legal Social Media and Email Substitute for Indie Film

Hi Everyone!
I am in the process of pre-production for a low budget indie film and we are searching for an alternative to email, Facebook and Instagram that we can show on screen without issues of trademark and copyright. Has anyone come across something like this?
 
Create your own fictitious media platform(s). My daughter was into Nickelodian shows such as "Victorious;" they used Pear computers and fictitious sites such as "FacePlace."

In one project on which I worked a character liked playing Angry Birds. They could not, of course, use any of the visuals or audio. I created a music that sounded similar ( i.e. if the melody went up, I went down) and created my own sound effects which were almost indistinguishable from the original. It was obvious what he was playing, but as we never saw the game itself on his phone, we did not infringe upon the copyright.

Get creative! That's the whole point of indie filmmaking.
 
Email is easiest. Just use an unbranded interface. I read email in Thunderbird which you can download free. I just looked and there are NO logos and it's just plain white on black email with the classic format. It's also open-source.

FB and IG are harder. The fake names take me out of the film/tv show the same as the 555 number does. I would imply it was the real thing. So for FB create your own interface, blue and white, put some pics and a feed. Don't put a logo. So for example:

John sits in front of computer. Blue and white screen in front of him.

John points at the screen and says "Look what she said about me!"

Close up of text on screen.

Facebook is never mentioned, just implied. If he needs to mention it later w/o pointing to the screen he can call it social. "She's been dragging me on social!"

Here, I googled Thunderbird for you:

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I agree 100% with @indietalk . And text messages are great for this - close up on the screen if needed and no need to show logos.

Also, as a side note, I like the trend toward showing text messages in VERY LARGE type face on the screen. I watched the latest episode of The Chi last night, and they did that beautifully. It makes it easy to read, and colors/type faces can be changed to reflect the characters.
 
If you'll pardon my French :coffee: these people (at : 2m41s if it doesn't load correctly)
did a very clever re-brand of their fake search engine. The acronym "Gafa" is much more widely used in French than it is in English, so this is effectively hiding a barely-legal rebrand in plain sight.

If your character is using a computer, and the page is static, you can (usually) edit most of the appearance using the developer's console, which would allow you to swap out recognisable logos and/or fonts and/or colours. Of course this still leaves you with the browser's interface (and the operating system) ... low budget - can't have everything! :lol:
 
Create your own fictitious media platform(s). My daughter was into Nickelodian shows such as "Victorious;" they used Pear computers and fictitious sites such as "FacePlace."

In one project on which I worked a character liked playing Angry Birds. They could not, of course, use any of the visuals or audio. I created a music that sounded similar ( i.e. if the melody went up, I went down) and created my own sound effects which were almost indistinguishable from the original. It was obvious what he was playing, but as we never saw the game itself on his phone, we did not infringe upon the copyright.

Get creative! That's the whole point of indie filmmaking
I agree 100% with @indietalk . And text messages are great for this - close up on the screen if needed and no need to show logos.

Also, as a side note, I like the trend toward showing text messages in VERY LARGE type face on the screen. I watched the latest episode of The Chi last night, and they did that beautifully. It makes it easy to read, and colors/type faces can be changed to reflect the characters.
Great thanks - Ill take a look at The Chi and see what they have done!
 
Email is easiest. Just use an unbranded interface. I read email in Thunderbird which you can download free. I just looked and there are NO logos and it's just plain white on black email with the classic format. It's also open-source.

FB and IG are harder. The fake names take me out of the film/tv show the same as the 555 number does. I would imply it was the real thing. So for FB create your own interface, blue and white, put some pics and a feed. Don't put a logo. So for example:

John sits in front of computer. Blue and white screen in front of him.

John points at the screen and says "Look what she said about me!"

Close up of text on screen.

Facebook is never mentioned, just implied. If he needs to mention it later w/o pointing to the screen he can call it social. "She's been dragging me on social!"

Here, I googled Thunderbird for you:

1625153632436.png
Great - thanks for all the information! An unbranded open source email sounds like the perfect solution and thunderbird looks like it could definitely work. In terms of yout facebook solution - also what I have been thinking! :) Just wanted to check if there was any sort of template or faux app setup for film productions before we go down other routes. Thanks so much for the suggestions- they are really great :)
 
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