Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Digital Tech and the Re-Birth of Product Placement

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the making-the-world-worse dept.

pbahra writes "When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap—where do you think the sobriquet soap opera came from—to deliver his line. Perhaps to save all of us the artistic murder, the practice was prohibited in Europe, but recently the prohibition has been relaxed and a U.K. start up is offering digital producers the chance to inject products realistically in post production with full directorial control. The problem with existing physical product placement is that there are no clear business plans, and the process is incredibly slow. In Europe, legal constraints prohibit directors from re-writing scripts to include products, so any placement has to be done at the creative stage."

2 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't bad... by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Product placement isn't bad when it works with the story. For example, a horror movie isn't ruined because at a party they have a box of Pizza Hut pizza and are playing on a PS3. On the other hand, bad product placement can ruin character development, for example, showing what is supposed to be a poor family having a top-of-the line Mac in their kitchen.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:Isn't bad... by grimmjeeper · · Score: 5, Informative

      Natural placement of branded items isn't always a bad thing. It can make the story that much more believable. I find that the products with labels that are deliberately nothing like anything in the real world can actually be distracting. With the dialog, it's far more natural for an actor to ask for a Coke or Pepsi than to say "I'd like a cola."

      But the best product placement in a movie had to be "Wayne's World". They did an entire scene about how they didn't want to sell out to advertisers. Of course, the scene was shot with as many product placements as possible while they were talking about selling out to advertisers. They even mimicked the commercials of some of the products. Garth dressed head to toe in Reebok gear saying "It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad." had to be the funniest part of that scene.