I wonder if part of that is just the general principle that society is better off without everyone and his brother knowing how to pick locks?
More likely it’s the simple fact that the real process of lockpicking is long, tedious and involves little dynamic movement: all anathema to an action movie, which is where it’s most often depicted on film.
Since people are mentioning TV shows, I have one. There was an episode of Ally McBeal (Yes I watched the show, yes I know what that says about me) where a friend of hers was in an auto accident. Long story short, Ally makes up a settlement figure and offers it to the other attorney and after he accepts it she says they’ll let the insurance know. That almost makes the fact that her offer was either 30 or 50k, I don’t recall which, for a fairly minor accident that appeared to leave little to no injury.
Bah! At the time I was an auto claims adjuster and the process they were showing in no way at all resembled reality. An attorney hired by an individual does NOT get to make offers with their clients insurance companies money. And you don’t make settlement offers with no investigation or medical reports.
They may be. I’m thinking too much through my perspective as a person who works in a museum. Chenall’s lexicon sometimes makes things a bit confusing for us. We’d either have to classify it as a medical device or “clothing–underwear” and since we wouldn’t be certain of its purpose as the former, we’d probably classify it as the latter.
In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the Enterprise is hijacked and taken to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The exact geometric center. The trip seems to take about 8 hours. Let’s be real generous and say it actually took them a week. Let’s be even more generous and say they were already 1,000 lightyears closer to it than Earth when they started. That means they had to travel at roughly 1.3 million times the speed of light. Nevermind that warp 9.9999, which even the TNG Enterprise-D couldn’t reach, would be about 6 and a half times slower. Just look at Voyager. They were thrown 70,000 lightyears away and expected to get home in 70 years, doing about 1,000 lightyears each year. If only they had the Enterprise-A, they could have made the trip in two weeks.
As an old Mac hand, I’ve spotted the “Chicago” font in some odd places—like on the marquee for a sleazy movie production company (in Ed Wood), 30 years before the typeface was invented.
Hah. I can’t watch Mr Holland because of the sheer volume of glurge in those two hours.
Did you ever catch that CSI ep where Grissom and co. investigate the murder of a deaf kid from a school? I had to translate for some friends of mine who wanted to know what they were saying. The camera angles were a little weird, but… the conversation was okay, from what I remember.
If you want to have some fun, watch any Law & Order episode with a trial attorney. My friend will murmur stuff under her breath. [sub]“Leading…facts not in evidence…badgering…”[/sub]
I know I already mentioned to not get me started about San Francisco filming locations, but I must give special mention to the Kim Basinger / Richard Gere movie Final Analysis, in which the climactic final scene is a lighthouse at the base of the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Not only is there no lighthouse there, but if there were its existence would be utterly pointless, as any ship would have been diced to bits about a mile further west, at the entrance to the headlands. Which is why there actually is a lighthouse at that spot - Point Bonita. Why they chose not to film at the real one is baffling - there’s this suspension bridge that would have made for some great dramatic shots.
The only thing more egregious is Dustin Hoffman driving the wrong way across the Bay Bridge in The Graduate. I can’t even imagine how they got approval to shut down the bridge to film that scene.
Well, yeah, it kind of is. One would have to be found. He would have to be paid enough to pry him away from his regular work, possibly including travel, lodging, and certainly he would have to be fed. And then you have another person on set creating noise and liability and taking up space.
This thread is pretty interesting to me as an ex-film school student and aspiring filmmaker. In the defense of real filmmakers, remember that they are above all storytellers. Movies cost extraordinary amounts of money to make, they create enormous amounts of stress, and it would be impossible if an expert had to be consulted at every corner to attest to the real world validity of every conceived detail.
There is such a thing in theater as “suspension of disbelief”, and the cinema is really just a modern continuation of the theater tradition. True, it comes a lot closer to reality than the theater ever could. But they used to just use masks and makeup, for cryin’ out loud. Cut 'em at least a little slack. 
That being said, carry on.
There are a number of errors concerning the discovery of the comet in Deep Impact. Many of them are obvious even to the layman: A comet wouldn’t be discovered by a kid with a 2-inch scope at a backyard star party; it’d be discovered months earlier by someone with much better equipment who was searching for comets (to be fair, that better-equipped person would likely still be an amateur). But that’s excusable, since it’s obviously important for the plot for the kid to make the discovery.
