It gives me great pleasure to announce that we officially have a new logo for LateNite Films (as we have also decided to write “LateNite Films” instead of “latenite films” as a tribute to Peter Jackson’s WingNet Films).

We have been trying to come up with a new logo that really reflects what we stand for, for months now. We tried doing it ourselves – but just never really came up with anything solid. After officially giving up, we decided to post something on Twitter. Within minutes, we suddenly started receiving emails, Facebook messages and Twitter DMs and Replies from all over the world. After looking through all the messages, we eventually came across a reply from an amazingly talented UK-based Graphic Designer René Ellis. She had a really solid range of work behind her – but more importantly, even though we only communicated via email and Twitter, I must say, she was an absolute joy to work with. She was fast, incredibly inspiring and creative, and made the whole process a lot of fun, as we tried out various styles and formatting until we came up with something we actually all agreed on. If you ever need a Graphic Designer for any project – I highly recommend getting in touch with her! You might as well add her on Twitter – just for future reference!

If we take a trip down memory lane, the first ever LateNite logo was put together by the amazingly talented Eloise Loxton (one of the founding members of the LateNite team – but has since moved away from production to the magical world of film make-up!) in the labs of Swinburne University late at night during the post production of Happy Sundaes. Hand drawn and then brought into Photoshop, it was quick, simple, but incredibly effective. It was black and white – only because it was mainly going to be used for the closing credits of Happy Sundaes, and we wanted something simple. However, in retrospect, although the hand-drawn moon does represent us very well (i.e. we love to get down and dirty, and just make films with our own two hands!), the font choice wasn’t ideal and the lack of colour made it a tad boring.

Our next revision of the LateNite logo was put together by Isaac Egan (another LateNite founder, but has since moved on to other things), for the credits of Superb Menura (a documentary we shot whilst still at Swinburne). It was thrown together in Macromedia Flash, and animated to have the eye blinking. It was the perfect fit for our documentary (as the whole film was about looking into someone else’s world), however as a company logo, it just never really fitted. Lots of people had trouble working out if it was a face or the front of a Knight in Shining Armour! Again, although this abstract quality was great for an art-house company, it didn’t really suit us.

Then for the pre-production of the SAKOOZ promotional teaser/trailer, Isaac went back to the drawing board, and came up with something new. Sticking with the the black and white eye theme, he developed another logo that could be easily animated to have the eye blinking. Slick, sharp and with nice text, we actually all really liked this logo. It looked great on printed documents, and was really bold and impressive, but at the end of the day – it didn’t really have the LateNite spirit.

And so, we went back to the drawing board for SHOTGUN! With Alistair A E Marks potentially joining the LateNite team as a partner, we initially thought of changing the whole company name entirely! However, this was short lived – as after consulting many friends and expects, it was clear that we shouldn’t throw away all the hard work we have put into getting the LateNite brand up and running. However, for your viewing pleasure, below are some of the research notes we came up with. I must say, it’s INCREDIBLY hard to come up with a new name – all the good ones have already been taken! So if you like any of the names that are listed as free below – I recommend you jump on to the MD Webhosting site (our recommended host), and grab some domains!

• The Mutineers – Free (mutineerfilms.com)
• Sortie Films (army term – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortie) – Free (sortiefilms.com)
• Rebel Arts & Technology (one of George Lucas’ ideas for ILM) – Free
• Filmsiege – Free (filmsiege.com)
• Skirmish Films – Free (skirmishfilms.com)
• Rebelart Films – Free
• Rebel Backlot – Free
• Rushing Rebels – Free
• Rebelat (.com taken but others free)
• Backlot Rebels – Taken
• Pocketfilms – Taken
• Phalanx Films (an army formation term) – Taken (http://www.phalanxfilms.com/)
• Rebel Attack – Taken
• Kasplat – Taken
• Kaboom – Taken
• Riot Films – Taken (http://riotfilms.com/) – In fact every variation of Riot is taken! Riot Cinema, etc.
• Dissent Films – Taken (http://www.dissentfilms.com/)
• Radical Films – Taken (http://www.radical-films.com/ and http://radicalfilms.co.uk/)
• Rad Films – (Taken http://www.radfilms.com/)
• Insurgent Films – Taken
• Insurgency Films – Taken
• The Insurgents – Taken
• Revolutionary Productions – Taken
• The Revolution – Taken
• Revolution Productions – Taken
• Revolution Films – Taken (Has an AWESOME website photo – http://www.revolutionfilms.net/)
• Advant Films – Taken
• Leading Edge Films- Taken
• Cutting Edge Films – Taken
• Cinematrix (what George Lucas wanted to call Pixar originally) – Taken
• Landmark Films – Taken (http://www.landmarkfilms.com/)
• The Skeleton Crew – Taken
• Half Track – Taken
• Film Bomb – Taken
• Groundsmash Films – Pretty crap…

After deciding to stick with LateNite Films, we jumped into Photoshop and started experimenting. We also looked at what other film companies have got, and came up with a list of our favourite websites (and believe me – we looked at hundreds of sites and wrote extensive notes on all of them – but we’re not going to post that here, as sometimes we didn’t say very nice things):

• Launch Pictures
• Roar Film
• Goalpost Pictures
• Exit Films
• Couch Media
• In Pictures
• Matchbox Pictures
• December Films
• Revolution Productions
• Rebel Films Australia
• Rebel Films Facilities
• Riot Cinema

After much mucking around, here is my favourite concept I came up with. I still like it – but it’s just a bit too childish and comic-book like to be our official company logo!

We also tried all kinds of fonts, text layouts, and trying to get a light bulb in there!

Eloise also came up with some cool ideas – but none of them really stuck unfortunately. Here are some of them below:

We needed something that was “us”. We’re a group of young independent filmmakers. We love movies. We love making films. We love to blow stuff up. We love pushing boundaries. We are fearless. We are regarded as “rebel” or “guerrilla filmmakers”, as we make stuff that has low budgets, utilises skeleton crews, shoot at whatever locations we can find and use simple props using whatever is available. We respect filmmakers like Spike Lee, Robert Rodriguez, Darren Aronofsky, Peter Jackson and George Lucas. Our attitude to filmmaking is tough, exciting and unique – our productions are slick, compelling and innovative, and we needed a logo to reflect this. We think our logo should look a little high-tech, have elements of war/military in it (to suit the rebel/guerrilla theme), and at the same time has a slight professional edge.

When we gave this pitch to René she addressed this straight away with a range of options. To be perfectly honest, all the logos she came up with were amazing. I would have been quite happy to use any of them for our logo. But in the end, we almost did a complete circle, and decided on a logo that was basically an extension of Eloise’s first creation – the hand drawn moon. Although René gave us options that perfectly matched our pitch (i.e. rebel but professional), in the end the hand drawn moon just felt the most LateNite. And so, we stuck with it, and we’re all very happy with the decision!

So now, we have quickly thrown the new logo into our blog and website – however, we are planning to revamp both sites very soon! We still really love the look of of our main site – so it probably won’t be a complete redesign, but there are a few things that we think we can improve upon, and we are even considering merging the content from the Melbourne Rebels site into the main site just to keep everything centralised. We may even consider bringing the blog into the main site as well. Time will tell – but at the moment we’re concentrating all our web design efforts on getting the SHOTGUN! site and blog up and running! We should be making it public VERY soon, so stay tuned!

As I always say… exciting times certainly lay ahead! It’s already been a big year – but the best is yet to come!

Onward & Upward!

Chris!