Product placements may be added to classic films

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56758376

by daverol • 5 years ago

42 60 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

oriettaxx• 5 years ago

omg, I remember Fellini was pissed when Italian TV channels (first the Berlusconi private network, then the state TV, too) started to interrupt his movies with Adverts.

now this.. :(

omg, we will need a movie AdBlocker :(

franksvalli2• 5 years ago

Strangely relevant link: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/il-maestro-federico-fell...

Scorsese lamenting the lack of Fellini magic today, and the increase in commercialism:

"“Content” became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode."

Nextgrid3• 5 years ago

Roy Taylor, the chief executive of Californian-based business Ryff, says his firm is taking digital product insertion one stage further. It has developed the technology whereby the product placement is targeted at individuals, and changes depending on who is watching.

A film is supposed to be an experience, and the products/brands within it (whether "organic" or "placed" with the approval of the cast) is part of it. I don't like how they're planning to change it dynamically.

loceng• 5 years ago

I believe this is how you see "real life" ad placements when watching sports events through TV - custom insert based on viewer/household demographic.

dTal2• 5 years ago

I think it goes far beyond that. Silently tailoring experiences right down to the personal level compromises our shared understanding of reality and fractures society. I believe this kind of thing is responsible, in no small part, for the increased political tensions we see today. How can we have a democracy when everyone gets custom-made propaganda, and no one knows what's being whispered into anyone else's ear?

prox• 5 years ago

Exactly, what if this comment would change depending on who is reading it?

thundergolfer• 5 years ago

We'd get situations like when Exxon sent one kind of ad messaging to left-leaning Facebook users ("we're fighting climate change!") and one to right-leaning Facebook users ("regulations bad!")[1].

Companies could have their products or services featured in a movie but set the context depending on some demographic feature of the viewer. And just like that you can give a positive impression of your company to two groups holding opposite positions. An example could be having the protagonist driving an electric eco-car in one version and a gas-guzzling 4WD in another; just make use of cheaper and cheaper CGI.

1. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/two-faced-facebook-how-the-di...

HKH24• 5 years ago

What shared understanding of reality? Does not fiction already fracture society?

ArkanExplorer• 5 years ago

Fracturing society is a feature, not a bug, of our current news landscape. It keeps people from thinking too hard, about things like Billionaires and members of Congress generating fortunes during a pandemic.

No, I think this technology is much simpler. It means that product placement contracts can now generate annual recurring revenue, instead of once-off revenue.

Movies and TV shows could be shot and distributed with exposed 'source code' (eg. visible green screens) which the client or local distribution network then seamlessly overlays with an appropriate brand.

Advertisers can be rotated in and out depending on who pays the most, and multiple advertisers can be signed up based on a segmented viewer base to maximise revenue.

Its also a long-term source of work for advertising agencies and video technicians, I guess.

axaxs• 5 years ago

Yeah, not a fan either. Netflix has done at least a couple 'choose your own adventure' style films. The idea itself is...fun. Maybe I'm boring, but I just don't like it. I want to be told a story, not decide the story myself.

PhillyG2• 5 years ago

Something made to be a choose your own adventure is a different experience to a film - it's a lazy video game basically.

mhh__• 5 years ago

With Bandersnatch at least you are still being told a story.

One of the central themes is how you are controlling the character, making the character feel a lack of agency. It's far far too Charlie Brooker to be as simple as you describe.

PhillyG2• 5 years ago

Yeah at present, people can see a film separately but still talk in depth about tiny details of it. When this tech is in place but new some conversations are going to get confusing. Once everyone is used to it it'll be a slight annoyance, and something that some people will actively avoid - perhaps putting premium prices on original copies.

Red_Leaves_Flyy• 5 years ago

premium prices on original copies

This is only possible if sharing and copying is made impossible. History is on the side of the sharers. I'd rather miss the cultural experience of the millennia than buy into shenanigans like this.

gumby2• 5 years ago

In other words: "We choose your own adventure".

MikeUt• 5 years ago

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."

franksvalli2• 5 years ago

This idea is actually pretty old. Old episodes of Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" have a place in the frame for advertisers to be superimposed and swapped out.

