Details in films that bug you

Actually ,apart from being able to fill it with water, none of the rest of that statement is correct.

i concur.

the big tank at pinewood has been used for all sorts of things.
i have actually been on the set of Skyfall and seen the Macau hotel and all the floating lamps/dragons (a friend works in the art department and had to get all those made)

the scene of the harbour at night is actually a painted scene on the back wall with loads of tiny lights stuck to the wall

old school film set building.

I’ve always presumed it helps the lighting(?) but night scenes, especially Hollywood ones, they always wet the floor. Even when it obviously hasn’t been raining . Why?

It does indeed help the lighting.

For continuity reasons you often wet everything down in daytime too – it can take all day or even several days to film a scene and if theres a risk it’ll rain during that time its safer to have everything wet to start with than have to dry everything out. I once had to drive a 1000 litre tank if water around Skye for 5 days just in case it stopped raining….. it didn’t.

not seen 3 yet then ?

Don’t need to now. I’m guessing he gets his car back after inflicting a high body count on the Russkies.

there is a scene in 12 years a slave where a horse rides slowly across the frame in front of a drought hit dry and withered crop of cotton.
the matte artist has literally cloned one patch of dry crop from left to right probably from some stock download that wasn’t wide enough to fill the frame, its obviously stepped and repeated in the most basic ham fisted way.

can’t believe they let that shoddy work stay in the final cut.

Opening scene of American Warewolf in London. Starts out with the lads walking north along the Gospel pass road towards Hay on Wye. Change camera angle, and now they are walking south back the way they just came from. Switch camera angle a 3rd time and, hey presto, they are going north again. Really bugs me that one.

I’m with thegeneralist on the empty cups thing

This has bugged me for years. Not just that they’re clearly empty but no-one ever even tries to act otherwise. “Here’s your coffee, sir.” “Hey, thanks.” *Takes a bag swig with the cup at somewhere between 45′ and horizontal* If they did that in real life they’d have a faceful of boiling coffee.

I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that trained soldiers would cock their weapons as soon as they realized they were in a fight.

I’m far from an expert either, but AFAIK guns don’t need cocking at all unless you’re using a flintlock.

Being an out and out nerd, whilst watching Independence Day i was amazed to see that the Aliens had alsodeveloped a network protocol exactly the same as TCP/IP which enabled the U.S Army to conveniently drop a virus into their systems…..as if this wasn’t obvious to the audience they reinforced the fact with a convenient progress bar that said ‘Uploading Virus’!!

The use of computers in pretty much any film ever, exponentially so if “hacking” is involved. Was it a fairly recent Jimmy Bond film where they had launch codes or some such on screen, they had a load of characters cycling on a huge screen and it lit up green every time a character was guessed? There’s just so much wrong with that I don’t know where to start, not least of all that if that was how cracking passwords worked you could break it with a ZX Spectrum in the time it took to switch the screen on.

In the only bit of Towie I’ve ever seen the people are filmed entering the big swimming pool room at Pennyhill Spa . In real life they have all just come out of the  toilets.

but AFAIK guns don’t need cocking at all unless you’re using a flintlock.

It depends. Mostly for pistols nowadays you have single action vs double action. Single action does need the hammer cocking and some allow for both. So its not a completely invalid scenario.

they had a load of characters cycling on a huge screen and it lit up green every time a character was guessed

For an internal team site in a fit of boredom once set up the welcome page to do just that. Or rather it was a random number as to whether it decided it was valid and then x “valid” attempts allowed you in.

My pet bug-bear: orange and teal colour pallet. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, it’s in every goddamn thing these days. Inside of an office? Sure, let’s colour it like Mad Max.

Re guns – in most films and TV shows someone gets their gun out and points it at someone, says some lines, then the other person gets their gun out. What is the point of pointing a gun at someone if you’re going to let them get their own gun out and point it at you without firing it? Surely that’s the whole point of aiming at someone? It’s hilarious. And, after several hammy lines of dialogue, THEN they cock the hammer.

One that I’ve recently noticed – everyone always has their shoes on indoors.

This bloke, I mean this particular action sequence..

The Hollywood Run. Just point your fingers like a six year old, lift your knees as high as you can, like a six year old, and you can sprint. For longer and quicker than an Olympic 100m sprinter.

Motorbikes – whenever there’s any motorbike it’s normally the wrong engine sound dubbed over.

Ducati V-twin – IL4 sounds… 🙁

Correct:

No, no, NO!

Spooks: the greater good

Scene at the the start where Kit Hartington on the run in Moscow gets picked up by some other agents driving a Tesla model S…

….with normal car engine noise and gear change sounds…arrggghhhhh!

then of course there’s the classic car chase scene in Bullitt between Steve McQueen in a Ford Mustang and two assassins in a Dodge Charger where they repeatedly overtake the same VW Beetle (guess the driver might have been lost) and a bit later on Steve manages to do 37 consecutive gear upshifts (yes, I did count them!)

the big tank at pinewood has been used for all sorts of things.
i have actually been on the set of Skyfall and seen the Macau hotel and all the floating lamps/dragons (a friend works in the art department and had to get all those made)

We built the steel frame for the Dragon Casino, including the little hump back bridge indoors over the lizards where he fights on the way out.
Some epic stuff being done in there for the latest one, but the majority is on the backlot and other stages

One that I’ve recently noticed – everyone always has their shoes on indoors.

