Spyglass Entertainment

Background
Spyglass Entertainment was a production company founded by Roger Birnbaum and Gary Barber in 1998 after the former left Caravan Pictures. In 2010, Barber and Birnbaum became co-Chairs and co-CEOs of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, just as the company was recovering from bankruptcy, and due to that Spyglass's releases became heavily scaled back before bowing out entirely in early 2012.

(June 4, 1999-February 10, 2012)
Logo: We see an ocean environment with mountains in the background on a portable telescope. The ocean then disappears, revealing that a man is looking through the telescope to the right on the background. "Serif", in the Spectrum MT font and with a transparent 3D glass texture, appears from behind the mountains and moves above the man. Then a box zooms out, surrounding him on a black screen with "Serif" wiping in at the bottom.

Variants:
 * On Instinct (the first movie to use this logo), "Serif" appears in plain 2D (sans glass texture) from behind the mountains.
 * On movies shot in 2.39:1 scope, the logo zooms out towards the end to fit the aspect ratio. Some movies, like Eight Below, Stay Alive, Underdog, Evan Almighty and The Love Guru use the 16:9 version cropped to 2.39:1.
 * A fullscreen open-matte version exists and was seen on 4:3 prints of Dinner for Schmucks.
 * On 4:3 fullscreen prints of films shot in 2.39:1 scope starting with Reign of Fire, the logo zooms out to a much farther distance than usual.
 * Starting in 2010, coinciding with the music change, the glass texture on the "Serif" text is replaced with a shiny /white 3D lettering with a golden outline, and the water ripples on the ocean are more realistic.
 * On widescreen 16:9 movies with the above variant, the mountains appear further away.
 * On No Strings Attached, the logo cuts, rather than fades, to black.
 * On the TV show Miracles, the logo is shortened to the final few seconds.

Technique: Live action and CGI animation by Picturemill.

Music/Sounds: Either a wonderful dramatic piano/string tune (composed by Randy Edelman, who also composed the fanfare for Spyglass's predecessor, Caravan Pictures), silent or the opening theme of the movie.

Music/Sounds Variants:
 * On The Sixth Sense, the sounds of the water waving and water splashes are added.
 * On The Count of Monte Cristo and Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, the last note is trimmed to fit the logo's duration.
 * On The Invisible, the string portion of the theme plays about a second early.
 * On 27 Dresses, the theme is re-orchestrated and in a different key, segueing into the opening theme of the movie.
 * In 2010, starting with Leap Year, the theme is re-orchestrated again; it sounds more powerful and in a higher key than the above one.
 * On AMC's print of Shanghai Noon, the theme is low-pitched.
 * On the TV show Miracles, 4 piano notes from the theme are heard.

Availability: Very common. It's seen on films produced by Spyglass from 1999 to 2012. It also appeared on the company's website.