A&M Video

Background
A&M Video was the home entertainment arm of A&M Records, currently a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group. The division was dismantled in 1996, 2 years before A&M itself met its demise and was merged into the Interscope Geffen A&M group. In 2007, the company was relaunched when Sony's Octone Records subsidiary was renamed A&M/Octone Records, before being absorbed by Interscope Records in 2014.

(1984-1996)
Nicknames: "The Snapshot", "The Flying A&M Logo", "The Film"

Logo: On a black background, six white outlines of rounded squares appear in the center of the screen. The A&M logo, consisting of the large letters, "AM" in the Futura Condensed Bold font, with a small ampersand (&) in the space between them, and the silhouette of a trumpet below that, flies through the squares. As it passes each square, it leaves a blue imprint inside them. The logo is tilted as it begins its journey, and is perfectly straight when it comes to the fourth square. There, instead of the imprint being blue (or white), it is a white outline, with "VIDEO" below the rectangle. When the logo passes the last square, we zoom up to the fourth square and pause for several seconds. Then, we zoom even closer to the logo as we fade out.

Variants:


 * A black-and-white variant was sometimes used.
 * There were filmed and videotaped variants.
 * On the 1984 Betamax release of Styx: Caught in the Act, the boxes are colored static, and the A&M logo is in a colored text.
 * On the 1984 Betamax release of Bryan Adams: Reckless, the logo is already zoomed in, and there is static inside the A&M logo with diagonal dotted lines inside the left box, and a merging square wave pattern in the right box.

FX/SFX: The logo flying and making imprints.

Music/Sounds/Voice-over: None, but on the Lamb Chop videos, we hear two reverse cymbals, followed by Lamb Chop saying: "What's that? Oh, it's A and M, 'AM'. That is 'AM'.". Shari Lewis says, "That is A&M.". Lamb Chop replies with "That AM A&M.". Shari laughs and says, "That AM A&M Video!". On some tapes, you can hear a "whoosh" sound followed by a synth-bass pound, another "whoosh", then a synth "twinkle" sound, also used in the second KVC Video logo. On the 1984 Betamax of Styx: Caught in the Act, it had a crowd cheering over the logo.

Availability: Very rare. This logo was seen on releases such as Raffi concert videos (e.g. Raffi in Concert with the Rise & Shine Band), Sharon, Lois, & Bram's Elephant Show videos, and the Lamb Chop videos.