Weston Woods

Background

Weston Woods is a production company founded in 1953 by Morton Schindel, that produces animated short films and audiobooks based on well-known children's books. The company was acquired in 1996 by Scholastic. The company did not use a logo until 1954.

1st Logo (1954-1996)

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Nicknames: "The Trees", "Blue W"

Logo: On a black background, we see three green, stylized trees, with two blue Vs connected together, from the left to right tree, resembling a "W". The lowercase words "weston woods presents" or "a weston woods release" are seen below.

Variants:

• For the "presents" variant, said word can be either beside or below "weston woods".
• Sometimes a copyright symbol is placed after "weston woods".
• A filmed version exists.
• On early shorts we see different text that says "produced by morton schindel at weston woods studios weston, connecticut, u.s.a.".
• A black and white version exists of this variant can be found on Millions of Cats.
• An early version of said variant has "connecticut" shortened to "conn."

FX/SFX: None.

Music/Sounds: None, or the closing theme of the short.

Availability: Seen on early Weston Woods shorts (including those from Gene Deitch/Rembrandt Films) starting with their first film, Andy and the Lion.

2nd Logo (1996-)

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Nicknames: "The Trees II", "Blue W II," "The 3 Blue W Trees"

Logo: On a black background, we see the stylized trees from before, now slightly amended and in a darker green color, zoom up. Then, a flash occurs in in the middle of the trees, turning the middle section into a sky blue "W". The words "weston woods presents" or "a weston woods release" fade in below.

Variants:

• On later videos, the logo used the 2003 Scholastic logo.
• Starting in 2011, the logo is in widescreen and it was enhanced.

FX/SFX: The logo forming.

Music/Sounds: A piano stinger is heard during the Scholastic logo, which then turns into a whimsical folk theme.

Music/Sounds Trivia: An extended version of this theme would later be used as the background music to an intro used on later Scholastic Video Collection and Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVDs.

Availability: Common on many Weston Woods videos and DVDs, starting with Harry the Dirty Dog. The 2003 variant can be seen on their later videos and Cinedigm DVD releases.