Season 1, Episode 4 when Luis is looking for his SNL tape
hey yall, im a props master, builder, set dresser in the film industry for the last six years.
thats called “greeking” which is used to cover up brands that a film or studio may or may not have the rights to, to avoid copyright, or associating the brand itself with something they may not want to be associated with, and then getting sued for it. (for example i recently worked on a film about a domestic terrorist, and coca cola wanted nothing to do with it. so we either had to turn labels for all of their brands, cover them with fake labels, or edit them in post, or blurr them in the background, etc)
you may be wondering why its called “greeking” and the answer is back in the old days they would remove or scratch off certain letters (we still do this sometimes) until you could look at it and say “its all greek to me” meaning you couldnt understand what it said.
Like I said just not entirely correct.
You are right that they don’t want to seem like they’re advertising for a company, but I was building off the first comment stating it was companies they couldn’t extort money out of and I’m sure you know thats just not how product placement works.
Who are you replying to?
Goddamn, I loved Surge. RIP. SUUUUUURGE!!
You can still get it in Norway under the original name Urge. It’s quite nice, had one last week. Maybe there’s somewhere that imports it?
I was a PA on a (very bad) movie and got tasked with “greeking” (I forgot why it was called that) the products in the kitchen. The one I was most proud of was making faux Tostitos…Fostitos…
What am I looking at here?
Soda can that looks like it has BOBOB or something written on it. It was a soda brand (that I think is now defunct) called Surge. As for why it was done that’s both more complicated and stupid. In many cases brands are obscured because studios tried to extort payments from their owners for “advertising” and the company refused. In other cases companies may have requested to have their product removed due to the content of the show or movie, although usually it’s the former reason.
The other reason is that movies/shows don’t want to SEEM like they’re advertising a brand.
Good news! You’re both wrong or at least not entirely right. That’s called greeking and is done on literally any brand, marketing or imagery of any kind unless specifically approved by that company, and or the artist that made the imagery regardless of whether that company has given them money or not. Its often done with a sticker and a graphic made of some made up brand or maybe just tape over it but this is my favorite type. This means the on set dresser took that from crafty because they weren’t expecting a fridge shot today and “greeked” out surge by using a sharpie to fill in the spaces. Just great work right there.
This is all out of fear that they might be sued. That’s all.
I’m not wrong to say production companies don’t want to seem associated with a brand they’re not associated with. And in my other comment in this thread I noted that I greeked a movie set myself! It was the best part of the whole shoot
Ah, I see it. Thanks!
BOB
BOBOB? BOBOB!
