First Release Home Entertainment

Background
First Release Home Entertainment was a division of RCA/Columbia Pictures Hoyts Video. The company released tapes in The Netherlands as well.

1st Logo (1988-1996)
Nicknames: "Laser Shooting Stars", "Neon Star"

Logo: On a black background, a star shoots across the screen with a laserlike pink line trailing behind it. Then, two stars shoot across the screen with green and yellow lines trailing behind them. Another star shoots with a red line. After that one more star shoots with a blue line, forming an abstract pattern. Then, the middle of the pattern is illuminated, and it looks like a blue star. Four stars then fly near the big star, with red, yellow, pink and green trails. A flash occurs and the words

Garamond HOME * ENTERTAINMENT appear under the resulting star.

Variant: At the beginning of tapes, after the logo forms a blue star shoots on "HOME ENTERTAINMENT", the text fades out and the words

Garamond fade in in its place.

Technique: The stars shooting across the screen, the flash, and in the variant, the fading.

Music/Sounds: An extremely catchy techno ditty with a few laser sound effects. This is slightly shorter for the closing variant.

Availability: On old Aussie and Dutch PAL tapes. Check ebay.com.au or ebay.nl! The company mainly distributed B-Movies, music videos and Magic Window titles, among others. One tape that had this was Look Who's Talking.

2nd Logo (1996-1999)
Logo: On a night-sky background, we see a comet like object movie about the screen which forms a five pointed star as the camera zooms back. The inside of the star fades out leaving just the outline as five comets come towards the star. Four of the comet stop before the star but the fifth one movie to the bottom of the screen and explodes as a fireworks display. The remnants of the fireworks form the same letters from the previous logo (in the same style and font).

Variant: At the beginning of tapes the words flip over to reveal the words "Coming Soon"

Technique: The comet forming the star, the fireworks. A nice blend of CGI and 2D animation.

Music/Sounds: A soft choir when the star is forming followed by a deep bass note when the letters are revealed.

Availability: Seen on all First Release VHS from this time period. It is not known yet if they did DVD releases., Don't expect this on early Australian DVD releases from the time, as they use the 1997-2001 Columbia TriStar Home Video logo with Music.