And people then lying on sofas and beds with their shoes on.

Back to the Future, the enchantment under the sea dance, 1955. Marty is playing a Gibson 335 which was first made in 1958

Back to the Future, the enchantment under the sea dance, 1955. Marty is playing a Gibson 335 which was first made in 1958

You could write a book of BTTF niggles.

The big one is in BTTF2 when old Biff goes back from 2015 to 1955 to give the sports almanac to his younger self, why does he not return to an alternate 2015 rather than the one he left?

classic car chase scene in Bullitt between Steve McQueen in a Ford Mustang and two assassins in a Dodge Charger where they repeatedly overtake the same VW Beetle (guess the driver might have been lost)

It belonged to one of the film crew, iirc.

Steve McQueen’s son did a tribute remake of the bullitt chase with Gas Monkey Garage recently. They even had the beetle being overtaken several times 😁

Volcano films, like the Tommy Lee Jones one that just finished.  Very rarely do you find a lava flow that you cannot out walk to escape from (note lava, not pyroclastic flow)  Concrete blocks will not divert a lava flow.

My pet bug-bear: orange and teal colour pallet.

It compliments  skin tone – so for as long as the humans in films have skin on them the sets are going to be orange and teal 🙂

Jets making attack on vital installation, after many explosions, the pilots talk to each other explaining they are all out of ordnance, save one who has one bomb/missile left. Cut to outside shot of jets showing flight of jets with pylons fully loaded with ordnance.

We built the steel frame for the Dragon Casino, including the little hump back bridge indoors over the lizards where he fights on the way out.
Some epic stuff being done in there for the latest one, but the majority is on the backlot and other stages

i was on that stage when they were striking the set (sat in on of the bond DB5’s as i was there on a job for EON) a friend is back on the current Bond, it’s nice to go and see but wouldn’t want to be on a long production, too many nightmare stories…

on the subject of cars….

Where a driver is completing a long journey, the car pulls into the driveway…with plumes of water vapour pouring out of a stone-cold exhaust pipe.

Guy is stalking deer in Scotland,

Arrested on his return for using a bow in UK.

Also light one candle and it’s like the sun came up.

wouldn’t want to be on a long production, too many nightmare stories…

Longer the better , it all helps pay the bills 😉

Explosions where they get blown backwards a distance, then dust themselves down, if the blast wave has enough energy to do that then you’re dead already.

Also in Bullitt, the mustang which has a broken track rod end, which is magically repaired 50yards later.

Explosions where they get blown backwards a distance, then dust themselves down, if the blast wave has enough energy to do that then you’re dead already.

Don’t ever watch the Ateam on Acid Windtalkers

It compliments skin tone – so for as long as the humans in films have skin on them the sets are going to be orange and teal

No. It’s all done in the grade with luts plus it’s easy to track a mask on a face so nothing to do with the human face but more to do with setting a mood/feel or even a historical time.

They even tracked a nose to recolour, Nicole Kidman had a prosthetic nose in The Hours and it didn’t always match her skin tone so all done in post.

Indiana Jones, the staff for the emulet to locate the ark is desciby as being ‘6 kadam high, 72 inches but take back one kadam to honour the Hebrew god whose ark this is’ Making it 5 ft. It’s then about 2 ft taller than Harrison ford in the map room. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

I’m glad someone mentioned Dunkirk. They lost me when the guys were leaving Weymouth and the Jurassic Skyline tower was clearly visible in the background of some shots. It was built in 2012.

Fist fights where nobody puts up any defence. Every shot lands with a sort of slapping noise but without breaking either the nose of the person being hit or the knuckles of the person doing the hitting.

Helicopters in films where the pilot is injured or shot dead, and the instruments start talking “head up, terrain..terrain..danger, terrain..”

#missionimpossiblefallout

(and yes, Toms already done the “running like a chicken” routine)

🤷‍♂️

The bass drop sound that seems to be essential for all films these days

OOOOOooooommmmmm…

Any film with weapons in it: there will always be something that makes me shout at the telly.

John Wick 3. Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

Always when they stealthily plant explosives but it has a flashing LED/and/or audible beep on it.

The Alcatraz time travel series they cancelled at the end of S1 had a final car chase that was an homage to Bullit but with a modern Mstang. They did overtake the same car @ few times.

In Goldeneye: the giant satellite dish under the lake in Cuba.
That’s a multi-year construction, hundreds of millions of ££, and we’ve had the CIA character saying “you can’t light a cigar in Cuba without us knowing about it”

So how did he build a massive dish and then flood it and WHERE THE **** DOES ALL THE WATER GO? The dish rises up, the water goes down through the hatch in the bottom. Next minute, James Bond is dropping through the same hatch into a nice neat computer room. Where’s the water?!

Sorry, there are numerous little details in most films that annoy me but that is unforgivable.

Another vote for the gunshots one. Bad guy blazes away on full auto and there’s a cloud of ricochets, sparks etc around the good guy who remains unharmed. Good guy pulls out a pistol – one pop and the bad guy falls dead (uually from a distance of about 200m).