Super Productions Vidéo

Credits

Editions by
Jeffersonkendric

Video captures courtesy of
rvideoprod

Background

Super Productions Vidéo was a French VHS distributor that mainly distributed old B-movies.

1st Logo (1978-1983)

Logo: On a sky blue background, a white shield outline zooms in very slowly, with a bar and white block below it. As it zooms in, more of the logo is revealed, before it stops to take up the whole screen. Inside the shield, the letters "SV" overlap each other, looking like a knock off of the Superman emblem, and the text "SUPER VIDEO" span across a ribbon, while the bar has "PRODUCTIONS" in it. The logo cuts out and "PRESENTE" fades in, flashing away once before the logo fades out.

FX/SFX: Just the shield fading in and zooming in.

Music/Sounds: A synth jingle that sounds like a light Kraftwerk song that continues on through the warning screen.

Availability: Extremely rare. Seen on any tapes from the era, which are signified by the simplistic white box.

Legacy: At 25 seconds, it's a long logo, and a very slow-paced and boring one at that.

2nd Logo (1983-1985)

Nicknames: "Groovy Groucho", "Go, Disco Julius"

Logo: On a blank blue background we see an animated Groucho Marx smoking his trademark cigar and moving forward in quite a funny way, supposedly to the rhythm of the logo’s disco jingle. He’s wearing a golden late 70s outfit (very much à la Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever) with a blue tie and a boutonniere. Groucho stops in the middle of the screen and bends his head to the right. An armchair fades in. Groucho sits on it in a relaxed position. A white line forms a TV screen right in front on him and the shield from the first logo fades in, this time colored in gold and black and positioned at an angle. The camera zooms towards it and after a few seconds it fades out to show the warning screen.

FX/SFX: Limited 2D cel animation.

Music/Sounds: A disco jingle that starts with a brief piano glissando, and then continues with lots of strings and horns, tropical-like percussion (i.e. claves, bongos, congas) and a groovy bassline, then it passes to a dramatic horn section when the camera zooms towards the logo and turns into a Herbie Hancock-like Fender Rhodes solo during the warning screen. Overall, one of the grooviest themes ever heard in a logo.

Availability: Very rare.

Legacy: It's a massive improvement with a long runtime (35 seconds) and great music, but one can't help to wonder why Groucho is in this logo. Was it a tribute, or a shameless use of his image? Or maybe a relation to the image of Groucho and the golden days of cinema?