Developing Film Names (and Production companies)

With our genre of psychological thrillers we found that film titles had subtle links to the subject matter (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, A Clockwork Orange, Requiem For A Dream) as oppose to that of other genres such as slasher films Halloween, Scream, Nightmare on Elm St etc. We wanted an original name, we could suggest the theme of the film but in an indirect manner.

Our initial ideas were:

Fools Paradise
Driving
The Unbalanced Mind
Human Traces
Bats in the Belfry
The Troubled Mind
Out To Lunch
Painful Minds

We narrowed it down to Human Traces, Bats In The Belfry, and Out To Lunch before deciding upon our final working title of "A Bat In The Belfry". We felt that Out To Lunch, though meaning crazy, had too much of a Rom-Com sound to it and this is what audience feedback seem to concur, and Human Traces felt too murder/suspense thriller as proven by later research on IMDB finding that "The Human Trace" was a 2008 thriller.
"Bats In The Belfry" was refined to "A Bat In The Belfry" as it sounded more catchy and filmic, but also as it signifies our character isn't completely insane...only slightly. The term means "crazy" so fits well for our theme, but as with our researched films is more subtle. Research on IMDB found that "Bats In The Belfry" was a 1942 musical (link) and also a 1960 Woody Woodpecker episode (link)  so we were all clear to use "A Bat In The Belfry" as our title.

Below is our original logo for the film:

 We designed the logo using Adobe Photoshop. We really wanted to signify a level of sophistication through the film logo, so chose a serif font
to create a serious styling. We also rearranged the layout of the films into a more sophisticated, artistic fashion and this is a technique often seen with film logos. We felt that being more creative with the text's layout would allow an artistic appeal, whilst sticking to a very simple colour scheme of black and white would help maintain the cold, serious look.

Our initial ideas for the main production company were:

Aspect Media
Muse Productions
Panorama Films
Element Films
Vista
Scope Pictures
Polaroid
Blackout Pictures
Vertigo Films
Scape Media
Mask Films

We cut this list down to a final four of Element Films, Blackout Pictures, Vertigo Films, and Polaroid Films.

Our initial ideas for a distribution company was "SIMPLAZ Distribution" coming from the phrase "Simple As" implying the small independent company.