Warner Home Video

''Logo descriptions by Matt Williams and James Stanley Barr Logo captures by bigrene2, Eric S., Logophile, wisp2007, V of Doom, Royger Short, Mr.Logo, Dean Stewart Rumsey, and socoollogos Editions by V of Doom Video captures courtesy of ChadO, Jordan Katz, ACDC48086, Watcher3223, and youngleader610 (Mr.Logo)''

Background: Warner Home Video (formerly "WCI Home Video"; the word "WCI" for "WarnerCommunications, Inc.", and also known as "Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc.") is the home entertainment unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner, founded in 1978 to distribute on video the film and television library of Warner Bros. Studios, and when Time Warner acquired them, programs from other Time Warner companies. Currently, they also serve distributor for television and/or movie product released by BBC (w/ 2 Entertain), Lifetime, Cartoon Network, Turner Entertainment Co., Viz Media, TruTV (formerly "Court TV"), TNT, National Geographic Society in the U.S., and product from the NBA, NFL, and NHL.

1st Logo (July 1980-January 1986, 1987, August 1990, 1996)

Nickname: "The Big \\'"

Logo:

·        July 1980-February 1981: We start out with a very big \\' logo (that is white with a blue "tube") that fills the entire screen. It then zooms back slightly. Then above the logo, the words "WCI HOME VIDEO" between two horizontal lines appear, followed by a much smaller \\' logo besides "A Warner Communications Company". The logo fades from black after the standard FBI Warning Screen and has a more-grainy film like quality to it. The W logo is slightly bigger than on the later version of the logo.

·        September 1980-January 1986: Same as before, but now the logo is better quality, with "WCI HOME VIDEO" replaced with "WARNER HOME VIDEO", and the FBI Warning Screen now cuts directly to this logo. The \\' is a little smaller as well, and the film scratches are gone.

Variant: A variation exists in which the now-white logo is placed on a blue-purple background. The byline is in a different typeface as well.

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Trivia: The logo is derived from Warner Cable's logo, which was used as early as 1975-76. A still version exists at the end of all of pilots of the Warner Cable game show How Do You Like Your Eggs from 1977, which can be viewed here.

FX/SFX/Cheesy Factor: The "zooming out" of the logo, not to mention the film scratches on the WCI version.

Music/Sounds: None, though a Canadian VHS of Casablanca has the second half of the "Turning UA" music play over this logo.

Music/Sounds/Voice-over Variant: On some UK tapes with previews, the logo has music and a stoic, quiet-sounding man. Before the first trailer, the man says "Some other great titles from the small screen. From Warner Home Video." After the last one, he says "The titles you have just seen are available on VHS and Betamax. Ask your local stockists for details. Warner...Home Video." Oddly, the announcer is American.

Availability: Used on VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, and CED releases at the time. Most video releases of the era went straight from the warning screen to the movie with the Warner Bros., Orion, or First Artists logo in use at the time, and tapes that actually have this logo are long out of print. Releases as far back as the July 1980 batch of releases have this including ''Every Which Way But Loose and Magnum Force'' with Clint Eastwood and Bullitt with Steve McQueen. The first WCI releases included Blazing Saddles, The Green Berets, and The Wild Bunch. Some WCI releases are also packaged in WHV packaging, with WHV labels during a short 1980 transitional period. Caddyshack, ''Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and Just Tell Me What You Want'' are a few videos known to have this variation. The 1980-1985 variant is available on The Road Warrior, Death Race 2000, THX-1138, ''The Amityville Horror, Any Which Way You Can, The Great Race, Gremlins, Fandango, Vision Quest'', the first two Police Academy movies and the Kung Fu pilot movie. The last tape to use this logo officially was the 1986 reprint of ''Just Tell Me What You Want, though the logo later made a surprise appearance on the 1987 Canadian VHS of Them!, the 1990 release of Ensign Pulver, and a 1987 reissue of Call of the Wild ''(1972) from MPI Home Video. The logo made its final appearance in 1996, when Warner Home Video reissued the ''Super Friends Collection'' on VHS, using masters originally created in 1985. The variant with music and an announcer was seen on the original UK VHS of ''Risky Business''. Some tapes have the next print logo on the cover but have this logo on the tape, such asGremlins, The NeverEnding Story, ''Vision Quest, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment'', early prints ofLost in America, and Ladyhawke. Oddly enough, it and the preceding warning scroll plaster the United Artists logo but keep its original music on a Canadian VHS release of Casablanca.

Scare Factor:

·        July 1980-February 1981: Low. The fade from black to the logo may startle you.

·        September 1980-January 1986: Minimal to low. The transition from the FBI warning screen to this logo is sudden and jarring, but this logo is otherwise harmless.

2nd Logo (January 1986-February 1997)

Nicknames: "The Cheesy Shield", "WB Shield", "CGI WB Shield", "The Cheesy WB Shield"

Logo: Over a time-lapsed animation of clouds, the camera zooms out between the tops of some gold-colored letters and the bottom of a gold plank. The camera then zooms out and the logo turns towards us, revealing that it is the words "WARNER HOME VIDEO", with two lines above it and two lines below it. It then zooms out to the bottom of the screen, followed by a giant WB Shield logo appearing from the top of the screen, slightly tilted to the bottom, then rotating to face us. The Warner byline fades in at the bottom of the screen. "Sparkles" appear and white "reflections" appear on the logo.

