A&M Video

Credits

Descriptions by
V of Doom and Mr. Logo

Captures by
ThatLogoDude, LogoMaxEntertainment, and deanstewartrumsey

Video captures courtesy of
DudeThatLogo and osdatabase

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)

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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 it fades out.

Variants:

• A black-and-white variant was sometimes used.
• There were filmed and videotaped variants.
• A short version exists where it skips over the "snapshot" part.
• The logo may fade out as soon as it stops zooming in the first time.
• On Amy Grant: Age to Age, "PRESENTS" fades in when the logo finishes zooming in the first time, and then fades out when the logo zooms in a 2nd time.
• On the 1984 Betamax release of Styx: Caught in the Act, the logo starts off of a slow-motion shot of a crowd raising their hands in the air (taken from the concert video possibly) as 3 rows of squares slide over the footage, in which they also zoom in. The squares have colored static in them, with the top being yellow, the middle blue, and the bottom red. As the squares zoom in, the blue squares are the only thing left we see as a single square featuring the A&M Video logo, but with the logo in orange with a red outline, and 2 static squares around it. The footage fades to a black background, followed by the static fading out. It pauses for a second before the logo zooms in, and the "A&M" fades out.
• 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.

Editor's Note: A cool logo concept with solid execution, thus making it a favorite of some.