Stupid Product Placements
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I know that the movie industry has to get advertising support; it’s a fact of life. I liked the way MacDonald’s was handled in the Fifth Element, updated and Lexxified, and we are all used to seeing the brand name on computer shots. [b]But[/b]…
For some reason this grates on me. The only reason the chick in Blade: Trinity listens to music while “hunting” is so that they can plug the Ipod over and over and over. [i]The entire movie seems to be a commercial for Ipod.[/i]
I would have liked to have seen more Blade in it than Ipod, but that’s just me.
Okay, anyone else have a gripe about a ridiculous product placement ruining your suspension of disbelief? Anyone?
83
What? You don’t like ‘The Thruman Show’ style product placement?
The studios make big money, and with TiVo I have heard that this iis going to be on a big upswing since people can now zip past their commericals.
After watching so many shows where they go out of their way to tear off and cover up labels, it’s almost impossible not to notice. What I find funny is seeing it in older movies.
I was watching an old Clint Eastwood movie from the 70s called “The Gauntlet” the other night.
During a high speed chase a can of 7-up was shown throughout the entire chase. with the label facing the camera. Even when the actors heads turned the can stayed glued. Later on there were billboards and all.
Tivo is the reason the promos invaded the bottom of the screen during broadcasts.
Here’s another one: AFLAC duck in Lemony Snicket
In one of the Killer Tomatoes movies a cereal box floats up into the screen….
Soooo, do you think CNN will pick up on this for their footage? 😀
83
theBrother was watching ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ with Bruce Willis while I was wrestling his computer back into shape. I noticed when Oz the denist was talking to the killers wife in a cafe they had a soda can promently placed….. and moved it when they switched the camera angle!
[quote=”pet”]
Okay, anyone else have a gripe about a ridiculous product placement ruining your suspension of disbelief? Anyone?
83[/quote]I was watching “The Matrix Reloaded” Friday evening and found myself laughing at an obvious promo. I then recalled this thread so I thought I’d contribute.
The chase scene in “Reloaded”: Morpheus, Trinity and the key maker come flying out of the parking garage in the new Cadiliac “sports” car. The Caddy crest/ logo was damn near center-screen for a cool 3-4 seconds in slo-mo.
Also, the two albino rastafari guys were in hot pursuit in, you guessed it, a new caddy Escalade. It is also interesting to note all the competitors, er I mean bystander cars (BMW, for instance) that get trashed so prominently 😉
[quote=”YOWAYYO”][quote=”pet”]
Okay, anyone else have a gripe about a ridiculous product placement ruining your suspension of disbelief? Anyone?
83[/quote]I was watching “The Matrix Reloaded” Friday evening and found myself laughing at an obvious promo. I then recalled this thread so I thought I’d contribute.
The chase scene in “Reloaded”: Morpheus, Trinity and the key maker come flying out of the parking garage in the new Cadiliac “sports” car. The Caddy crest/ logo was damn near center-screen for a cool 3-4 seconds in slo-mo.
Also, the two albino rastafari guys were in hot pursuit in, you guessed it, a new caddy Escalade. It is also interesting to note all the competitors, er I mean bystander cars (BMW, for instance) that get trashed so prominently :wink:[/quote]
Lol, I also noticed this exactly. Only took 4-6 bullets to incapacitate the other cars, while Trinity and the Wraith Twins took about 1500 rounds.
24 does it too. Think they’re Fords.
[quote=”pet”]I know that the movie industry has to get advertising support; it’s a fact of life. I liked the way MacDonald’s was handled in the Fifth Element, updated and Lexxified, and we are all used to seeing the brand name on computer shots. [b]But[/b]…
For some reason this grates on me. The only reason the chick in Blade: Trinity listens to music while “hunting” is so that they can plug the Ipod over and over and over. [i]The entire movie seems to be a commercial for Ipod.[/i]
I would have liked to have seen more Blade in it than Ipod, but that’s just me.
Okay, anyone else have a gripe about a ridiculous product placement ruining your suspension of disbelief? Anyone?
83[/quote]
Hey at least they didn’t play that god forsaken overplayed U2 song everytime the iPOD was popped out.
I-Robot (Converse I believe – the shoes….not only does he hold it up and say the name but the year!)
The obious one in I Robot is of course US Robotics. How much more obvoius can you get?
On the other side of the argument, (or am I just very naive?) the use of known brands can add a sense or realism to a Sci-fi setting giving the audience a feeling of connection with the story that you cannot get otherwise. Would not work in Lexx though or Farscape.
I could see things going too far; what if the processor from Terminator had been picked up by Microsoft instead of the fictional Skynet?
Chances are noone here has seen it, but something that bugged me in the movie Left Behind was that they carefully covered or blurred all Sony logos on TVs, monitors etc. but there’s a laptop with a massively oversized Toshiba logo.
Fun can be had [url=http://anime.thenexxus.org/prodmis/]the flip side[/url] however..
