How to remove logos in your Commercials & Branded Content.
A Case Study On the Un-Product Placement
You've likely heard of, and definitely seen, the idea of product placement in blockbuster films and television content. Brands will pay even above what the average person would think is a load of money to place their logo, brand, and products into seemingly innocuous situations during scenes which millions of people have the potential of seeing. There's an entire industry with agencies built around repping the right products for pertinent movies and hit television programming.
On the flip side, with every advertising opportunity also comes the opposite: the legalities involved if products, people, or intellectual property are not accurately represented. For everything from music licensing, to appearance buyouts, location releases, voice licensing, and especially product placement, there is the potential of running afoul of someone if commercial production companies & brands aren't careful.
For a recent project, we had to take a bit of a different approach to the idea of making sure a final commercial didn't feature any logos or licensed images. Our client, Go RVing, is responsible for marketing all the positive aspects of traveling in an RV. Go RVing wanted to move towards real stories that feel authentic to viewers and potential RVers.
The Puglisi's, like a lot of lifestyle influencers, have their own brand: RV Family Travel Atlas. To support their brand, they are sponsored by many well-known outdoor gear brands. As this is more of a docu-story following real people, we don't treat this like we would a traditional commercial shoot where we cast talent, hire a wardrobe stylist, buy clothing and do fittings, and hire an art department to create a set full of brand-free props. The alternative on these types of projects? Instead of incurring the larger expense in production, we instead spend less on the post-production side and simply remove all logos & licensed images. Using modern graphics wizadry to remove all visible logos during the post-production process!
See how we removed logos, brands and licensed images from Go RVing's "Adventures in Acadia" and "Little Explorers Big Adventures" videos below!
“Instead of incurring the larger expense in production, we instead spend much less on the post-production side and simply remove all logos & licensed images.”
The moral of the story? If you're producing a commercial or digital content that may feature images that could potentially be a legal problem for you or your client, you should consider your options. Is it more worthwhile to pay for art department, props, talent, and the associated crew? Or do you want to enter into more of a flow where you don't worry about logos and licensed images until the post-production side of the production process? The good news? Either decision works, and our process worked out well for our client.
The next time you get into a scenario where your commercial production needs problematic images removed, check out the amazing digital compositing experts at Explore Media to simply erase your problems!