Bylines:

·        January 1986-1990: "A Subsidiary of Warner Bros. Inc., A Warner Communications Company"

·        December 27, 1990-March 31, 1993: "A Subsidiary of Warner Bros. Inc., A Time Warner Company"

·        April 14, 1993-February 1997: "A Time Warner Entertainment Company" (This byline is in a different typeface.)

·        Variant: Sometimes, the Time Warner Entertainment byline (1993-1997) is slightly smaller, using a font similar to the first two bylines.

·        Most releases outside the U.S. and some domestic releases during the Time Warner merger didn'thave a byline.

Variants:

·        There exists a rare still version of the logo, which can be found on certain Kidsongs videos andBatman Returns (though the UK release of Batman Returns used the normal bylineless logo).

·        On some UK rental tapes, when the logo animation is finished, the logo splits in two horizontally down the middle, then the two sides compress up and down, respectively, revealing a blue background with the yellow words "COMING SOON". This is seen on the rental tapes of Lost in America and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.

·        There is a prototype variant of this logo with a different time-lapse cloud background. So far, it was only known to have appeared on later prints of the original 1985 VHS release of Lost in America. If you look closely at the picture (the only evidence of this variant), you'll notice that the clouds seem to be unused footage from the regular version. It was recently discovered that stills of this prototype appeared on Warner Bros. trailers that plastered the Warner Bros. Pictures logo with the prototype stills.

·        There is yet another different cloud background. This can be seen on the home video trailers for Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, ''Lethal Weapon 2, Chasers, A Time to Kill, and Tin Cup''. (Note: on the latter three, the logo is only seen for a split second, but on the Daffy Duck's Quackbusters and Lethal Weapon 2 trailers, the logo lasts longer, with the cloud footage starting where it ended on the regular logo.) This cloud background is, in fact, additional footage from the regular version.

·        There is a very rare promo variant where the giant WB shield rises up from the top, and rotates to face forward, then zooms out slightly. In this version, there is no company name or byline. This can be seen on a June 1989 dealer preview tape, and on a promotional feature on Batman Forever for its upcoming VHS release in October 1995. A slightly extended version was seen on a promo for Clint Eastwood movies on the original VHS release of ''The Dead Pool, ''where the shield zooms out and disappears into the clouds.

·        On Australian videos from the 1980s, the logo fades away to a different cloud background. It has "At Home With The Hits" in cursive and arched, with the words "PREVIEW ATTRACTION" sandwiched between sets of two lines. All are gold and the cloud background eases back.

·        A black & white version can be found on B&W releases such as VHS tapes of the TV series Maverick.

FX/SFX: The "time-lapse" cloud animation, the WB shield rotating into place.

Cheesy Factor: Relatively primitive CGI (looking like it was designed on an Amiga computer, which it probably was) along with the "time-lapse" cloud animation. Cheap synth theme as well. The freeze frame on the still version looks cheap, too.

Music/Sounds: A proud, bombastic synthesized theme that really fits the logo. This is a synthesized version of Warner Bros.' 1937 theatrical fanfare. As a side note, a lusher orchestrated theme with the same notes as the HV logo was briefly used as the fanfare for the movie WB shield when it returned to usage in 1984. Silent for the still version. Note: the Time Warner Entertainment byline faded in at the last note of the theme. The Warner Communications and Time Warner bylines faded in as the shield rotated to its final position.

Music/Sounds Variant: On the 1990 Laserdisc of S.O.B., the logo is silent.

Availability: Common. Seen on every Warner Home Video release from the era, beginning with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Notice that the current print logo is seen on 1996-1997 tapes, but still uses this logo, however it also still uses the commonly seen "DIGITALLY PROCESSED" text on the side of the packaging, so this logo is an easy find. Examples that have this logo include Bullitt, Beetlejuice, ''Gremlins 2: The New Batch, the first three Lethal Weapon'' movies, and the first three Batman movies. The Time Warner byline variant is a tough find, but it appeared on My Blue Heaven, ''Presumed Innocent, Memphis Belle, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Rookie, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, GoodFellas, Defending Your Life,Out for Justice, Rover Dangerfield, Curly Sue, Batman Returns, Lethal Weapon 3, Stay Tuned, Under Siege, and Blade Runner: The Director's Cut'' (only the Japanese-subtitled VHS; the American release uses the Time Warner Entertainment byline). The Time Warner Entertainment byline appeared during the waning days of the logo, and appeared on, among other tapes, Animaniacs Sing-Along: Yakko's World. Another easy way to find this logo is to look for the WB shield on the front of the tape. Among the last tapes to use this logo were Eraser (pan and scan VHS only; the widescreen version uses the next logo) and Twister. The bylineless version oddly shows up on an early 1990s VHS of ''Journey Back to Oz from UAV Corporation(perhaps it was taken from a foreign master) as well as international VHS prints of Thelma and Louise'' fromMGM/UA Home Video (which must have been due to WHV's distribution deal for MGM/UA at the time). Also, from 1996-1997, this logo was used concurrently with the next. Raised to rare for the still version. The prototype variant is also very rare, and (as mentioned above) was only known to have appeared on later prints of the original 1985 VHS release of ''Lost in America''. This makes a very strange appearance on the Hong Kong Tai Seng/Megastar DVD of The Protector, after the 1st Media Asia logo and before the 1984 Warner Bros. logo of the time (this is likely because it uses the U.S version of the film, which appears to be taken from a Laserdisc source, being it has this logo on it).

