I know these things have been said a million times, but I wanna have my go at it.
Shaking camera: We went from steady cameras on dollys to cameras on steady shoulders to less-than-steady looks-like-documentary shaking to nowadays camera operators actively shaking the camera in a way that would make the videos made by my kids on a cell phone while riding a horse look like the rock of Gibraltar.
Lens flare: I understand that every now and then it could be OK, but now it looks like we’re actively making them.
Multiple useless screens. All TV/Movie labs have 20 computer screens showing information that nobody is looking at.
The mouse, apparently, has not been invented.
We still have green or orange phosphorus screens alongside 5D ultra HD ones.
Information blinking and beeping when you find it.
Multiple overlaping docs and images appearing onscreen and rendering 95% of them unreadable.
Turning off the TV just after hearing the news.
“turn on the TV”
“The president has been shot”
Proceeds to turn it off without any more information.
Apparently, when you disconnetct a computer, the screen flickers a couple of times.
Smartphones can only call and send MSM (and the occasional pic).
One of mine is when a character is driving a vehicle and they continually yank the steering wheel back and forth as if they’re weaving through a test drive obstacle course.
That’s one that always gets me. Moreso when the news is about the main character. If something happened to me or my family, I’d be trying to suck up every last bit of information about it, but they just listen to one sentence and turn it off. I suppose it’s supposed to look like they’re just sick of hearing the news everywhere they turn, but still.
Also, I’ve had a bunch of cell phones, not one has said “SAM CALLING” in giant letters that took up the entire screen. I’ve also never had a phone that allowed me to (with one button press) take a picture and send it to the person I was talking to, while I was talking to them.
Looking at and talking to the passenger, while driving. Long long conversations, arguing, flirting…I want to yell “look at the goddamn road!”. (Also done on TV too much, it was curiously satisfying when Callie and Arizona cracked up their car on Grey’s Anatomy.)
Let’s be fair before making the list too long, and consider what movies would be like if your criticisms were addressed. I mean, it’s absurd that there’s always a convenient parking space right in front of the building, but do you want to sit there watching for ten or twelve minutes while they scout around for a vacant space and then walk three blocks to get where they were going?
Thank god for CGI so that airplanes and helicopters don’t have to fly behind the mountain to blow up any more.
People who pour a hefty drink, take a sip, set it down and don’t drink any more. Hey! I paid for that!
People who have sex with their clothes on. I mean, like, fully dressed under the covers. Who does that?
Similar to turning off the TV before they get the whole story, somebody will call somebody and say “Quick! Turn on the news!” and the second guy turns the TV on to the BEGINNING of the news story. Now, that’s quick! He turned the TV on before the first guy even knew to call him!
The fact that cups of “coffee” are obviously empty. I know that for various technical reasons you’d prefer not to keep liquids in them, but would it kill you to put in a bag of sand or something instead, just so they look like they have some heft?
People who just hang up after completing their phone call without even saying goodbye. If one of my friends did that I’d call them out on it for being rude!
Arrested Development addressed this nicely. Attorney Wayne Jarvis turned on the TV to show a damning news story about the Bluths, but turned it on to a commercial instead.
Zooming in on the obviously fake and hopelessly useless looking GUI they made for the production to avoid infringement. On the other hand the opposite also annoys me when they start very obviously advertising whatever new device/operating system that’s sponsoring the show.
The former annoys me even more when it’s a video game. Since it normally appears as if neither the people who designed it nor the actors “playing” it have any clue what a video game actually looks like. Again the opposite is quite annoying too. Yes Live Free or Die Hard I know what Gears of War is, no I’m not going to go buy it purely because it shows up for 30 seconds in your shitty film.
In any movie involving a sailing ship there will be a storm. The storm will always be at night. During the storm someone will fall from the mast. The next morning will be a calm, bright, sunshiney day.
Another is when people jump to conclusions and nobody communicates and feelings get hurt for no reason. I thought of this last night while watching “Rock of Ages” - the guy thinks his girlfriend cheated on him with Stacee Jaxx when she totally didn’t. He accuses her and stops talking to her and she stops talking to him and hurt feelings happen all around. Simple trust and communication would have prevented all that.
Also when the characters don’t match the weather - like they walk in from a blizzard but their clothes are perfectly dry and their faces aren’t even red from the cold.
And the corollary…they walk into the warm house from the snow, covered in fake snowflakes, and it don’t melt. They’ll stand in the doorway for a moment or two, talking to another character, and the “snow” on their hair and coat is still there, minutes later.
Oh man!!! MY BIGGEST PET HATE WITH TV SHOWS! I also don’t like that people’s apartments are often much bigger than their means would suggest they could afford. Small apartments in shows, especially sit-coms are often there for one-off gags rather than dwellings of main characters.