The nitpicky detail, though… When the professional astronomer double-checks it, he’s able to determine the orbit on the spot, with only two observations (his own and the kid’s). But you actually need at least three to determine an orbit at all, and preferably a lot more, if you want anything resembling precision (like, enough precision to determine it’ll hit Earth). And you’d want your observations to be a lot better than an untrained teenager’s naked-eye sketch.
I haven’t read the entire thread…I would like to point out that some of the errors -
- Military Uniforms
- LockPicking
- “home made” silencers
Are not neccisarily errors… I would say that the film industry has a few written rules governing “teaching” criminal behaviour outright - showing how to actually pick a lock for example -
I also seem to recall that the use of Military ‘stuff’ in the movies required it to be done to a certain degree incorrectly… to keep it from ever being confused with actual military footage… this was especially true with uniforms. The exception being if the Military somehow “approved” of the film itself… (or was asked to participate).
I’m curious - where are these written rules and requirements? Do you mean federal laws, or are you alluding to some sort of industry-standard agreement?
It can be used to good effect, though; in Undercover Blues, it’s a good setup for the lead characters to exchange witty banter during the downtime. Kathleen Turner is fairly obviously using a real lockpick kit…okay, at least she’s using two tools instead of one. 
The camera’s also set up so you can’t get a good look at exactly what she’s doing, which may play into that ‘don’t teach criminal behavior’ thing.
Here is one googled article
Section 772 lists some exceptions:
IIRC, what I read was that in order to qualify for the exception, the military had to review and approive the film in question, and that the exceptions were rarely granted… THis article does not go into that detail.
This is why, again IIRC, most movie makers “fudge” the uniforms a bit… gives them legal wiggle room.
So, I would say that it is both a “law” and an “agreement”.
It’s not as if you’re going to pick up even basic technique (much less detail information needed to defeat locks with security features) from watching a movie, even if done accurately. It really takes time and understanding of the lock mechanism. Besides, most burglars don’t resort to using lockpicks; they break a window or kick in a door. The only reason someone is going to bypass a lock by lockpicking is if they want to pass without leaving obvious signs of entry, and that requires skill.
A pittance. When Michael Mann was filming Heat, he had the main actors trained in firearms technique for two months, and it shows; the characters handle their firearms like they actually know what they’re doing. In Real Genius, director Martha Coolage had a CalTech alumni and physicist on set and reviewing the script. While there are certainly some scientific liberties taken (for the sake of humor, naturally) much of the terminology regarding laser technology was current and relatively accurate and many of the pranks were transparent fictions of real pranks.
Having a local locksmith demonstrate lockpicking technique sufficient to pass on film would take about five minutes. It isn’t hard.
Stranger
Message board flaw that no one should notice: “alumni” is plural. The singular is “alumnus” (masculine) or “alumna” (feminine). Or you could just use the Anglicized “alumn”, which works for either gender.
But yeah, Real Genius did a pretty good job (far better than usual in Hollywood) on the physics.
You’d think, although pretty much any piano player can tell from the actor’s arms and body whether those motions are at all related to what’s on the soundtrack. Movies about musicians (Ray, Shine, etc.) generally tend to get it right or fake it pretty well. And on Frasier, it seemed pretty likely that Kelsey Grammer was actually playing in any scenes where Frasier was sitting at the piano.
But in most movies where a character is just incidentally playing the piano, it’s clearly phony. Ian Holm’s faking jars me out of Big Night, and the recent Pride & Prejudice has a hilarious scene where Keira Knightley walks into a room where somebody is playing a piece on a little fortepiano that the instrument doesn’t even have the keys to play.
Satellite phones won’t work inside of a dinosaur, and depending upon who your long distance company is, and the type of sat phone, you might not be able to *69 them, either.
In Gladiator they used stirrups. Which hadn’t been invented then.
One thing that always gets me is wine vintages. Playboy impresses friends by saying “We had the Latour '63 last night”. Funny how 1963 was one of the worst vintages of the last hundred years.
I’d say that good to great vintages account for about 50% of all years, yet somehow they always pick the crap years. If you’re going to guess, you’d think that the odds would be better. Otherwise, try Robert Parker (amongst many, many other websites).
Or do Hollywood and TV script writers only drink beer…?