> 1. Recently, there has been a trend in advertising in movie theatres > before films and in movies themselves (especially Generation X movies). > What are your views on this trend? Are advertisers moving forward into > the past? In a sense, yes. You should really look at all the material you can on Apple's recent product placement efforts in "Mission Impossible" and material on Disney's "fast food" toy tie-ins that have been popular in recent years. Also, you can go back into the past and look at the early licensing done by Walt Disney when the Mickey Mouse shorts became popular -- keep in mind that Disney got his start by producing animated advertising shorts for theaters. Do you think there are some parallels between Apple computers being featured in "Mission Impossible" (where the good guys use Apples and the bad guys use PC's) and Hollywood using the assistance of the military for it's 40's and 50's war-themed films or various efforts to sell War bonds to the public during WWI and WWII? The products may be different, but the methods are quite similar. You might want to dig up some material on a film called "Million Dollar Mystery" -- a case where an entire film was produced in the mid-80's for the sole purpose of promoting a contest sponsored by Glad trash bags. > 2. How do advertisers find inspiration for new and unique ads considering > the massive amount of advertising out there today? Also, is it more > difficult to get the attention of a generation who are used to MTV and > "Terminator 2"? You need to read an article in the latest issue of "Film Comment" that looks at how music videos (essentially advertisements for music) are produced. The author flat-out charges the whole industry with wide-spread plagerism and copyright infringement on works by photographers, painters, illustrators, and experimental filmmakers. The process described in the article begins with assembling notebooks and video reels of appropriated material that the director "rips off" to produce the video. The most interesting implication of the article is that many of these directors move on to make Hollywood features -- do they take this same working method with them to the big screen? RAND ------------------------------------------------- Randy A. Riddle, Winston-Salem, NC [log in to unmask] -- http://www.infi.net/~rriddle ------------------------------------------------- ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]