| Logorama | |
| Director: | François Alaux Hervé de Crécy Ludovic Houplain |
| Producer: | Autour de Minuit |
| Starring: | Bob Stephenson David Fincher Aja Evans Sherman Augustus Joel Michaely Matt Winston |
| Music: | Bryan Ray Turcotte Dayna Turcotte |
| Editing: | Samuel Danési |
| Studio: | H5 Autour de Minuit Productions Little Minx Films Mikros Image |
| Distributor: | Cinema Public Films (France) |
| Runtime: | 16 minutes |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | English French |
Logorama is a 2009 French adult animated crime black comedy short film produced by the French graphic design and animation studio H5 as their first and only animated project. Co-written and directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain,[1] the film is set in a stylized version of Los Angeles and portrays various events as being told entirely through the extensive use of more than 2,000 contemporary and historical company logos and mascots.[2] The short's voice cast consists of Bob Stephenson, David Fincher, Aja Evans, Sherman Augustus, Joel Michaely, Matt Winston, Gregory J. Pruss, Josh Eichenbaum, Jaime Ray Newman and Andrew Kevin Walker.
Upon its release on May 20, 2009 in Cannes, Logorama has received numerous awards and nominations, including winning both the Kodak Discovery Award for Best Short Film (the Kodak Prix) at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival[3] and the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 82nd Academy Awards the following year.[4]
In Los Angeles, California the buildings and inhabitants are commercial branding: Birds are in the form of Bentley and Aston Martin logos and MSN's butterfly; pedestrians are in the shape of the AIM icon; and overhead highway signs are mounted on Atlantic Records logos, among others. The Original Pringles mascot pulls into a Pizza Hut restaurant's parking lot and propositions an Esso waitress on a smoking break. Meanwhile, BiC Boy students alongside Bob's Big Boy and Haribo Boy are on a tour at a zoo led by Mr. Clean; hating the tour, Big Boy and Haribo Boy hop off the tour train and soon begin to harass the MGM lion by mooning and throwing a bottle of Coca-Cola at it, prompting the zoo's owner, the Jolly Green Giant, to scold them.
As Michelin Man police officers Mitch and Mike order lunch at KFC, a call comes in over the radio stating that a criminal named Ronald McDonald is on the loose on a red delivery truck; the police chase Ronald in his truck. Many innocent bystanders are imperiled/injured. Meanwhile, the students on tour are back on the school bus, nearing the Pizza Hut where Esso Girl is serving the Original Pringles mascot and the Pringles Hot & Spicy mascot. Ronald swerves to avoid the school bus and crashes his truck over in front of the Pizza Hut. Several guns and biological weapons then spill out of the back of the truck, tempting Big Boy and Haribo Boy to steal and sell them at the black market. Ronald gets out of the truck and knocks out Haribo Boy with his foot, before taking Big Boy hostage and running inside the Pizza Hut. Big Boy frees himself by biting Ronald in the arm, before running for cover behind the counter with Esso Girl while an enraged Ronald attempts to shoot him. The police are given the excuse to start firing on Ronald, but Ronald kills one of the police officers.
As the gunfight ensues in the streets, a low rumbling is heard across Los Angeles, resulting in a giant earthquake erupting and opening a fissure shaped like Microsoft's Xbox logo that splits the streets wide open. Big Boy and Esso Girl escape the rapidly collapsing Pizza Hut using a hijacked police car while the Original Pringles mascot and the Pringles Hot & Spicy mascot are both crushed inside. After shooting Mitch with his gun, Ronald rides through the city on a stolen Grease 2 motorcycle, but drives into a fallen Weight Watchers sign and is thrown off, sliding and falling into a crevasse shaped like the Zenith Electronics logo. As he pulls himself back up, he is run over by Esso Girl and Big Boy, who barely escape the city and speed along a curved highway shaped like the Vaio logo. As the duo near the Hollywood Chewing Gum Hollywood Sign, it falls apart and sends the giant letters crashing onto the highway in front of them. While evading one of the letters, the duo veer off the highway and down a hill, finally crashing into a tree shaped like the American Century Investments logo. Petroleum suddenly erupts and floods Los Angeles.
The hill Esso Girl and Big Boy are stranded on splits into two, revealing a giant North Face logo while the land crumbles around them, swallowed by the sea and leaving the duo on a tiny island together. Esso Girl bites a colored Apple Inc. logo while lying down on the island alongside Big Boy. Southern California and the Baja California peninsula are shown to be separated from mainland and is now shaped like the Nike logo.
Logorama explores the extent that logos are embedded in Earth's daily existence. H5 members explained: "Logorama presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks that are destroyed by a series of natural disasters (including an earthquake and a tidal wave of oil). Logotypes are used to describe an alarming universe (similar to the one that we are living in) with all the graphic signs that accompany us in our lives. This over-organized universe is violently transformed by the cataclysm becoming fantastic and absurd. It shows the victory of the creative against the rational, where nature and human fantasy triumph."[5]
The entirety of Logorama features numerous brand images, mascots and logos as the characters, props, locations, vehicles and other content. Notable uses include McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald being depicted as a criminal reminiscent of the Joker, Michelin Men being depicted as the police, and the Esso Oil Drop Girl being depicted as a waitress in a diner. However, some of the logos are also derived from fictional brands, such as Slurm from Futurama, the Ghostbusters logo, and the Buy-N-Large (BnL) logo from WALL-E.
Logorama has received the following award and nominations:
The Simpsons episode "A Tree Grows in Springfield" (season 24, episode 6) ends with a vignette inspired by Logorama, called Logomania.[6]
A catalog inspired by the short, titled Logobook and written by the film's co-director Ludovic Houplain, was published by Taschen in 2013.[7]