Doing this on a gameshow seems strangely acceptable, but don't touch the old films please. Even though old films themselves have product placement (continuing with the Marx Brothers - you can see an old cartoon-style flit gun in Animal Crackers (1930), which was used for one of the earlier product tie-ins), manipulating them seems wrong. People want to experience the movie as it was intended to be...

tengbretson• 5 years ago

Now they just have to figure out how to break into my house and swap out my DVDs I suppose.

pests4• 5 years ago

Then they will just sell DVD players that only use the disc to determine what you want to watch while it silently pulling the newer version from online.

emptyparadise• 5 years ago

Isn't piracy great? You get a single file that you can be certain will not change the next time you watch it!

jtmetcalfe• 5 years ago

Star.Wars.Episode.IV.A.New.Hope.1977.2160p.x265.DTS-HD.MA.5.1-NO-COKE-AD.torrent

toast0• 5 years ago

If you want the good one, the title should just be Star Wars. The episode number and subtitle were added later; at that point who cares who provided the blue milk.

brokenmachine2• 5 years ago

Yeah but it will have the pirate's targeted ads for VPNs or whatever hardcoded in.

nitrogen• 5 years ago

They'll strip the ads when they strip the watermarks.

Nextgrid3• 5 years ago

Is that an actual problem?

From my experience, somehow a decentralised illicit industry manages to hold better standards than the legal alternative.

bumblelad• 5 years ago

It doesn't get censored, disappeared because the company tries to erase its history (cough Disney cough), and best of all, no ads!

I remember the thing that first drove me to piracy: previews. Nothing like trying to watch a VHS or DVD rental and being subjected to 10 minutes of ads. DVDs were the worst perpetrator, with bullshit unskippable ads before you even got to the menu.

mrguyorama• 5 years ago

When I make a rip of my legally owned DVDs, I don't even have to watch the stupid FBI warning screens that tell me not to distribute pirated movies

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf• 5 years ago

I'm imagining a black and white Oscar Schindler cracking open a beautiful, bright red can of Coca Cola and taking a sip.

lupire• 5 years ago

Nah, the liberating army hands out Cokes at the end.

gumby2• 5 years ago

You clearly have no taste for art. Schindler does this as a means of foreshadowing (warning: spoiler!) his transformation into a good guy.

The film was disgracefully meandering before the studio made this crucial addition.

braveneww• 5 years ago

They will have to find an equilibrium between the optimal number of old movies to cancel, or retain to shove ads in.

gentleman11• 5 years ago

Imagine if some inspired tech founder started adding product placement to the paintings in the louvre (which were recently made viewable online here https://collections.louvre.fr/en/).

deeblering4• 5 years ago

s/if/when

intergalplan4• 5 years ago

All the major tech companies are acting like they expect AR to become A Real Thing in the not-so-distant future. Which means non-dorky, decently-functional AR glasses (AR on a phone or handheld game system plainly sucks and everyone can tell that, yet they're all pouring development money and PR into AR efforts)

Things are gonna get much weirder, and it'll be soon. We went from "what's a smartphone?" to "you basically can't function in the modern world without a smartphone" in, what, a little over a decade? We'll see how long this one takes.

selfhoster113• 5 years ago

I'm so not looking forward to the jankiness of whatever the Android equivalent will be with AR glasses.

Nextgrid3• 5 years ago

A glimpse of the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

fluxinflex• 5 years ago

If you could do one of two things:

1. Puts ads into old movies, or 2. Fix climate change

what what you do?

I know what humankind would do.

Koiwai• 5 years ago

That's not fair, some people are doing one of them and some other people are doing the other one. Apparently the other one is harder.

1. Start WWI&II, or 2. Make human interplanetary, AFAICT human only accomplished one of them. Make a more biased point.

sorokod• 5 years ago

There is a lot of cultural history out there just waiting to be monetized. Why limit ourselves to films? How about (e)books and music? Anything in a digital format really.

jka• 5 years ago

If paid placements had to be declared, strangely this might not turn out so badly.

"Ah, time to sit down for a relaxing film this evening. Shall we watch the romantic comedy where Coca-Cola paid $20,000 to place a can of Fanta in a sex scene -- everyone's talking about it -- or perhaps this independent science fiction film; it's a new director, no product placement?"

brokenmachine2• 5 years ago

That Fanta sex scene that everyone's talking about sounds pretty interesting, to be honest.

pests4• 5 years ago

Some company is also digitally replacing billboards/posters/television content with "newer ads" in reruns. I forget who but it was posted and discussed here within the last year.

lethologica• 5 years ago

That seems less egregious, at least. The TV/billboard was already there in the first place and was already playing an ad in the original version of the film. While I don't like re-writing history like this at all, it's better than digitally adding in things that weren't there to begin with.

pests4• 5 years ago

Eh, I don't agree. The tv / ad might have not been advertising anything real, and even if it were my next point still stands. The tv/billboard was choosen for a reason and it might help set the stage for the tone or theme of the movie.

carlosperate• 5 years ago

I definitely saw this in How I Met Your Mother in Netflix, where a movie poster on a cinema wall was (badly) replaced by a newer movie that came out after the show aired. I wouldn't have minded if it was done better, as that specific example was quite noticable, but it is perfectly possible there was a few more of those that I didn't notice.

pests4• 5 years ago

Yes thank you. I think this was the example in the article I was mentioning.

