Do you find it cheesy when a show makes up its own version of a real pop culture phenomenon for its characters rather than using the real one? Which annoys you more?
Depends on the context to me. If done right, I think it can actually enhance a production and feel believable and add to the narrative. Other times, when it feels too obvious it can take me out of it, like say a character referring to Bookface, which I've actually heard said in a TV show.
I think they can be fun. Especially if they're being used to saterize the real thing, or are in some other way clever.
What tends to distract me is if I happen to notice those legally distinct fake product packages that come from prop houses. I.e. chip bags styled like "LAYS" brand but that just say "CHIPS", or obviously empty boxes of "CEREAL." That sort of stuff pulls me right out.
What tends to distract me is if I happen to notice those legally distinct fake product packages that come from prop houses. I.e. chip bags styled like "LAYS" brand but that just say "CHIPS", or obviously empty boxes of "CEREAL." That sort of stuff pulls me right out.
I'm not clear what you're talking about here. Could you give examples? If you mean something like a fictional pop band or restaurant chain or TV series that resembles a real one, that's obviously something the creators have to do since they'd have to pay extra for permission to use a real trademark. And if the item is portrayed in a negative light, obviously they have to use a fake one to avoid defamation lawsuits.
I think the term for that is "frenching," though I don't remember why.
I love how the miniature cityscapes in the Japanese Ultraman franchise, the ones where the Ultra heroes fight the giant monsters, are peppered with recurring signs of made-up businesses, some of which are in English, so you often see signs for "Kibry's" [sic] and "Steakhouse Miguel" and the like. And since every season of Ultraman is set on a different parallel Earth in a larger multiverse, it means these are cross-dimensional franchises.
Particularly when they don't have to - when the story doesn't center around it and they could choose something else altogether.
Although sometimes the story does center on it; for instance, when a crime show has a murder which happens behind the scenes of a company or TV show that's obviously a spoof of a real one we all recognize, it can be cringe - it's too close to the real thing.
Although sometimes the story does center on it; for instance, when a crime show has a murder which happens behind the scenes of a company or TV show that's obviously a spoof of a real one we all recognize, it can be cringe - it's too close to the real thing.
Again, vague generalizations don't tell us what you're talking about. Please give specific examples of instances where this has been done.
If it's a spoof or pastiche, then reminding us of the real thing is the point. And again, obviously they can't use the actual company or show in a context like that, for the reasons I explained, so what exactly are you complaining about?
My first thought, too.
Things like NCIS referencnig a "Game Box Portable" (while also referencing regular playstation 3 in the same season) lol. Or south park with the Okama Game Sphere early on, but later directly spoofing x box 1 and ps 4 with specific sony and microsoft references.
SO MANY fake references to myspace and facebook and such on shows in the 2000s lol.
SO MANY fake references to myspace and facebook and such on shows in the 2000s lol.
I suppose they choose fake lame names over equally fake but cool sounding ones because the good ones have been taken, or they don't want to take them from a future product creator.
Murdoch Mysteries spoofed Corn Flakes with Corn Shards.
Murdoch Mysteries spoofed Corn Flakes with Corn Shards.
My fave is when they combine them into MyFace. I can't recall where it was (first), but it did make me chuckle.
The flipside of that are brands created for a TV show that turn out to be real. Case in point, the beer in Letterkenny and Shoresy, Puppers Lager, is a real beer created by a local brewery for the purpose of the show, and yes it can be bought.
Ditto
I think you're thinking of "Greeking," which is when brand-name packaging has elements of the label altered or obscured. Youtuber Scott Prop and Roll has a few videos about it; the generic type of packaging I was talking about he always refers to as "cleared" (as in legally cleared) packaging .
It is challenging to find names that haven't already been trademarked. One of the jobs of studio research departments is name clearance, i.e. looking up the names of characters, companies, places, products, species, etc. in scripts and making sure they don't infringe on anyone's trademarks. In the case of personal names, it's about making sure they don't hit too close to any real person. It's almost impossible to find a name that someone doesn't have, but the goal is to avoid too many parallels, e.g. being in the same job or coming from the same city. For instance, Robert Hewitt Wolfe's TV adaptation of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novels had to rename Chicago police detective Karrin Murphy as Connie Murphy because there was a real Karen Murphy with the Chicago PD.
I'm fond of the Precure (or Pretty Cure) magical-girl anime franchise from Japan, but one thing I dislike about it is the rampant product placement. It's typical for anime and tokusatsu superhero shows to be very toy-driven with the superhero costumes and transformation items and weapons and cute mascot critters and such, which is annoying enough, but Precure in recent years has routinely incorporated their own tie-in brand of kids' cosmetics, jewelry, and merchandise, Pretty Holic (which is a disturbing name right there), into every season of the show as a brand that the characters like to shop for, usually as a store that the heroines or their parents or mentors work for or operate. So it's not even pretending to be story-relevant items, it's just blatant in-story commercials promoting the merchandise. Before that came along, they'd often have the characters be fans of food items that were also offered as tie-in merchandise, such as various flavors of melon bread (a popular flavored snack bread that looks like a melon but rarely actually has melon in it). Oh, and last year's season had the Precures as a team of singing idols who put out CDs and merchandise that were no doubt duplicated in the real world (although the show never established whether the girls were actually getting paid for any of it, which was really disturbing).
Something similar happened with Doctor Who. Russell T Davies had originally intended the word Neon to be the arc word running through the 2009 "Gap Year" specials with David Tennant to the point that the bus featured in the special Planet of the Dead even features an ad with the word Neon displayed quite prominently on in. Unfortunately, mere days before the episode aired, someone went and trademarked the word Neon for business purposes and after it aired, they sent a complaint into BBC about the bus ad seen in Doctor Who. As a result, the Neon arc word was removed from the remaining specials. In his book The Writer's Tale, RTD voices his frustrations on the matter saying "what was I supposed to do, just use a random string of letters forming gibberish which will never be trademarked?"
Amusingly, a day or so after I read that part of the book, I was at a mall where a new store opened and the name was indeed a random string of letters seemingly forming gibberish. I laughed, thinking "I guess that trick isn't going to work either, RTD."
If you hear of someone who has the same name as you, it's not surprising if two (sets of) parents thought the same combination sounded good together.
Hey, I just found this:
But that's a different matter from a TV or movie production needing to get legal clearance to use a character name.
The reason I decided to use my middle initial in my author byline was that I hoped to write for Star Trek in some form and I didn't want to be confused with Christopher Emil Bennett, the son of Star Trek movie producer Harve Bennett (whose actual full name was Harve Bennett Fischman, though I don't know if his son's legal name includes the "Fischman"). Yet in over two decades writing Trek prose fiction professionally, I think only one person has ever mentioned the similarity of names to me.
Or in this case, if a TV writer liked the sound of the names together, chances are someone's parents might have, too.
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