LOS ANGELES—Sometimes marketing gets in the way of marketing. Take Apple's association with the about-to-be-released movie, Sex Tape, directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal, whose characters, according to Cult of Mac, "record an 'adult home movie' on their iPad, only to accidentally upload it to the iCloud, so that all their friends and family get to see it."
Of little concern to most audiences, techincal details in the comedy's plotline remain problematic for the company. As explained by Luke Dormehl for the site, "While Apple’s inclusion in the film means that Cupertino is presumably happy with the script (the trailer even features an added reference to Siri), when GQ magazine contacted AppleCare to find out whether the described scenario could actually happen it was told that it is pretty much flat-out science-fiction."
An AppleCare specialist explained, "Videos can be backed up to iCloud, but what that means is the video would be saved as, like, a backup. But you wouldn’t be able to share it with anyone. No one can go into the iCloud and watch the video.”
The specialist also clarified that a video cannot be accidentally uploaded to the iCloud, noting, “You would have to make special settings for anyone to be able to see that—like a shared stream.”
Whether director Kasdan thought to inquire of Apple about these sorts of technical details before making the movie we do not know, but according to a interview he just gave HuffPo Live, he did reach out to YouPorn as part of his research for "a sequence in the movie having to do with YouPorn and the threat of YouPorn, which is a huge, huge porn company website.
"They play prominently in the movie," the director told host Ricky Camilleri, "and we were actually working with YouPorn on one sequence—we needed their cooperation—working with them to the extent that were hoping they would help us out a little bit, and they did."
According to Kasdan, the YP staff explained to him precisely how the tube site model works, telling Camilleri, "[YouPorn] had a lot to tell us about how technically it all works, in terms of how this all works on the Internet, and that was really interesting actually. It turns out [people upload videos] so frequently and in such volume that those websites are just some of the biggest on Earth, and the technology to keep them running is worldwide. It was much more like a tech company than like a porn company."
Sex Tape opens this weekend, technical faux pas intact.
