Posted on 03/03/2020 11:32:35 PM PST by Swordmaker
In an interview with Vanity Fair today, Rian Johnson, who directed the popular movie "Knives Out," shared an interesting tidbit about iPhone product placement deals for films. Apple, he says, allows iPhones to be used in movies, but bad guys aren't allowed to have iPhones on camera.
The relevant passage starts at 2:50 into the video
Also another funny thing, I don't know if I should say this or not... Not cause it's like lascivious or something, but because it's going to screw me on the next mystery movie that I write, but forget it, I'll say it. It's very interesting.
Apple... they let you use iPhones in movies but -- and this is very pivotal if you're ever watching a mystery movie - bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.
So oh nooooooo, every single filmmaker that has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now. Apple is known for having strict rules about how devices are used, portrayed, and photographed. As part of its guidelines for using Apple trademarks and copyrights, for example, Apple says that Apple products should only be shown "in the best light, in a manner or context that reflects favorably on the Apple products and on Apple Inc."
As noted by our forum members, people have in the past pointed out that it's the good guys that use Apple products in TV shows in movies. When "24" was on the air, Wired wrote about a fan theory that the good guys use Macs while the bad guys use PCs, which turned out to be accurate.
Given this tidbit from Johnson, who is a well-respected director, many people may be watching movies with a much keener eye on the devices that actors and actresses are using to suss out hidden details.
Thanks for the mature, non-homi
nem counter-argument. Such well-reasoned discourse is always enlightening.
If Apple thinks they can control what I do with my phone after I bought it (assuming I’d buy one of those overpriced toys), they’re nuts. I doubt I would ever have occasion to use an Apple product in a public way to make money, but I’d be more inclined to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Not if it’s an identifiable brand. Crazy, I know, but watch and see how often brand name stuff is obscured in TV shows and movies these days, or a no-name generic you’ve never heard of, say a breakfast cereal called "Big Oatie-Os", is used. There are reasons for that.
A big one is that unless the product is explicitly placed by and with the manufacturers’ permission, in this litigious society a plaintiff could sue claiming they were inspired to buy and use that product due to their seeing it used by their favorite character using it in the movie, and were either injured by it, or it didn’t perform as it did in the movie, holding the producers and/or the product maker responsible.
Used under control of the manufacturer, their phone does only what it’s designed to do. Used without that control, the filmmaker, waxing creative, has it shown, newly purchased, out-of-the-box, with amazing abilities such as built-in radar, sonar, and through-the-wall x-Ray 3D video. Idiot disappointed buyer sues the manufacturer because his newly purchased, out-of-the-box phone does none of those things he just saw it do.
Even though it’s a frivolous suit, the suit has to be defended against, and that costs the manufacturer and movie company attorneys fees to file an answer. Multiply by a few dozen such idiots. . . Such are the pipe dreams of attorneys who make certain it doesn’t happen at both production and product end, because both can be sued if they don’t cover their collective asses.
Obviously facts and law mean nothing to you. Are sure you are on the right forum?
"Overpriced toys"? Really? Thanks for proving my point about your ignorance on Apple products. That says more about your trolling purpose and ignorance, not to mention your opinion of your superior purchasing choices in this thread than your comments. I did get a kick out of your "ad hominem" comment but you seemed to deserve the kick due to your deliberate obtuse responses. ;^)
You are probably not aware that several Android brand flagship models, for example Samsung’s ($1,879) have been priced higher than Apple’s iPhone flagship model? Apple also offers brand new iPhones in their online store for as low as $449, or with trade-in $349? Either one of which possesses a CPU that is 50% faster than any Android phone offers, even though it’s three generations behind Apple’s latest and fastest mobile processors which are more powerful than those found in MacBook Pros with Intel i5 processors. All of Apple’s iPhones and iPads are far more secure than any Android device with hardware based 256bit AES Encryption.
They are hardly "toys" considering that at least eight full feature length movies and numerous music videos, several National Geographic photo spreads, as well as multiple National major magazine covers have been shot on iPhones, and some fully edited on iPhones and iPads. That kind of professional work is not done on "toys."