8jef• 5 years ago

I'm assuming cigarette smoking in movies and tv shows, old and new, must have been the most widespread and profitable product placement ever.

intergalplan4• 5 years ago

I've been interested to see that weed-smoking is starting to become normal where cigarette smoking might have previously in (at least) genre films over the last couple years, because, damn it, it does look cool and I kinda missed it, despite being a strict non-smoker myself (drugs are fine, but I saw too much damage from smoking—I just won't do it, personal choice). By "normal" I mean not used as a way to get the audience to pass judgement on a character, or to give other characters space to criticize them, either, as some cigarette smoking in film had been lately, so it can "just" be cool. I think it's still a big factor in ratings, though, so I doubt it'll become as widespread as cigarette smoking ever did in film. Possibly weed lobbies are paying for this micro-trend, though, IDK.

tobr• 5 years ago

Two ad executives get to talk at length about how masterfully their companies are able to deceive the audience. A brand management professor says it will be great income for the poor TV advertising industry. A media director describes what a great source of revenue this could be for starving bands.

A marketing lecturer warns brands that they might end up in a bad PR situation due to something something scandal.

A film critic says it raises some questions about copyright, and that it might intrude on the work of the production designer.

Not a single word about how the heck this will affect the audience.

selfhoster113• 5 years ago

Advertising is a cancer. Change my mind.

- Online privacy is basically dead because of it.

- Consumer manipulation is so well developed that it either borders on, or tips right into mind control territory.

- Targeted for political advertisement, it fractures the society and lets demagogues/morons like Trump and Boris Johnson get elected.

- It's nickling and diming us out of our attention on our smartphones and websites, assuming no countermeasures taken by the end user

- Now, it's threatening to affect artistic and historic integrity of our recorded media by turning into a for-profit Ministry of Truth.

What else is it going to destroy?

jfengel• 5 years ago

I certainly wouldn't try to change your mind. The question is, what would you like to do about it?

Advertising is the most frictionless way to monetize content. If you own content and want to make money, advertising requires your consumers to pay nothing and install nothing except what they already have.

Everything else is harder to use and less effective. People keep trying and nothing works as well. Users ignore tip jars. They circumvent paywalls. They share passwords. Micropayments cost too much and have too much overhead.

We'd all love a good alternative, but nobody's found it yet. We all think that privacy is the worst, except for all the others. As with cancer, we wish it didn't exist, but that's not effective. We need to research cures.

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

What a ridiculous take. The film industry has been tremendously successful at earning money for over a century. It built California well before there was ever a Silicon Valley. Even when disrupted temporarily by the Netflix and Amazons of the world, they're pretty quickly making a comeback and the only way for Netflix and Amazon to continue competing is to make their own content. The most straightforward way to monetize it is to sell it. Plenty of people seem perfectly willing to pay money to Netflix and Disney.

The problem of monetization is now every single person with access to a keyboard or camera can post something identical to the content produced by a few hundred thousand other content creators and think they deserve to get paid for it. Nobody seems to be running the Washington Post or the Economist out of business. HBO isn't going anywhere. Whenever James Cameron gets around to finally releasing something again, he'll make another billion. It doesn't mean anyone who can put a camera in their bedroom and post their personal thoughts about life on YouTube deserves to make a living doing that.

The answer to how to monetize content is the same as it has always been for any business. Make a sufficiently valuable and differentiated product that consumers are willing to pay for it.

perl4ever• 5 years ago

(1997)

"Fred Astaire’s daughter, Ava, says she is “saddened that after his (Fred’s) wonderful career he was sold to the devil.” The “devil” in this case is the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner. Fred is appearing in commercials in which his dancing props (a mop from “Easter Parade” and a coat rack in “Royal Wedding”) have been computerized and substituted with vacuum cleaners. The blurbs have already appeared in (very costly) spots on the Super Bowl and more are to come"

(the reason it was permitted is because his widow was ok with it - she drew the line at "putting words in his mouth", but a vacuum cleaner in his hands was ok by her)

https://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/astaire-won-t-deal-w...

Product placements may be added to classic films

Related Stories