OP really says it all; whe people are drinking from cups in movies and TV, they always seem to be drinking… nothing. And all the cups and mugs seem weightless and empty. Is this true? If so, is there a good reason why the actors can’t just drink coffee or whatever? Maybe they aren’t trusted with hot liquids or something.
If it is the case – and it’s plausibly so – then remember that they usually do multiple takes per scene. A hot liquid would cool and get nasty, and water might be seen and ruin the effect of drinking coffee. Any liquid in general might splash on clothing; not that the actors are lunkheads, but accidents can happen. Leaving out the liquid makes it a lot easier to ‘reset’ a scene for another take, lowers the risk of accidents, and actually does preserve the illusion (seeing water kills the illusion faster than seeing nothing).
I’m not necessarily saying these are the reasons, and I’m sure someone with more experience can weigh in, but these are the rationalizations I can think of off the top of my head. Against them, having the actor pretend that a cup is full is pretty trivial.
I always suspected that this might have something to do with continuity. As distracting as it is to see an actor waving an obviously empty cup around, it’s even more distracting if the cup keeps going for full to half-empty and back again to full from one shot to the next.
Well, that and you don’t want your star drinking so much coffee that they need to keep running to the bathroom between takes, since those little breaks can add up to lots of money when you’ve got a whole crew waiting around.
I always feel the same way, for what little it’s worth.
Yes, it annoys my husband and me all the time. It’s surprising how easy it is to detect cups with no liquid weighing them down.
I suspect it’s done for ease of use and to avoid spills. Water in the cups probably wouldn’t be readily visible - the worst offenders in my opinion are the take out paper cups with lids anyway. And the actors wouldn’t have to actually drink the water in them. But it would be obnoxious and expensive if every week or two a cup turned over and the whole surrounding area got drenched and had to be re-set. And of course if you fill the cups, you have to pay someone to fill them - it’s an extra step that is probably viewed as unnecessary.
Didn’t Bill Lumberg have actual coffee in his ubiquitous Initech mug in Office Space? I seem to remember the coffee being there.
This is one of those things that bugs me too. Not only do the cups get set down too fast and sound empty, but the sips are simulated and look way too small and dainty. Of course, no one talks without ums and ahs in real life either so I guess I have to accept it.
For me it’s the big disconnect between how they manipulate the cup and how they drink out of it. Either they wave the cup around like it’s empty and then delicately sip the airspace half an inch from the rim. So either you’re suffering from invisible scald wounds or you just enjoy the refreshing, ethereal quality of coffee-scented steam as it tingles all seven tastebuds.
Yeah, it bugs me, too.
Bugs me too.
Maybe I’ll make my next fortune inventing and selling “simulated coffee” to studios desiring realism.
Endowing can be one of the harder aspects of acting because it requires constant focus on maintaining the illusion that the coffee cup is full, or the knife is sharp, or the fourth wall is a mirror. If the actor flubs at all, then the whole effect is ruined. The actors and directors probably feel it’s better to let the little stuff slide and not spend a huge chunk of time rehearsing movements with a mug. (If however, the actor should spend half an hour every night practicing in front of a mirror until it becomes automatic, so much the better.)
One of the worst offenders in this category is The West Wing. During any infamous walk-and-talk scene, one or more characters will be holding a styrofoam coffee cup. And you can always tell that it’s completely empty, because their arms swing as if they were holding nothing.
And then they’ll take a drink by tipping the cup past the horizontal, like they were chugging beer. IT’S FUCKING COFFEE, YOU NUMBNUTS, YOU JUST BURNED YOUR THROAT! TAKE A SIP!
/rant.
On The Gilmore Girls, the girls drank Coke instead of coffee.
Always bugs me, and I see no reason why they can’t put water in the damn cups or why highly paid actors can’t hold a cup like it does have liquid in it. Put marbles in the damn thing or something!
Reminds me of a saying I’ve heard in the theatre - If the audience notices a minor set flaw, then the actors aren’t doing their jobs.
This reminds me of one of my favorite movie cliches; how you know the movie is about to end when the main characters are sitting next to a police car, with a blanket over their shoulders, drinking coffee. I’ve always wondered; are police cruisers stocked with extra blankets and a coffee-maker for such occasions? Are victims of traumatic experiences always automatically cold and thirsty afterwards? Anyway, I’ve always loved that little bit of cinematic shorthand.
Sounds good to me. The best example I can think of in this regard off the top of my head is in the pilot episode for the series Firefly. Alan Tudyk, the ship’s pilot (character names not bothered with for those who haven’t seen it) has just finished evading a hostile ship in a very tense scene, and there’s a brief shot of him, the captain, and first mate relaxing and congratulating each other. What nobody notices until the commentary points it out is that Alan has his hand where the control stick should be, cupped as if he’s holding it, but there is nothing there.
Every time I see that scene, I can’t help but giggle. You register in your mind that he’s holding the controls, but you’d never notice there’s not actually anything in his hand until someone else points it out. Alan’s posture is just that natural.
IIRC, in the commentary the chair he was on had to be moved back so the scene would fit, and the lack of apparatus was supposed to be fixed in post. Either they forgot or ran out of time, I forget.
In the commentary for War Stories he said the one scene he’d pay anything to redo was after he’d been rescued by Gina Torres. Wobbly–he’d just endured a torture session–he leans against a doorframe with his head on the far side of the frame for a moment while Torres rips off a pithy comment to the bad guy. “Look at me,” he says. “I have no head!” He does indeed, look like a decapitated corpse propped against the doorway.
If it’s an urban situation, I always assumed they fetched it from a nearby deli.
If you’re kind of shocky, sipping some coffee or tea helps for some reason. I think It’s mostly psychological but it does work. One of my co-workers got tagged with 110-v 400-Hz one afternoon. No real injury but, boy, does it sting. He stood there blinking for a moment until I said, “Siddown before you fall over.” Then I fetched a cup of coffee and he drank about an ounce of it over the half-hour or so it took him to recover.
Bugs me too. 
It’s more the way they take and hold a whole mug though, in a way you just wouldn’t if it was hot. They even do it on Eastenders, ferchissakes, and we all know that is top.quality.drama.
(It is. :))
Can’t say as I’ve ever noticed the empty cup phenomenon but what I have noticed is that when coffee is actually shown being poured into a cup, no one ever seems to pour more than about a quarter of a cup. That always pulls me out of the scene because it’s so obviously stagey.
They also hold the cup so high you can’t see into it, or so low it’s out of camera range. Friends does that all the time.