Vehicles On Screen

Filmmakers and TV producers understand the importance of every detail, from script to set design, in creating a believable narrative. When art departments need to fictionalize product names, we make every effort to provide alternatives that look and sound believable. But what about featuring products that have distinct identities, like vehicles?

Much like the use of firearms on screen, where discerning audiences and manufacturers can identify specific gun brands without seeing labels, vehicles are similarly distinctive. Attempting to disguise, say, a Mini Cooper with a fictional brand would not convince anyone and could potentially become a costly legal issue.

Some productions employ picture car coordinators who work with manufacturers, obtain permission and ensure vehicles align with characters and plot. However, not everyone has the budget or need for these services. Consequently, we are often asked questions about clearance guidelines for using vehicles on screen. The answers can be complex and depend on various factors.

To gain some insight into these issues, we interviewed Cassidy Watkins, a veteran art department and clearance coordinator, with over 10 years experience in the field.

The following is an edited interview:

Eastern Script (ES): What are some of the clearance issues that arise when dealing with vehicles on screen? And when do productions have to get permission from the manufacturer to feature?

CWatkins (CW): As with all things clearances, this will depend on a variety of factors and usually stems from one of a few things: an advertising relationship between the broadcaster and a car maker or its competitors; the car is part of a product placement or product integration deal; the car is featured or a story point and the studio or network requires permission to show featured trademarks.

A project can make a deal with a car maker or their representatives for a paid integration where agreements are made about what features of the car will be exploited in the project. Or you could request product placement, where the brand agrees to supply vehicles, but no agreements are in place in terms of features or exposure, and the brand is aware of and approves the scripted use of the vehicle(s).

ES: Are there incidences when you don’t have to get permission? i.e.: how ‘featured’ does a car have to be before permission is necessary?

CW: For general use across most projects, we don’t need to get permission to show cars. Could you imagine a street shot if we did! There would have to be a specific car clearance division on each project! We might be restricted from using particular brands to protect advertising relations and if one of those brands shows up in a prominent way in a shot, we may be asked to remove the branding in post.

It’s much more common that we avoid, obscure, or remove branding from vehicles that we don’t have permission to see because it’s not a quick or easy process to get permission from or make a deal with a car brand. Ever wondered why there’s a black oval in the middle of that truck steering wheel where a Ford logo might have been? It’s usually because it’s either a restricted brand for the broadcaster or they’re protecting their other truck advertisers

As for how ‘featured’ a car has to be, that again all depends on the context of use and some of the policies outlined earlier. Some considerations would be: is it the car a main character spends a lot of time in throughout the project? Is it referred to in dialogue? Is it part of the storyline? If you answered yes to any of those questions, a more conservative legal department might require you to get permission, but a less conservative streamer is likely not going to require permission.

ES: In our research work, we are rarely asked to provide fictionalized vehicle brands. What are the main reasons for this?

CW: The reason you as a research company aren’t often asked for fictional car names is because a production could face a claim of trademark infringement if they were to stick fictional branding on what is clearly a known vehicle to the public. We can cover or remove branding without that danger, but we cannot alter or rebrand without opening up to a risk of a claim. Not many productions are building cars for their shows where they would have free reign to brand their original creation with a fictional name.

A more common use for a fictional car brand would be in a graphic produced by production - say a poster, a billboard, a magazine ad - where there’s a licensed stock image of an unbranded vehicle, and as long as the name and vehicle aren’t confusingly similar to a real car and brand, the production is free to create and clear a fictional brand name. How close can you get to an existing brand name before it’s ‘confusingly similar’? Well that, as is always the case in the clearance game, depends on the many assessments of risk, exposure, context, use, advertiser considerations, etc., that makes clearances in film and tv an ever-shifting landscape with few hard and fast rules from production to production.

Cassidy is a freelance clearance coordinator based in Toronto, Ontario. She has worked on productions such as Star Trek: Discovery and the feature film Thanksgiving among many others. She can be reached at cwatkinsfilm@gmail.com.