Arts & Entertainment
Do Movies Need Product Placement To Get Made?
Morgan Spurlock takes Hollywood apart with his examination of product placement in movies. In making this documentary, he reveals how this film itself got financed--with an advertiser in the title.
POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: When you watch a movie, how closely do you pay attention?
Do you study the acting? Do you focus on the cinematography? Do you concentrate on the direction?
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And do you even pay attention to the other parts of a movie…like the music, or the pace of the action, or the editing style? Then, even beyond that, do you look at the sets and how they are constructed and laid out? Do you notice the furniture?
The products? Yes, the products!
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Earlier:
Products and their placement are VERY important in movie financing. And Morgan Spurlock, documentarian of Super Size Me fame, spends this recent movie focusing on exactly HOW important product placement is to movies today. Most of it is innocuous…things you do not notice. Someone drinking a Coca Cola. Someone using a Dell computer. Someone working on an iPad. Someone driving a Ford. Someone jogging while listening to their Sony Discman. Someone making a call on their Nokia phone.
From food to electronics to vehicles to accessories…product placement is everywhere in films of today. Spurlock does a great job here of walking the audience through the process of getting products into movies. Actually, he uses his own movie as an example…which is the reason for the creative title of his film.
POM Wonderful is the company that put up the most money to back his film so they get what they paid for…their product IN the title of the movie. If Hewlett Packard would have been Spurlock’s top contributor, this movie would have been called HP Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. When he goes around to these companies “selling” his film, he explains that for a certain amount of money, they will get THIS and for this amount of money they will get THAT. POM Wonderful got their name in the title. But, Spurlock rounds up lesser donators who get a mention (logo) on the movie poster.
And —just wait until you watch your first movie after this documentary. Products will be so evident they will practically hit you in the face. Is that Spurlock’s goal here? That he wants audiences to be well aware of these placements? Well, no…as with Super Size Me, his goal is to educate. But, trust me…once you know how many placements are worked into today’s movies, you will be amazed!
It’s fascinating…it brings Hollywood to life as a living, breathing BUSINESS. Now, if you want to get your movie made, your main character has to use a Mac and drive a Chevy.
Does this mean the days where creativity and artistic integrity reigned supreme are gone? Would Hitchcock have gone for this? Would Wilder or Preminger or Capra or Ford or any number of film directors that made movies with heart and soul and not products? Well, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen are all still making films and somehow in the age of product placement, their artistic integrity still survives. It can be done…it’s just that creativity is now sponsored by JetBlue.
POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: 2011, PG-13, 90 minutes, directed by Morgan Spurlock. The Niles Public Library owns copies of this film on DVD.
