Distribution Company research
Distribution companies are those wonderfully iconic figures responsible for getting your favorite works into a cinema or DVD case nearby! From longstanding veterans of the field 20th Century Fox to more subsidiary companies like Columbia (a subset of Sony Pictures), there's no shortage of unique conglomerates scrambling to get the next big thing to audiences world wide. The opening sting or 'IDENT' of said companies are iconic visuals that have generated a brand and awareness through association with the biggest names out there, keeping them as industry powerhouses since the silver age. The current film landscape is made up of something known as the Major 6, a collective of Universal, Disney, Warner Bros, FOX, Sony and Paramount that for some have run for more than 100 years with success after success putting them in the AAA sphere of production.
20th Century Fox unsurprisingly is one of the biggest distributor companies and in a world where multimedia industries rank among the highest of them, this makes Fox one of the most valuable staples working in the industry with an estimated brand value of $11.3 Billion when combining their television, worldwide and movie revenue. It's is likely no surprise then that 20th Century Fox has one of the most immediately recognizable opening stings in a long time with that now familiar drum roll and low angle pan synonymous with the decadent excess of Modern Hollywood; the icing on the cake being that the monolithic structure depicted residing over Los Angeles has been rendered in the style of minimalist Art Deco, a style popularized in the first half of the 20th century (appropriately) and adopted by the American Film Industry as a staple of luxury, after all, most of the refined hard edges are in gold of all things. You've also got the very basic visual contrast of the warm oranges and stark blues to make the font more aesthetically pleasing with the black emboss of the shadows just adding texture to the text. Responsible for titles such as Deadpool, Avatar, Alien and The Simpsons Movie, FOX has built an empire within which almost all demographics are catered to.
It's no surprise to your average movie goer that Disney is one of the largest media empires on the Earth. To give some perspective, the entire Star Wars franchise, Marvel, the Princess Films and Pixar slave under their chains, meaning that they control the most culturally influential film properties that have ever existed, setting a standard and pedigree for multiple genres and mediums while inspiring several generations of kids with their moral messages and visual sensibilities. Whilst their is to me an air of cynicism hanging over their Park franchise, you can't deny the wonder that this company more than any other provides. Valued at roughly $179.5 Billion (suddenly that Star Wars investment isn't seeming so huge), their opening IDENT reeks of brand recognition with the synonymous Cinderella castle a beacon of light in a swathe of dark background capped over by fireworks and charming fairy-tale music, the camera falls from the clouds to a wide of the structure as the score swells and that squiggly shiny font beams across the screen, indoctrinating the sights and sounds of their capitalist victory into the latest line of film watchers.
Paramount is probably the most relevant to Horror movies of the six with it's track record sporting some of the heavy hitters like the entire Friday the 13th franchise (which interestingly was sold for a world wide distribution of my pet favorite Interstellar) as well as Psycho, Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield. Valued at around $10 billion after it's purchase by Viacom, paramount's sweeping IDENT follows Disney's trend of having the camera drop from orbit and follow a celestial item, in this case a star ( another Staple of vintage Hollywood iconography) across a lake and into the mountain as it towers over it's opposition. As a change in pattern from the prior two, Paramount chooses to have its open cards scored based on the film, for example, the Friday the 13th movies all have the iconic 'ki ki ki ma ma ma' sfx playing over them, linking the distributor to the film with additional reinforcement.