At a screening of Your Face is a Saxophone Episode 2 last weekend, someone asked me why we had product placement for Lay’s potato chips. He suggested that we use a fake brand name that evokes the same product. This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone bring this up to me — why we litter real brand names and logos all over the place, instead of showing “Zony” TV sets and “Croaka Cola” — so I figured I’d address it once and for all.
The common practice of using fake brand names is to avoid claims of trademark infringement. Production companies will go to great lengths to create fictional products to show on-screen because they fear a lawsuit from the trademark holder. This is because trademark holders will go to great lengths to sue every unapproved appearance of their logo on anything because they fear losing their trademark. Trademark law requires holders to maintain control over their marks, which generally results in them go completely overboard about it.
This cycle of fear results in the censorship of reality. Part of what we’re trying to do with Your Face is a Saxophone is to vehemently point out how pervasive branding, commercialization, and consumerism actually are in our world. We casually refer to “drinking a Coke”, “buying an iPhone”, and “checking Facebook” in everyday conversation. We’re surrounded by our electronics from Audiovox, LG, Sony, and Antec; our office supplies from Scotch, 3M, Bic, and Sharpie; our Kraft macaroni, our Heineken beer, our Hershey’s candy, and our Mott’s fruit. This is what the real world looks like, people.
But the moment we start populating our real-world settings with bizarro-world brands, the impact is gone. We’re no longer satirizing the real world, we’re escaping from it. Perhaps we’re vaguely commenting on the concept of hyper-commercialization in general, but the unreality of drinking a Doke while using a Pineapple uPhone to check on Friendbook neuters it entirely.
I’m chiefly referring to the incidental use of brands there. There are certainly examples of fictional brand names being used to great effect in satire, without lessening the impact very much at all.
So, in Your Face is a Saxophone, I suppose we could structure our plots not around Pepsi, but around Schwepsi; not around Miller Lite beer, but around Schmiller Lite. But it’s those little things in the background — the Apple computers, the Lay’s potato chips on the receptionist’s head, the Motorola/Verizon logos on Leora’s phone — that we can’t ignore. We’re not going to let fear of a trademark claim (which we’d have a very strong fair use argument against) stop us from pointing out that in the real world, real brands and real logos surround us everywhere we go.
Perhaps it’s jarring that all of the characters are decidedly bizarro-world — nobody in the real world has a light bulb for a head — but the brands and logos aren’t. Good. We want you to notice the brands. That’s the point.
In Your Face is a Saxophone, we refuse to make up fake companies* to make fun of. If we want to make fun of Pepsi, then dammit, we’re going to make fun of Pepsi.
*Yes, there was Sqwoogy in the first episode. Sqwoogy was not a parody of Twitter, it was a parody of Silicon Valley startup culture and all of the dumbassery that stems from it.
The Indie Paradox: Paying Rent Without Depending On Corporations
Large corporations have come up with a solution: go into the manufacturing business. They are now Digital Rights Manufacturing companies, creating new rights for themselves using a revolutionary new process known as “fellating lawmakers”. Their revenue stream comes from licensing these digital rights at high prices, and suing people who don’t pay. But it’s too expensive for indie artists and creators, and it doesn’t win you any friends.
Because of this situation, indie game developers are doing horrible things like experimenting with in-game advertising. I’m not saying this as a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of annoying ads bombarding us. I’m saying this as a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of depending on the advertising industry for revenue.
Think about it: TV series with devoted fanbases are cancelled because they don’t make enough ad revenue. Millions of websites depending on Google AdSense would go broke if their accounts were inexplicably terminated (I’ve read about this happening before but can’t find a link detailing it. Maybe I’m typing the wrong words into Goo…gle…wait a minute). And remember when GameSpot fired Jeff Gertsmann when their advertisers didn’t like his reviews? For people who call themselves indie, it’s not very indie-pendent.
The best way to be indie in any medium, be it game development, filmmaking, music, writing…hell, even running a business in general, the only party you should be depending on is individual people. Some may know them as “customers”, or “users” who “generate content” on your “social media application”, but let’s avoid such corporate-speak, as it makes baby Jesus cry and is killing America. But there’s still the problem of how exactly to make money on individual people anymore. In a world where art is hard work and people don’t seem to want to pay for it, one man will stand up to explain his opinion. That man is me. Reread the previous two sentences in a movie trailer guy voice, then click the jump-cut-continue-reading thingy:
Continue reading ‘The Indie Paradox: Paying Rent Without Depending On Corporations’