Can I do this?

F

Fidelio

Active member
I am making a film that shows internet browsing. Can I show the Google website or the Yahoo email pages and not pay royalties or get permission to use it? The film is planned to be commercial.
 
Often it's considered fair use in documentary/news production to shoot a TV or Computer screen with the camera. However direct screenshots/captures generally arn't so easy to use fairly.

- Mikko
 
You could always create mock websites for your scenes. Have some fun, and create some knock off sites. Instead of Google, serch the web with Giggle, Goggle, or any other variation. Master of Disguise with Dana Carey had a Black Market ebay in it.
 
Damn. Well, I saw Naomi Watts search for information on Google in The Ring... I'm guessing that they paid huge bucks to do that?

So much for the thought of "product placement"...
 
All these sites and windows should be paying YOU for exposure not the other way round!!! .....Ahem..IMHO damnit!
 
So... anyone knows whether or not I can film Windows without permission in a commercial fiction film?
 
You can film somebody using the computer, but i don't think you can use just the image.

I've always been partial to Yahoogle myself
 
Most commercial films pay microsoft and or google if they show the real thing. Although they usually go the CSI route and make up some weird OS type interface in Flash or After Effects because; they don't have to pay a license, they can get it to do exactly what they want on queue and they canmake it look way more high tech than windows, linux or OSX.

Make yourself a few fake web pages in a folder on your hard drive, you can even make them in photoshop and avoid an html editor all together if you need to.
Make a fake google type search page with links to those pages.
Shoot your computer with your fake pages displayed.

If you want to avoid using what is obviously windows xp/vista, you can either install windowblinds and customize your OS interface or go the flash/AE route and just play it back while your actors fake it.

I remember on set once back in the mid 90s the computer tech guy had some software that looked like a clone of word, but you loaded up a premade text file. As the actor pressed a key on the keyboard it revealed the text document one letter at a time. It allowed the actor to just peck away at random keys but the text would appear on screen perfectly synched. The same guy had made a video card for a pc that could synch to the 35 mm camera's 24fps framerate.
 
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