# Examples of movie/TV/stage/book verissimilitude? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 22, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786 "2006-05-22T18:31:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/21 "2006-05-23T01:36:54Z")
> [@Sir Rhosis](#): > > I hate it when a shot is framed of a driver exiting a car so that the camera blocks the driver’s door, and he slides across the seat and gets out of the car on the passenger’s side. Yes, but back when that was used, it was how people did indeed enter cars. Easier to slide across the front seat than go out into traffic. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/22 "2006-05-23T13:52:35Z")
> [@Karen Lingel](#): > > “Hello, Hardware store?” At the bar: “Can I get a beer?” ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/23 "2006-05-23T15:49:20Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > At the bar: “Can I get a beer?” Sorry, all out. How about a milk? ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/24 "2006-05-23T16:12:11Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > The way people sit at a table to eat, with three or four people crowded on one side with the other side completely empty. > > _CSI_ does this all the time, with the techs explaining things to each other. Really, guys, I think Nick knows how to raise a serial number off a gun. There’s no need to have Sara explain it to him. I did like it on _CSI: Miami_ once where one of the techs explained the process of photographic development to the other, who rolled his eyes and said, “I \*\*\*do \*\* \* own a camera!” or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/25 "2006-05-23T17:07:50Z")
Any movie which wants to establish the relationship between two people with a line like “cause your my brother, that’s why” or “if you weren’t my brother I’d marry you”, etc. etc., although it could be argued this is a good way to introduce these things, it’s just that some screenwriters don’t have the ability to put this type of line in in a relastic sounding way. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786/26 "2006-05-23T18:03:59Z")
> [@chrisk](#): > > I’m going to nitpick and say that the OP seems to be asking for the OPPOSITE of verisimilitude… that these are conventions which don’t seem real, and that ask us as the audience to suspend a little bit of disbelief, in the name of making the movie or whatever work of art flow smoothly and easily. > > Examples of verisimilitude would be the situations that buck convention, that have you saying ‘no, most movies don’t get as real as this.’ Or am I missing something? Agreed. The OP’s examples seem to be a mixed bag of exposition and theatrical convention. (I tend to consider establishing shots and dateline text as a sort of shorthand exposition.) Expository material consists of narrative, dialogue, or scenes designed to provide information to the audience. Sometimes exposition is justifiable–a techie character can explain a problem to the audience by explaining it to his non-technical boss. The same explanation appearing in a dialogue between two techies would be harder to justify, because in real life, one techie would bring the other up to speed in one or two sentences of acronyms and impenetrable jargon. Audiences put up with exposition because they need it to understand what’s going on. Unjustified exposition is jarring, but most of us have been conditioned to overlook it in the interest of moving the story forward. We’ve also been trained to overlook theatrical conventions like the stage whisper and the fourth wall. The physical constraints of the medium often make these things necessary–the cameras have to stand somewhere, after all–so we’ve learned to ignore them unless someone really screws them up. Verisimilitude, on the other hand, is intended for members of the audience who already know something about the topic at hand. It’s about getting enough details right to make the work seem realistic. Say, for example, that a character in a movie has car trouble–if that particular model of car is selected for the scene because it is known by gearheads to be prone to the problem the character encounters, then it’s a case of verisimilitude. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-movie-tv-stage-book-verissimilitude/357786.md?page=1)