T-Shirt logos in view in documentary
 

I'm finishing a doc in which in some scenes T-Shirt logos (such as "Hurley") are clearly in shot. I notice that a number of reality TV shows blurs them out. Anyone care to share their experience in similar situations?

Been there! Last doc I did, had to black out a t shirt logo (sponsor pulled out) and probably even worse, had to change the color of a dirt bike in the BG of the shot from yellow to red. At least the shot was locked down on a tripod!

I've always thought blurring of logos was the result of excessive paranoia and make-work projects for the flood of graduates produced by the law schools. AFAIK, there's no legal reason it has to be done. Most often I think it's really due to the fact that production companies are traditionally paid a fee or given other consideration by corporations in exhange for product placement and they don't want to let logos on the screen unless to logo owner has paid them for the plug. When the happy young couple takes off for their South Seas holiday and we see them boarding their flight at LAX on Air XYZ, very often Air XYZ has paid the production company a gratuity to induce them to let their logo be seen, often loaning them the plane and gate space, etc, free of charge in exchange for the product placement. Of course if Coke has paid for product placement in your show (like they did on American Idol, say) they're not going to be happy to see a character drinking a Pepsi, so it is probably wise to blur the Pepsi logo you find on the background character's tee-shirt if you can't reshoot the scene.

I'll add to my experience that it was a personal thing between the sponsors and subject.
On another note, once the client saw that I could do stuff like changing colors and removing logos, they asked if they could start adding logos to things throughout. I told them it was possible but would significantly increase the small budget we were working with.
Give 'em an inch!!!!
In the end, we added all the sponsors to a page in the credits!

Thanks very much Robert and Steve; I appreciate the input.