Background: Northern Lights Entertainment was a film production company owned by the late producer and filmmaker, Ivan Reitman. He later went on to start (and also owned) The Montecito Picture Company in the late 1990s with his son, Jason.
1st Logo
(February 21-April 3, 1992)[]
Logo: On a black background, we see these words in the middle of the screen:
Northern Lights
ENTERTAINMENT
"Northern Lights" is written in an italic handwritten text while "ENTERTAINMENT" is written block text.
FX/SFX: None.
Music/Sounds: None or the closing theme of the movie.
Availability: Rare. Seen at the end of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Beethoven.
2nd Logo
(December 17, 1993-June 12, 1998)[]
Nicknames: "The Woodland Forest", "The Moving Lights", "The Forest Logo", "AWOO-O-OO!"
Logo: On a dark blue background, we open to something moving in the sky (akin to the Aurora Borealis that occurs in the high latitude Arctic/Antarctic regions). It slowly comes upward, the edges forming the outline of the name. The full logo appears and the background starts to brighten, showing the upper part of a mountainous woodland forest at sunrise. On the left of the logo, there is a pine tree standing on top of a cliff. The written part of the text is in white while the "ENTERTAINMENT" part is light pink.
Variants:
- A short version was seen at the end of Beethoven: The Animated Series.
- At the end of Six Days, Seven Nights, the logo is cropped to 2.35:1, and a registered trademark symbol appears next to "ENTERTAINMENT" after the sequence.
- 4:3 full-screen prints of films including Beethoven's 2nd, Junior, and Six Days, Seven Nights use an open-matte version with more information visible on the top and bottom, and sometimes very top and very bottom. Sometimes, the very top and very bottom parts of the frame are cropped to 1.85:1, making it a widescreen framing of the logo with both sides of the image.
FX/SFX: An aurora light show in the sky.
Music/Sounds: Twinkling chimes followed by a majestic synth tune and a wolf's hooting howl (probably the classic "cartoon" sound effect).
Music/Sounds Variants:
- At the end of Beethoven's 2nd, a piano synth tune with a choir is heard. A different (more realistic) wolf howl, also heard off-screen, follows at the end.
- On both Commandments and Beethoven: The Animated Series, it's the closing theme of the program.
- On Private Parts, the tail end of a wolf's howling just echoes over the closing variant of the Rysher Entertainment logo. On the 2020 Blu-ray, it also echoes over the Paramount Pictures closing variant of the logo, instead.
Availability: Rare. Seen at the end of Beethoven's 2nd (the first film to feature this logo), Junior, The Late Shift, Howard Stern's Private Parts, and Six Days Seven Nights (the last movie to use the logo). On Space Jam, Fathers' Day, and DiC's Mummies Alive!, only a copyright notice is shown.