Sonnenfeld Josephson Worldwide Entertainment

Credits

Editions by
Michael Kenchington

Video captures courtesy of
Mr. Gann and Broken Saw

Background

This was the production company of Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson, founded in 1997. After the box office failure of Big Trouble, the two split up. They later individually founded Right Coast Productions (later Sonnenfeld Productions) and Josephson Entertainment.

Logo (August 4, 1998-April 5, 2002)

Visuals: The camera zooms out from a counting-down screen through an empty drive-in theater parking lot with a blue sky above and a tree line far away. Then the camera keeps zooming out to the faces of the company's co-founders shown in the left and right halves of the edge. The countdown screen goes to 2 and switches off, and some paper litter rolls across the field, as the camera zooms out on a white background, revealing "Sonnenfeld" near the top left corner of the scene (now enclosed in a box), "Josephson" at the bottom right edge of the logo, and "worldwide entertainment" below.

Variants:

• On movies with this logo, the logo is slowed down and the ending scene is also inverted. The logo also starts with a close-up of the countdown screen with "PICTURE START" flashing on it, and the countdown itself goes from 8 to 2; the camera begins zooming out when the countdown begins.
• An early version of this logo exists, which has the words "in association with" below.
• A widescreen TV version also exists, which has white pillar bars, later blending in with the white background.

Technique: CGI and live-action for the co-founders' pictures.

Audio: A three-note guitar tune combined with ticking and a sudden beep when the countdown screen switches off.

Audio Variants:

• The movie version is silent or uses the opening theme.
• On Secret Agent Man, the music is played on standard, low or very low tones depending on each episode. One episode has the first note of the 1995 Columbia TriStar Television theme accidentally played over the logo.

Availability:

• The TV version is seen on Maximum Bob (including the pilot, where it is followed by the 1998 Warner Bros. Television 75 Years logo), the 1998 revival of Fantasy Island, Secret Agent Man and the 2001 version of The Tick.
• The movie version is seen on The Crew and at the end of Big Trouble.