Looking back at a century of bugs

January 8th, 2009 at 02:24pm Will Pfeifer

Over at his Web site, David Bordwell examines the history of what he calls “bugs” — those annoying little logos that appear at the bottom and in the corners of your TV screen to remind you (as if you’d forget) what channel or show you happen to be watching…

Like the above image proves, even a channel aimed at movie lovers (in this case IFC)  isn’t above using them.

What I found amazing about Bordwell’s post, though, is proof that these sort of things happened long, long ago — before the invention of TV, in fact. Producers, eager to stop their movies from being pirated, put company logos on the intertitles of silent films. Then, realizing that replacing those titles was easy for would-be pirates, they went a step further — and put the logos on the sets of the movies themselves…

That “AB” under the window is the logo for American Biograph, the company that produced this 1911 film, WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD?  Bordwell has lots of other examples, complete with handy frame blow-ups, over at his site. Check it out if you want to learn something about the movies you probably never even suspected.

Images courtesy of David Bordwell’s site.

Entry Filed under: Movie history