The Good Kind of Product Placement
National Public Radio (90.7 in Wisconsin; <3) carried a round-table discussion with scientists on promoting reliable science and technology news? One subject was how scientists could “spice up screenplays with science.”
The scientists recognized the idea of “product placement” as a powerful force. And some argued that there should eb an effort for “reality-based science” to be the “product”:
“Well, we actually recognize the power of Hollywood to inspire people, to inspire imaginations. When I was working as a journalist, I always would talk to scientists about what made them want to become a scientist. And invariably it would be a book they read, a movie they saw, or someone they met, but in general it was this entertainment industry.
It has the power to reach people with a very strong, inspiring message and it can get across very broad, general messages about, you know, the good or bad of science. And so this is a way of doing that by essentially finding a way to get entertainment people and scientists in a room together and talking.”
The panel discussed very specifically how it could work:
“It’s good when it’s done well. For many, many years I was on and still am - on advisory boards to Hollywood, and I keep trying to tell them that it’s not so much your job to tell the science story, but to tell the science process, because that’s not where people are going to get their science information, so you need an accurate thing.”
With some amusing anecdotes, speaking of The Day After Tomorrow:
“…big special effects. One of the things that our other speaker, Sid Perkowitz, brought up during our session was, okay, yeah, the science was ridiculous in terms of the time scales on which it happened, but it did have a measurable impact on people’s attitude towards climate change. People came out of there with a sense of immediacy and urgency that they did not get had they happen to see “Inconvenient Truth.”
Plus, it has scientists getting emotional about climate change deniers. Something you don’t always se. It is as enjoyable as it sounds:
“I completely agree and I got to put down the blogosphere. The blogosphere is one of the worst places to go for information, because, unlike Paul and others, most public people are not going to spend three hours a day doing this. We really need to reestablish the mainstream media in putting some specialists back in who can smell the north end of a southbound horse, because most general assignment reporters can’t and certainly their editors can’t.”
Listen to the whole wonderful thing.