Pre-Production: Development of our production company logo

I was very lucky to have Caitlin in my group, as she was able to create a moving logo, complete with an ominous sound to go with it. Very cool.

My group and I laboured for days over a name for our production company, trying to come up with cool, sounding names that we could possibly use outside our coursework for other things such as making our own films. We finally decided on doing something pretty basic-taking the fist letters of each of our names to create the name ELC Productions. Like the animal, not the Early Learning Center. We wanted a clean, minimalist look, so that we could get right onto the opening sequence and not waste much time. This gave Caitlin her guidelines on what the rest of the team wanted, allowing her to be really creative with the design. 

I thought that it would be pretty cool if we included antlers to cement that link between the name and the animal, and sever any ties the name may have had with the Early Learning Center. Caitlin used this idea and took a stock image of  a pair of elk antlers and created a still image of the new logo in Photoshop, with the name-ELC Productions in black font with a white background. I think that the font that Caitlin chose is perfect for our production company, as it has that almost gothic feeling to the font, which is perfect for our film opening. 

We wanted to include some movement to our logo and not have it being stock still, so Caitlin and I decided that we would show the name first and then include a cross-dissolve of the antlers onto the text. Caitlin made the magic happen by separating the text and the antlers into two separate layers in Photoshop, creating a base image (the text) and a transparent image of the antlers which appear on top. 

Caitlin then opened an Adobe Premiere file and imported the base text image to it. Through research, we discovered that the usual length for a production logo was about 5 seconds.Caitlin followed these conventions and made our logo 5 seconds too. 

Then, continuing the magic, Caitlin imported the transparent image of the Elk horns and created a cross-dissolve, making the antlers fade in slowly. Finally, she added an audio track (non copyrighted of course) of omnious music that fitted our horror theme, making the production logo set the tone for the rest of the film. 

Lauren.