Scare Factor: Low to medium. The bombastic music and primitive CGI may scare some, but this logo is a favorite of many. None for the still version.

3rd Logo (December 30, 1996, March 11, 1997, March 26, 1997- )

Nicknames: "CGI Invisible/Visible Shield", "Boring Shield", "Shield of Boredom", "WB Shield II", "The Boring WB Shield"

Logo: Against a backdrop of clouds, a clear WB shield with a wordless banner slowly fades into view. Then the words "WARNER HOME VIDEO" are wiped onto the banner as the colors slowly appear on the shield.

Byline: From 2002-2003, the byline "An AOL Time Warner Company" was seen below the logo. The shield is a lot smaller in this version.

Variants:

·        In 1998, like other Warner labels, a 75th Anniversary version was made. This used a smaller shield with the banner reading "WARNER BROS.", and featured a giant "75" behind it. "YEARS ENTERTAINING THE WORLD" is seen below with "YEARS" a bit bigger and in spaced-out letters. This logo is seen during the year on home video releases and some trailers.

·        A rare version had a still logo in the style of the 1992 WB logo with the Warner Home Video banner replacing the Warner Bros Pictures banner and the Time Warner Entertainment byline below that. Was seen on an ad for ''Cats Don't Dance on the VHS releases of Shiloh and The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain ''and was never used as a real logo.

·        Some early tapes with the AOL Time Warner byline have the byline sloppily chyroned in over the standard variant; the byline's fade out is also out-of-sync with that of the video behind it in this version. This can be seen on Uprising.

·        On all Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and the 2010- DVD releases, the sky background is zoomed in by 20%. For Blu-ray, HD-DVD, as well as 2010- fullscreen DVDs, the Warner Home Video shield is zoomed out 10%. Some Blu-ray releases from 2006-2009 have the aspect ratio in 2:35.1

FX/SFX/Cheesy Factor: A simple, effective logo animation; nothing really cheesy except for the "wiping" on of the text. It is worth noting, however, that the logo still carries the word "VIDEO" to this day, despite the VHS format ceasing production years ago. Also, the AOL Time Warner byline, not only was it badly introduced (being chyroned over the standard variant, as mentioned above), but the final version of the logo has something weird to it: as the versions without the byline (plus the previously mentioned cheap variant) has the whole logo fading to black. But in the byline version, the shield and byline are seen fading out over the cloud background: they turn translucid as everything fades to black.

Music/Sounds: A quiet piano tune with two ending types:

·        Regular strings. This is used for all VHS releases as well as laserdiscs and UMD Video releases. It was used on some 5.1 DVDs. It will still continue on DVDs of television releases.

·        5.1 Synthesized strings. All 5.1 DVD's and Blu-ray releases use this variant. On North American releases, it sounds more dual. The dual is not used on DVD's that have the format screen after the logo.

Music/Sounds Variant: Sometimes on the NTSC AOL Time Warner version, the regular strings theme is in a lower pitch. This can be found on the VHS and DVD releases of Uprising, The Adventures of Pluto Nash,''Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, A Mighty Wind, Kangaroo Jack, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, South Park: The Original Unaired Pilot, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines'', as well as the first Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set.

Availability: Common. This was used concurrently with the previous logo on 1996-1997 WHV tapes (on a side note, the print version of this logo was introduced in mid-1996, and those tapes contain the previous logo, but you should also expect the "DIGITALLY PROCESSED" text on the side of its packaging, so the previous logo is an easy find). The first products to have this logo include the 1996 rental VHS release of A Time to Kill, released on December 30, 1996, the VHS of Space Jam released on March 11, 1997, and the first DVDs from Warner Bros. (one of which was A Time to Kill), released on March 26, 1997. Surprisingly, this logo was seen at the end of a 1990 episode of Night Court on TV Land. It is possible that the episodes were ripped from DVD, and TV Land forgot to edit the logo out for broadcast. This is also the case with some episodes of ''Whose Line Is It Anyway? ''on ABC Family. The version with the AOL Time Warner byline can be found on most tapes and DVDs from 2002-2003, including ''The Great Dictator and the 2003 Special Edition release of Dennis the Menace''. Strangely, this can also be seen on a "Now Available on DVD" trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which can be seen on the DVD of Shorts. It can also be seen on the UK release of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Don't expect to see this on anything from Viz Media.

Scare Factor: None. This is a clean logo, but it's annoying for those who like the previous logos. None to low for the organ variant.