We didn’t mean to mislead the public by claiming review was from The Guardian says Surviving Georgia producer
The producer of Australian film Surviving Georgia has insisted that there was no intention to fool the public after a positive comment left anonymously by a reader on The Guardian’s website was promoted in publicity material as if it was an endorsement from the British newspaper itself.
The comment from “lutherfilms” said:
“Overall a film that touches your heart, and leaves you with a smile. What more could you want?”
But producer Spencer McLaren told Encore there was no intention to mislead filmgoers and there had been a slip-up by his marketing team. The film opens in Australia later this week.
Directed by Sandra Sciberras and Kate Whitbread, the film starring Pia Miranda, Holly Valance and Shane Jacobson came under fire last week from Stale Popcorn’s Glenn Dunks and Crikey’s Luke Buckmaster who pointed out the trailer suggests the film received four stars and glowing praise from The Guardian.
McLaren said of Buckmaster’s piece, “He seems to be implying that there is some Machiavellian plot to mislead the public.” He denied that was the case.
When Encore suggested that attributing the quote to a publication such as The Guardian was deceptive to the public, McLaren claimed: “It was not The Guardian, but Guardian.co.uk. But we contacted The Guardian to let them know. I think, what’s occurred, is it’s been accredited wrong. We’ve had different marketing people at different times. Ultimately it’s our fault as producers to cross-reference, that’s where the responsibility lies.”
“We’ve now got plenty of great reviews. So it’s not like we need it.”
McLaren said that although his team had now tried to correct the info, it might not have been amended everywhere. He said: “It has all happened late last week, we’re a small company so we don’t have a web department to drop everything and make the changes.”
At the time of posting, changes to the online press kit and website now attribute the quote to Lutherfilms rather than the publication itself, however the Youtube trailer still referenced The Guardian.
Never attribute to malice what could easily be seen as incompetence? That’s his reasoning to excuse his publicist? ‘Machavellian’ would imply that there was at least some thought put behind it, but this is just the usual publicists business. Despite the intention it *was* just plain deceptive. I’d imagine the publicist doesn’t just issue trailers without production at least looking over it?
It’s not The Guardian. It’s not even Theguardian.co.Uk, which still suggests an official review. What does ‘Lutherfilms’ really even mean?
By rights they should put:
‘Touching’ -TheGuardian.co.uk’s comments section.
That would be accurate.
I wouldn’t mind if this wasn’t the usual melodrama masquerading as realism.
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Is this a film or a segment from a TV show?
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The producers absolutely would have known if they received a positive review from The Guardian. By that reasoning alone they also would have known the quote attributed to The Guardian was bogus and misleading. It’s a case of sorry they got caught, rather than sorry they did it.
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Storm in a teacup, guys! Along with Doug, though, is this a TV show?
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