We’ve all seen product placement in films. We’ve also seen products whose identities were obscured. When working on low-budget or student films, we’ve always taken care not to show product names on-screen. Why? With product placement, the company gives some sort of support (monetary or product) to the production; an din exchange, the product is seen on-screen. But why avoid showing a product for which the production has not been paid?
I can understand it if the product is shown in a bad light. A company might be sore about that. But what about ‘incidental’ products?
For example, most of the 35mm SLR cameras I’ve seen on-screen have had their nameplates obscured (often by a bit of black tape). What’s the deal? Does Nikon or Olympus or whoever really care if someone in a film uses their camera? Suppose the film is successful, and the hero or heroine is using the latest and greatest Nikon. Seems like free advertising to me. It’s possible that someone watching the film may be considering buying a camera. Or maybe they hadn’t thought about it, and seeing the camera in the film inspires them to get one. They say, ‘Hey, I think I’ll buy a Nikon!’ Could happen.
What I’m getting at is this: Some props are just props. If someone is driving a car, they use the car that is available for the shoot. If they are in the kitchen, they’ll have various food products that can be identified by their labels or shapes. If someone needs a camcorder, they might pick up a Sony Handicam. But it could be anything. I’m not talking about using a product like ‘Okay, I’m picking up a bottle of Coke® – it’s The Real Thing!’, but ‘The character is drinking a soft drink.’ Or, getting back to the camera thing (because I tend to notice when they put the black tape on the front), ‘The Spy takes a photo of his target.’ – Not ‘The Spy takes a photo of his target with a Nikon F3HP equipped with a Nikon high-speed MD-4 motor drive and a Nikon 500mm telephoto lens.’
What are the issues with showing an actual product being used in a film?
If you ever want to sell the movie to a distribution company, or a TV network, that has an advertising contract with the product’s competitor, they won’t be happy to see the free advertising.
(1) The producers don’t wanna promote someone’s product if they’re not getting paid to promote it.
(2) The producers don’t wanna get sued for showing someone’s product in a negative light.
In Goodfellas, there’s a freeze-frame of an airline ticket envelope with the logo clearly blacked out. When I saw the film in an early test screening, the logo was plainly visible. I can only assume that American Airlines didn’t want their logo to be used in association with drug trafficking, which was the context of the scene.
There was a previous thread regarding this issue on the show Mythbusters, which seems to obscure corporate logos willy-nilly. Except the Corvette. Nobody had a clear answer regarding the Corvette.
Another reason:
I’ve noticed that most of the time when a logo is blacked out, it would seem like a paid product placement to the viewer if it wasn’t blacked out. If I was a director, I would not want the audience to think that I got paid for product placement, especially when I didn’t. For some people it cheapens the whole film even if they just think that there is paid product placement.
Personally, I think it cheapens a movie when a name is blacked out. It makes me think, ‘Wow. These guys are too cheap to make a proper prop, so they just blacked out the name.’ Turning again to cameras, this practice is especially annoying because all 35mm SLRs I’m familiar with have the brand name right up front. Covering it up with a piece of tape looks cheap and lazy. A little filler and a little silver (or black, as appropriate) paint would make the front of the prism look like a plain pice of metal. Tape makes it look like they’re trying to cover up the name.
Now, I’d be thrilled to get paid for product placement. (I need a gallon jug of vodka for an upcoming project. I wonder if I can get someone to pay me to use their brand?) But I’d rather show products as they are than to disguise them, even if I’m not paid to do it.
Agreed. I don’t mind some unobtrusive little logos here and there, but typically when a product has been “placed” in a film it’s so blatant and so annoying that it really interferes with my enjoyment of the movie. Like in pretty typical flicks like In Good Company where, rather than naturally saying, “let’s order pizza,” they’re like, “let’s all enjoy a reasonably priced pizza-product from America’s favorite pizza chain with over 1,500 nationwide locations and free delivery, Domino’s Pizza,” followed by a long and awkward shot of a pizza box before the family digs in.
What happens if you want to use a product that is distinctive even without the logo?
If my movie has people driving around in a two-seater subcompact car, there’s a good chance it will be a Smart Fortwo, which is immediately identifiable, simply because there are not a lot of choices in that market segment, and the Fortwo is visually distinctive. There would seem to be no way to use the car without it seeming like a product placement.
And what happens if you try for a product placement, the maker says no to a deliberate placement, and there are no alternative products that do the same thing? Can you still use the product?
How does this apply to places? I mean, say your location is a strip plaza. There are going to be stores around. Do you have to blank out or replace all the logos that you don’t have specific permission to use?
I cam out of my apartment one day about two years ago to go to work and found the little plaza across the road blocked off and swat cars all over the place and a chopper hovering in the sky… it was a film shoot. But I was panicking there for a moment.
I recall seeing in a TV show a few years ago a scene where the main characters were stuck in traffic in a Ford Mustang. Well, I’m not really sure it was a Mustang because they covered the logo in the grill with a bit of black tape, so I guess it could have been any car.
With regard to T.V. shows, as opposed to movies, the key factor is that the shows are being sold to advertisers. It’s difficult to get Coke to sponsor a show in which the characters are drinking Pepsi. It’s far easier just to block out the offending products – unless there’s a sponsorship deal, or the particular product is essential to the storyline.
ElvisL1ves is probably correct that a filmmaker who might eventually want his film shown on television would routinely cover non-sponsored logos just in case.
huh? What the hell country are you from? What the hell’s a Smart Fortwo, or a Smart for that matter.
Okay, I know the answers to that, but for the most part, 99% of all other North Americans don’t know the answer to that. I’d think that’d go for Ontarians, too, no?
Balthisar, this is a Smart (the Mexican site). This car is made by an arm of DaimlerChrysler, and is not yet officially sold in the USA. I believe there are some third-party importers there though.
I know when I’ve worked doing some layouts and shoots for my company, the graphic designer is pretty particular about product placement in some of our shoots. We took a picture of a ball game we sponsored, and McDonnalds had a billboard up. In the picture he went and edited out the golden arches. I don’t know the exact reason, but there must be a good one, because time is money after all.
My WAG is that the producer went to the Brandname® and said, “If you’ll pay me, I’ll use your brand on screen.” Brandname said no, so the logo was covered to say, “FU for not paying me.”
In the first Spider-Man movie, when Peter Parker is at the hospital and suddenly realises that Mary Jane may be in trouble, he goes to call her and gets her answerphone. Take a careful look at that phone. There’s a little square that was carefully digitally recoloured so as to hide the AT&T logo. You can barely notice it unless you look at it.
That was, so I believe, because product placement was actually withdrawn during post-production.
I originally read this article on the Reuters website, but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore. Generic or altered products always annoyed me; for me, it always interfered with the realism of any given scene.
Which is why I started this thread. It bothers me, too, that products always have their labels turned away or obscured. It just doesn’t happen like that in life.
If I’m reading the article correctly, it seems that I can use actual products without having to worry about obscuring their origins (as long as I didn’t intentionally show them in a bad light, which might anger the company enough to sue).
The Adventures of Pete and Pete handled this well. They invented a conglomerate, and the props department made up labels for all products so that they’d be products of the conglomerate. So there was a Krebmaster flashlight, Krebstar creamed corn, and even Kreb Scouts instead of Girl Scouts. It both got around the product placement dilemma and added to the strangeness of the Pete and Pete world.