A German TV movie (based on a Katie Forde novel) has a scene where a protagonist views from photos taken with a Canon camera. Though there are several things wrong here that cause Apple buffs to wince.
Consider this picture for a moment and tell me all that you see wrong here.
What made me chuckle in particular was the obvious use of a white Apple USB cable that this guy somehow managed to plugged into his Canon DSL. Erik Haselsteiner identified the camera brand from the neckband. Since when does Canon manufacture DSLs that have a 30-pin plug?
The second funny part is that the glowing Apple logo is hidden by a metal-colored sticker. But then there is a bowl of Apples in front of the sticker so that you only see a part of it. So you hide one overly bright apple and replace it with several not-so-bright ones. Then it still counts as an Apple(s) computer, even for those who wouldn’t have noticed it.
The cable goes nowhere… wouldn’t you plug in the USB cable on the side your MacBook where you have placed your camera? Rather in this picture it looks like the cord is plugged into the bowl of Apples. iCloud upload!
As far as I am aware Apple never does any paid product placements, especially not in German TV productions. There might of course be totally rational explanations for these oddities that don’t have anything to do with product placement, or Apple not allowing the use of their logo in a movie about love.
The glowing Apple logo might have thrown off the light composition of the scene which is supposedly only illuminated by this white lamp. Without this lamp you would probably not see the black camera on the dark wood desk.
The USB cable had to be one borrowed from an Apple device because the white makes for a nice contrast to the table. The original USB cable most likely is black and would have not produced this result in visibility. This way the camera can be made out and also be seen as being connected. The 30-pin connector seems to be sitting in the slot where usually the CompactFlash card is meant to be inserted. Finally the bowl of Apples is only meant to hides the ugly sticker which has a slightly off color, much cheaper than to erase the LED logo in post production.
I think Apple should allow regulating the brightness of the lid logo, because then we would probably see less stickers covering the logos for cinematographic reasons.
Categories: Apple
Of course you can reduce the brightness of the Apple logo! Just dim the brightness of the screen… 😉
Apple certainly DID do paid product placement in at least one movie: “Short Circuit” in 1986. I personally witnessed a day of filming, including the scene where Steve Guttenberg first meets Ally Sheedy, and he’s typing on an original (128K with floppy drive only) Mac keyboard. During the setup, the director instructed the cameraman and Steve G how the Mac had to be visible, and the crew made a little fuss about fetching the Mac from the props truck and making sure it remained in pristine condition. The rumor among the cast and crew at lunch was that Apple was paying $50k for the placement, which may or may not have been accurate, but clearly they were paying something!
See http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/Steve-Jobs-Legacy-on-Hollywood-Apple-Product-Placement.aspx for more (and a picture of a different scene with the Mac).