Elijah Wood's 'Grand Piano' Filled with BlackBerry PlayBook Sponsored Placement!
I just happened to watch the new Elijah Wood thriller 'Grand Piano' and right from the beginning, BlackBerry placement is everywhere. The main character of the film uses a BlackBerry Bold and in the very next scene receives a gift from his wife which says 'Welcome to the 21st Century ' - and it's a brand new BlackBerry PlayBook!
Minor spoilers below for more information about the placement.
In a later scene about 30 minutes in, Elijah Wood (a pianist) is stuck in a situation where a sniper is aimed at him and will shoot him if he misses a single note at a concert. After a lot of shots of the Bold in earlier scenes where he's receiving messages from the sniper, we see Wood sneakily place his Bold behind his cover sheet music book and sneakily type a distress message to his friend with one hand on the hidden phone WHILE playing the piano with the other and succeeds without the sniper noticing! Quite an ad for the need of a physical keyboard actually!
You'd think that's the end of the PlayBook placement, but the film goes so far as to make it a central plot point. In a later scene, Elijah Wood is in his dressing room and only has minutes to find sheet music for an extremely hard song that he misplaced by mistake. And that's when he remembers the gift his wife gave him, fires up his new PlayBook and Googles the composition (lots of shots of the PlayBook in action), and listens to it and prepares a sheet by ear. PlayBook saved his ***!
It was surprising to see this and interesting because this is a 2014 release (hits US cinemas this weekend and already on VOD) so unless the film was shot a couple of years ago, it's weird to see BlackBerry have paid sponsorship for a product that's no longer being made.
What do you guys think?
Posted via CB10