Research into Production Companies

For programmes on TV and movies to be released both in cinema and on DVD, production companies play a large role in this and if it weren’t for the productions companies a lot of media types wouldn’t be around. Production companies are responsible for the fundraising a specific production, they handle the budgeting, scheduling, scripting, marketing, the organisation of staff, post-production, distribution, the supply of talent and resources and the production itself. The production company is usually run by a producer or a director, but it can also be run by a career executive and in entertainment, a production company will rely highly on talent or a well known entertainment franchise to raise the value of a project therefore drawing it out to larger audiences.

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversified multinational mass media corporation headquartered in Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, California. It is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel.

Day & Night is a Pixar animated short film, directed by Teddy Newton and produced by Kevin Reher. It was packaged to be shown in theaters before Toy Story 3, and has been released to purchase on iTunes in the United States. Unlike most other Pixar shorts, the animation style combines 2D and 3D elements, and Up production designer Don Shank says it is "unlike anything Pixar has produced before". The stunning thing about this short film is that its such a simple point yet the short film seems as if it explores the message in through detail, that is what I feel the beauty of short film lie. Simple but powerful.

Example of Disney Short Film:

Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the United Kingdom. The company's first production was Walter, directed by Stephen Frears, which was released in 1982.

We have also been looking at independent production companies so we can make a decision on if we want to use an independent company or not. An independent company is independent and therefore not owned by any major companies, they will get help from other companies when it comes to distributing as they may not have the resources to do so themselves. The companies we looked at are LionsGate Entertainment, Dimensions Films and Dark Castle Entertainment.

Film 4′s logo is simple and straight to the point, with an easily recognisable design. Anyone could draw this logo within a minute and even if you hadn't heard of the company, you would know it’s name just by the logo. I wouldn't call the design unique because many logos have a similar style, but the colour scheme and the name show the audience what the company is instantly, which is important. The design is timeless as it is simply four letters and a number. The colours will never go out of fashion as they are simple and popular. The versatility of the logos means that the colours can easily be changed to suit the genre of film that they are producing. For example, if they are producing a horror film they may want to change the red to black or white to black to have a more evil, dark effect. This makes it so the logo would be appropriate in any scenario of film that they produce, as it would be easy enough to change it.

Universal Studios Inc. (also known as Universal Pictures), is an American motion picture studio, owned by Comcast through its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. and is one of the six major movie studios. Its production studios are at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California. Distribution and other corporate offices are in New York City.

Universal have a globe with ‘Universal’ overlaying it, this suggests they want to produce films for everyone. This is a very simple but effective design because everybody recognises the globe and what it stands for. In addition, this logo is memorable because film watchers can associate the globe with ‘Universe’. This logo signifies that Universal is for everyone and nothing specific because the company name is wrote on top of the globe. This logo is also timeless because the way the globe looks will never change and therefore will be instantly recognisable in every generation. Universal have changed the way it looks quite alot however the concept has always been the same, which is the globe with Universal written over it (Refer to video below).