I believe you that that may be the calculus involved. But IMO that shows just how out of control our overly litigious society is. We need some sort of legal, as well as political and regulatory, jubilee to get ourselves out from under the overgrowth of our institutions.
Too many lawyers and too many judges afraid to toss out meritless lawsuits.
I once was talking to a businessman in a town of about 25,000 people. At the time I had just read a statistic that there was one lawyer for every 200 people in California. The article added that every time there was a bar exam in California, 8,000 prospective lawyers took it and half of them passed, and there were two bar exams per year.
He thought that was a ridiculous number of lawyers and was probably way too high. So we got out the phone book for his little city and turned to the yellow pages and looked up lawyers. . . there were over 300 lawyers listed in his town alone. . . more than THREE TIMES that “one for every 200 population” figure, which would have been 125. 300 would have been the number for a population of 60,000 at the rate the statistic cited and that was back in the late 1970s.
How many would starving lawyers be 40 years later willing to take any case to court?
apples best product placement was in the public school system.
So it's a little hard to argue that the filmmakers are exploiting the Apple brand for profit. Or abusing the trademark, since the filmmakers aren't in any way claiming the brand belongs to them. Nor could it be convincingly argued that the use of an Apple product by a Bad Guy damages the brand's image. In fact, 90 percent of the audience probably wouldn't even be able to identify the manufacturer.
Do you seriously think anyone is going to say "Nope, I will never buy a Macbook because I saw a movie once where a crook used one to hack into a bank's security system"?
Under the Hays Code, villains were never supposed to be depicted as benefiting from the fruits of their crimes or wrongdoing. Per the code, by the end of the movie they were supposed to have repented, experienced some sort of conversion or suffered severe consequences for their moral failings. In It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter suffers no such consequences or conversion. If your Mr. Potter, crime did pay.
I don’t. But it’s not my call. Marketing is not something I’ve been involved in for that deeply, but there is most likely a foundation of psychological Basis behind it based on studies about audience reactions. Perhaps it’s only some marketing guy’s gut instinct. Who knows. It’s in the licensing. But it is more about how a trademark owner chooses to allow their product to be presented.
This isn't about the value of Apple's crap versus other manufacturers. It's about the right of people who buy a product to use that product as they see fit. Showing an Apple logo in a move hardly constitutes an endorsement or critique of the company, and I doubt anyone is going to see a movie just because the characters -- good or bad -- occasionally use Apple products.
And, no, your rights to use that device is not everything. . . because technically, you don’t even 100% own it. Every tech product you buy comes with some constraints on how you may use it because you are licensing its use. You don’t own everything in that CE product, especially the intellectual property included with it. That you only license a limited use under specific conditions. Even Apple doesn’t own everything in the devices they sell and license to you. Apple is licensing about 2,500 different patents from the patent owners who receive a royalty from Apple so YOU can use their intellectual property. Such products as cellular phones are, shall we say, complicated. I bet you didn’t read the user agreement when you got your last cellular phone, computer, etc, did you? My guess is fewer than one in one-thousand people do.
So it's a little hard to argue that the filmmakers are exploiting the Apple brand for profit. Or abusing the trademark, since the filmmakers aren't in any way claiming the brand belongs to them. Nor could it be convincingly argued that the use of an Apple product by a Bad Guy damages the brand's image. In fact, 90 percent of the audience probably wouldn't even be able to identify the manufacturer.
I bet you stand up and walk out of the movie theater without reading the credits, too. You don’t notice the names of the production company attorneys listed in the credits now, do you, especially the ones usually listed specifically for such things as liability and product placement. Oh, they’re there. They’re there because what you just dismissed out of ignorance matters. Should it? I wish it didn’t, but that’s even above the pay grade I used to draw when I hired attorneys to be on my staff to advise me on such matters. It is what it is in our over lawyer saturated society.
The problem is that ignorant assumptions like your’s gets one hauled into court at the wrong end of a lawsuit. . .
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