping people identify different studios, and, if the audience likes a movie a studio makes, they’re likely to come back once they see the studio’s logo on another one.
Thriller movies in particular are made by a variety of studios, many of them associated with the Big 5: Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, and Columbia. Many of Warner Bros.’ top grossing movies include thrillers such as It (2017), Inception (2010), and others, and Universal constantly makes thrillers such as The Purge (2013) or Insidious (2018). Some smaller (but still very relevant) studios who make thrillers, sometimes in collaboration with the Big 5 studios include Legendary, Platinum Dunes and Blumhouse, the latter two almost exclusively making horror movies.
The Big 5 have very grandiose logos, but for thrillers, mostly-thriller studios such as Platinum Dunes and Blumhouse do a good job at having their studio logos be consistent with the content they put out. Platinum Dunes shows calm, rolling white dunes with a slight blue-green tint. This calmness overlaid over the black in the background and the thin lines of the logo give us a sense of unease simply due to the lack of much movement and sound, something common at the start of thrillers as they build up. Blumhouse, on the other hand, uses a very long font, giving us a connection to horror (long nails, long fingers, etc.), and the H in the middle of the house is reminiscent of haunted houses. The stark contrast between black and white here provides us a connection between light and dark, a dichotomy common in thrillers.
Platinum Dunes in particular, being a rather young company, has only had two main logos - one from 2003-2009 and one from 2009 to the present. The old logo is below, with characteristic trademarks of 2000s design such as a 3D feel and embossed metallic letters.
The logo in use after 2009 (below), however, is more minimalistic, reflecting the shift in design trends at the time from blockier and more metallic things to minimalism. It is much simpler, without the wavy lines of the original logo.
Blumhouse has a much more thriller-esque logo. Although it was formed in 2000, I couldn't find any of its logos before 2012 on the Internet. The 2012-present logo is split into two forms, with smaller variations - a thriller one and a non-thriller one. The non-thriller logo features a buzzing lightbulb in a dull room with the Blumhouse logo emblazoned on the walls. While not giving off an overtly thriller feel, it retains a sense of thriller eeriness, with dark colors, no music, and one singular light source.
The thriller version, however, is one of the most thriller-esque logos out there. The lighting is much darker, with thriller-like pulsing sound and the sound of a man breathing heavily. The screen is distorted, and the walls are broken-down. The logo has a dark turquoise filter not unlike the one in the more recent Platinum Dunes logo, evoking horror vibes. The only door that has light closes shut from an unseen force, and paranormal activity, a common theme of thriller movies, is seen through the moving of objects such as a chair and a book - unassuming household items, which are commonly moved in thriller movies and used as ways of showing paranormal activity at work. The camera is shaky, a common horror first-person effect, and a small girl is shown for a few seconds, her voice distorted to become ghastly. Turning around, her look is reminiscent of Kubrick's famous stare, and blood splatters on the dark walls as the screen turns red for a few seconds. Small children, especially girls, are common in horror movies to represent the paranormal. Suspense continues to build as the volume increases, but then is resolved as the background sound stops and is replaced with the buzzing of a dim lightbulb. The walls are noticeably dirtier than the walls in the non-thriller logo
Instead of just analyzing the logos of different production companies, we now had to make our own. Since I really like science fiction, I wanted to make a logo for a production company focusing on science fiction thrillers. I decided to name my company Snow Crash Productions after Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. I took a free Outrun (If you don't know what that is, think Tron) background from YouTube and edited it (inverted colors to make it green, added film grain and CRT TV effects) to make a background. I then went on a font website, searched for Cyberpunk fonts, and found one that fitted my needs. I put together my logo with the font and the biohazard symbol, experimenting on many different colors but settling for a (quite disgusting) yellow. One thing that was regrettable was that my editing software added effects to the alpha (blank) layer in my logo too, which means that adding effects to my logo in the center would just make a square around the logo. I instead just put the logo on the background clean, which makes for a pretty jarring image. I then took my own voice, hummed a note, and edited it randomly (adding reverb, echo, etc.) to create background sound. Finally, I added fade-in and fade-out effects at the start and end, and my logo was complete. Below is the finished product.
Here you can see the three layers in use - the sound layer, the background layer (including the HitFilm CRT effect), and the logo itself. You can see that I added a fade-in and fade-out effect to the entire thing.
And here is the finished product:
Reflecting on the logo, I believe that it was a good effort. The dark yellow on green as well as the cropping of the logo itself is less than satisfactory to the eye, and the humming doesn't really give much of a thriller vibe. However, it does well in establishing a dark, sci-fi tone, as well as creating an air of danger and suspense common in thrillers. In keeping with the theme of cyberpunk and sci-fi thrillers, the background is retrofuturistic. It suggests less thrill and more science.
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