A question about using names in a short film

L

leetv

Hey ya'll,

In 7 days I'll be shooting my first short film. Just give you a little background on it. All of us that are involved in this film work a major groceries stores. I've got 3 people that work at Meijers and 2 people that work at Walmart. We are doing a Team Walmart vs Team Meijers pricing gun battle. Pretty much we are using pricing guns as weapons doing a modern warfare battle scene. One thing I wanted was for the actors to wear their name badges. The name badges have their work place name on them. Once the video is edited I plan on uploading it to youtube for everyone to see. My question is would I get into any legal trouble with both companies because their company name is shown on my video?
 
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I am not a legal proffessional nor am I giving legal advice, only my opinion.

You cannot, without the express permission of the companies involved publish or show their registered trademarks. What you can do,I think, is imply the companies you wish to portray. But I have never heard of Meijers. Have you ever heard of Piggly Wiggly?? I don't think it's an equal battle. Wal-Mart will win. :)
 
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There's only 5 people in the uniform?

It may be feasible to put patches over their polo shirt logos and put stickers on their nametags...

To be honest, are people really going to see that small of a logo on the nametag?

Do a test shot and see. If they're moving around and shooting in a medium shot, no chance of reading them...

It's kind of like saying "Can you see my BMW logo on my car key? I don't think I can use my car key in the short film..."

I'd just P-Touch or put a sticker over them...
 
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The process of replacing/disguising/changing real logos with something generic (or unseen) is called "greeking", btw.

It should only take a few minutes to take care of any offending visible logos, and it's probably worth the effort. Not 'cos of any "trouble if they see it" thing, but what happens if your video becomes wildly successful for some reason and someone wants to license/buy/use it for something where real dollars are involved? That's when you'll be kicking yourself for not taking the short time to cover your butt earlier.

There's a variety of ways to hide lables/logos, from coloured sticky tapes to markers to turning bags/bottles sideways to using DOF to blur products in that range... to manually distorting stuff in post (which some people here have done. Interesting before/after images, for sure).

There are also companies that specialise in this stuff, and which rent no-name products (from soda cans to wall posters to anything) with logos that look supsiciously similar to real brands... but aren't. That's an option, but probably a bit too much for your needs. Just mentioning it.

Post teh video when it's done! :)
 
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I'm more than likely going to just make name badges that have the colors representing the stores and just put "Team W" and "Team M" on it. It would sort of be like an inside joke. Who knows, this video could be really popular ha ha. Thanks for the input guys
 
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