Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

MutePrint · Mar 25, 2006, 06:12 AM

[WARNING! very lite spoilers ahead]

So I just returned from seeing Inside Man, and I think I can safely say that was the most ridiculous amount of Apple product placement I've ever seen. This appears to be the biggest step yet in Apple's brilliantly orchestrated movie saturation campaign, as evidenced by many other films from the past six months.

Inside Man - Two of the most visible and prevalent bank customers had ipods, as well as several extras conveniently passing by camera in almost every outdoor scene, Jodie Foster's character had what looked like a 23" or 30" cinema display, and another ipod was actually featured in a major plot point, including its own blatant close-up.

Final Destination 3 - Also filled to the brim with ipods, as well as an imac or two. If I recall a couple of the main characters even had a conversation about one the ipods, while sitting in front of the imac.

Firewall - Harrison Ford rewires his daughter's ipod to steal 150 million from a bank! Definitely one of the funniest product placement ideas in cinematic history.

I'm sure there are plenty more I missed, just wondered if anyone else had picked up on all this. I can't wait until Tom Cruise uses an ipod nano to hijack a space shuttle and steal the pope's hat in MI:3, Kurt Russel saves everyone in Poseidon by turning his new iPhone into a rescue beacon, and Tom Hanks uses his MBP to crack the Da Vinci Code.

Maybe Spielberg will even re-edit ET again and replace the cops' ~~guns~~ flashlights with ipods. We can only hope...

willed · Mar 25, 2006, 07:21 AM

I've noticed Apple UN-product placement a couple of times recently on TV.
In CSI although they show Dell logos occasionally, at some point Mac logos were covered by special CSI stickers on the back of PowerBooks. I'm not sure whether they did this in all the series?
In the BBC show Spooks they use a lot of Mac kit, but some advertising watchdog complained and when the series was re-run on BBC1 the Apple logos were airbrushed out.

B Gallagher · Mar 25, 2006, 11:24 AM

I remember a series of advertisements in a magazine in New Zealand around a year ago for a travel company featured a picture of a woman sitting on a chair, with a big smile, using what could only be a PB. The funny thing? The Apple logo on it was photoshopped out.

Mithras · Mar 26, 2006, 10:02 AM

How was Inside Man, by the way? I'm curious to see an action-suspense Spike Lee joint.

Eriamjh · Mar 26, 2006, 10:04 AM

Firewall - Harrison Ford rewires his daughter's ipod to steal 150 million from a bank! Definitely one of the funniest product placement ideas in cinematic history.

You didn't know iPods could do this?

Dr Reducto · Mar 26, 2006, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

You didn't know iPods could do this?

Actually, there is a huge hole with USB and Firewire that allows a device connected to said ports to arbitrarily read/write memory on the computer, without the OS being able to inervene. You can do a lot with that capability

phillryu · Mar 26, 2006, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by Mithras

How was Inside Man, by the way? I'm curious to see an action-suspense Spike Lee joint.

Sweet movie. Definitely the best bank heist movie I've seen in years.

DigitalEl · Mar 26, 2006, 01:15 PM

Overdoing product placement can bring you out of a story, no doubt, but to play devil's advocate... iPods are that ubiquitous. I can see 2 or 3 people with the white headphones in line at the grocery store, walking along a street or wherever. It's not that much of a stretch.

Rewiring it to rob a bank though... That's as ridiculous as infecting superior alien technology with a virus using your old-school PowerBook.

greenamp · Mar 26, 2006, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by Mithras

How was Inside Man, by the way? I'm curious to see an action-suspense Spike Lee joint.

Two words: Ex Cellent.

ShortcutToMoncton · Mar 26, 2006, 01:35 PM

What, no one saw Minority Report? I mean, good movie, and the placements were integrated pretty well, but it got a little ridiculous.

Oh, and Maddox didn't like I, Robot either.

greg

greenamp · Mar 26, 2006, 02:10 PM

The Apple placement in Inside Man was a little on the embarrassing side at time though I agree.

There was a scene when Jody Foster's character was sitting at her desk taking a call, and the camera was panned in front of her desk so that all you could really notice was her gigantic 30" Apple Cinema display, whose Apple logo was more in focus than her face. Keen eyes could also see the G5 PowerMac under her desk. It was like, "here is this beautiful 30" display made by Apple. Notice as we pan around the lack of cord clutter and the elegant Apple logo. Oh yeah if you look hard you can also see Jody Foster on the phone behind it."

I chuckled.

Dark Helmet · Mar 26, 2006, 02:10 PM

I agree about the Inside man (which sucked). I kept leaning over to my boyfriend telling him that there is a couple iPods in every group shot.

As far as I know Apple doesn't pay films to do this, many of them want to use apple products as they look the best.

I guess spike lee is an Apple fan.

willed · Mar 26, 2006, 02:42 PM

I do wonder how much non-nerds notice this stuff. I'd bet it hardly registers.

DigitalEl · Mar 26, 2006, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by willed

I do wonder how much non-nerds notice this stuff. I'd bet it hardly registers.

Bingo!

And companies definitely pay for product placement. Exactly how such deals are priced, however, is anybody's guess.