The Trout Parade 2015

INTRODUCING THE REIGNING MISS BEAVERKILL & OUR VERY FIRST FLOAT

Thank you to Elizabeth Ennis and Jonathan Charles Fox for the photos.

A New Look

We haven’t even opened for business and already Beaverkill Studio has a new, updated logo. The first logo gave a hipster wink to our upstate location and the 1950’s, the glory days of the Catskills and the style of the Borscht Belt beauties, resorts - like Grossinger's and the Concord. It was a mid centurymodern design in robins egg blue and brown created by a fabulous artist & friend in NYC.

The first business card read “Opening Summer 2013.” And my first take that Beaverkill Studio would entail some remodeling soon morphed into the fact that the building needed a gut renovation. Two years later, I am proud to announce - this August - yes, 2015, Beaverkill Studio will open for business on Main St in downtown Parksville, NY. Of course, if we are swept away by a tornado… well, in that case, we will open in Oz - August 2015.

Our logo has also evolved. As the vision for Beaverkill Studio has matured, the new logo reflects our journey to an enriched sense of purpose and direction. In exchange for the blue that leisurely intersected our original logo to evoke the streams and fly fishing for which we named the studio, now, there is green to   evince the Catskill forest backdrop and our green cyclorama.

It is a “get it done now” chromakey green, a symbol of growth and production. The initials, BKS, play on the familiar call letters of the dinosaurs of production, networks like ABC, CBS, HBO, TCM and … TMZ. Whereas those network studios used to be centered in Hollywood or NYC, now, production happens upstate, in Sullivan county.

The “BKS” font draws inspiration from mid-century art movements - the clean, industrial focus of Constructivism, the streamlined Modernism, and the creative Arts & Crafts Movements such as Byrdclyffe - here in our Hudson Valley. For me, in the design of the initials I see the images of Lights and Cameras, and the Action of filmmaking: partly a visual manifestation of our tagline “Shoot. Edit. Stay.” Even looking at the logo, I see that filming is going on.

The font of “Beaverkill Studio” is inspired by Saul Bass, while the bottom font of “Shoot. Edit. Stay.” nods to the deco past of the “Golden Age of Hollywood.” Bass is the genius behind many well known corporate logos but is even better known for his work on film title designs and credit sequences - including one I watched over and over again as a kid - the one starring every Borscht Belt comedian EVER, “It’s A Mad Mad Mad World.”

It is a new dawn, the rising sun lighting our green screen stage. Our Studio provides a working retreat suitable for today’s Mad Men and a production equivalent of the Apple Genius bar.

Please feel free to indulge in your free-association with our new logo, and share your visions with us. Can you tell the background is chocolate Brown rather than black? I’ve always called it Hershey’s brown (referring to the chocolate bar wrap) - one of my favorite shades. And for further inspiration, come by for a tour of our soon to be open Studio.

Finally, credit for this great new logo goes to the design team & geniuses behind Green Door Magazine, Akira Ohiso and Ellie Ohiso of OHISO. They are also the brawn behind our new website. And a thanks also is due to Louie Petraglia for his very “key” suggestion.

Stay tuned for news of our upcoming Opening Celebration.

We're Under Construction...

…but while we're at it, have a look at some of our plans!