[quote=”LexLurker”]24 does it too. Think they’re Fords.[/quote]
Although I’m in the UK and you Yanks (no offence, I actually use it as a term of endearment ) have differnt cars out there, I beleve the model was Taurus? (unless I’m very mistaken, which I probably am (and sorry to any offended Americans))
SG Atlantis- the ep titled “Home”
While Sheppard was at his house with Teyla, they decided to crack open a coupla brews- Coors original (gold label.) Teyla even did the classic “bottoms up” as she stood chugging her beer with the label conveniently toward the camera.
Soon after that, Sheppard (standing on the right-side of the screen) slowly glanced around his house as he grew suspicious of their situation, but that’s another story. A nice, black Calloway golf bag was just behind him to the left the entire time he did this. It was like a mini-blitz of adverts. I wonder if I missed any more?
I really don’t care that this sort of placement is done. It’ just that I went from figuring out what was afoot in the episode to “Oh, look! Stupid product placements for me to note on Sadgeezer!” Anyway, I don’t like Coors and I don’t play golf well enough for me to run right out and blow all kinds of $$$ on Calloways so there.
[quote=”YOWAYYO”]SG Atlantis- the ep titled “Home”
While Sheppard was at his house with Teyla, they decided to crack open a coupla brews- Coors original (gold label.) Teyla even did the classic “bottoms up” as she stood chugging her beer with the label conveniently toward the camera.
[/quote]
The funny thing about that is that in SG1 Season Two, O’Neill at the start of one episode is seen taking a case of Heineken Beer (not Coors) into his house. The scene opens with a slow shot of the Heineken sitting on the seat of his vehicle.
Whatever, whether i drink or not I don’t like product placement.
It detracts from the film and is invasive and crazymaking for people.
…
I can see the future here for everyone in daily life and it is not pleasant… Product placement on every medium personlly tailored to each of us. Radios calling out our names, electronic billboards changing to our names coded by our identity cards and targeting our marketing profiles kept in corporate databases.Edit: what was the movie that showed this at an airport with the protagaonist being deluged by holograms? Total Recall?
[quote=”Shiroekitsune”]I-Robot (Converse I believe – the shoes….not only does he hold it up and say the name but the year!)[/quote]
Not only that but Will Smith endorsed the product and took sime time to do so, while talking to his shoes or himself, , i think saying how comfortable they were or how he had looked for them a long time.
—–Let’s also not forget that I, Robot was a total betrayal of Asimov’s concept, or to make it even worse, a misrepresentation since few knew his original vision in the first place and this serves to bury Asimov.
Also, a side note here, the movie producers did the same thing to Ursula’s “Earthsea”, the director refusing to work with a native people’s cast, saying he found it hard to work with “those people”.
——————-You know what this reminds me of?… It reminds me of the Jim Carrie movie”the Truman Show” where his whole life is on camera and his wife keeps looking toward the camera and plugging products and Jim’s mind is just blown, he can’t figure who she is talking to.
Edit: I see Frey already made the connection or rather defined this phenomenon.
[quote=”7th_Dizbuster”]The obious one in I Robot is of course US Robotics. How much more obvoius can you get?
On the other side of the argument, (or am I just very naive?) the use of known brands can add a sense or realism to a Sci-fi setting giving the audience a feeling of connection with the story that you cannot get otherwise. Would not work in Lexx though or Farscape.
I could see things going too far; what if the processor from Terminator had been picked up by Microsoft instead of the fictional Skynet?[/quote]
No, that is not realism, that is brainwashing. In reality we don’t stare long at product labels, blur out other labels from our vision nor listen to friends give long testimonials about products.
…
Fiction is fiction but it also creates reality. It can influence us to be sane wholistic, growth oriented or as dysfunctional, neurotic, manipulable beings.[quote=”7th_Dizbuster”]The obious one in I Robot is of course US Robotics. How much more obvoius can you get?
Yeah but hang on I thought US Robotics is an original Asimov creation i.e. a name of a fictional company thats been filched by a real company. Been a long time since I read the books anyone know for sure?
[quote=”corvina”][quote=”7th_Dizbuster”]The obious one in I Robot is of course US Robotics. How much more obvoius can you get?
Yeah but hang on I thought US Robotics is an original Asimov creation i.e. a name of a fictional company thats been filched by a real company. Been a long time since I read the books anyone know for sure?[/quote]
Asimov’s original name for the company was:
“US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.”“US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. was the major manufacturer of robots in the 21st century in Isaac Asimov’s fictional Robot Series. Dr Susan Calvin, the chief robopsychologist at US Robots is the main character in many of Asimov’s short stories, usually dealing with robot problems in the lab. In other robot stories Greg Powell and Mike Donovan, field specialists for the company, try to solve robot issues in the field.
The modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics appears to have been named after this fictional corporation.”
———————
“U.S. Robotics (popularly nicknamed USR), based in Schaumburg, Illinois and founded in 1976, is a company that makes computer modems and related technologies.”“The name for the company is a reference to Isaac Asimov, who is widely credited with inventing the term robotics, and whose Robot stories featured a fictional company named U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men. The 2004 Will Smith movie I, Robot, loosely based on Asimov’s works and set in Chicago, uses U.S. Robotics as the name of the fictional robot manufacturer. The film’s U.S. Robotics corporate logo resembles a former real-life USR logo.”
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From Wikipedia.
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