Sunday, December 3, 2006

Gadget Placement in Casino Royale

I recently watched the James Bond movie Casino Royale in a movie theater (no, not in a digital move theater, but in an old fashioned analog one). Not that I'm a big movie fan, but in May I accidentally witnessed shooting of some scenes of the movie in one of its filming locations. I've never seen serious film shooting before (I mean not on TV); it amazed me how massive their lighting equipment was (both in quantity and quality) and how quickly they were moving with it from one location to another.

As probably all Sony Pictures movies, Casino Royale is filled with product placement. I don't like that. Some actions like digital photo shooting in Venice were probably specifically inserted just because they had to show the camera somewhere in the movie. VAIO laptops and SonyEricsson phones are all over the film, Blu-Ray surveillance... All these things weren't natural in the movie. I mean, they could have been shot naturally, but they concentrated on the products too much and spoiled everything. There is a very fine line between good product placement and bad product placement. If you ever shoot a movie, be very careful with that, especially if you still think that cinema is art ;-)

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