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Suspension of disbelief
Films and tv shows usually rely on suspension of disbelief.
To me, if one is going to maintain the suspension of disbelief, you have to obey all the ordinary everyday rules that people know and understand. One can believe an massive alien invasion with giant biomechanoid floating death cannons, so long as the world rules beyond that are consistent. But if a human character, in avoiding one of these cannons, jumps off a ten storey building without any sort of aid, or interruptions to their fall, and land unharmed and run off - that's the deal breaker. One knows that's not possible, and suddenly one is left questioning that moment, and by default, the rest of the film.
I mentioned in a post yesterday that I hate it in films and tv when medics use the defibrillator paddles on a woman to try and restart her heart, and they are using them through material - bras, tank tops, etc. - rather than on bare skin. It pulls me right out of the moment, because I know it's not right.
I also mentioned hating when people can just break passwords when they have no information on the person, which has become really common in shows. Any computer whizz can break any password, within a relatively short time.
Another one I hate is when someone who is driving spends time looking at the their passenger rather than paying attention to the road. Quick glances are fine, but when they're maintaining eye contact for whole big chunks of conversation it annoys me. If you regularly did it in real life there's no way you wouldn't crash.
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king_espresso mentioned that he hates when people don't wear ear protection on board military helicopters, which is a great one. Well, except now I'll be looking for it and getting annoyed by it.
kaths brought up the way people type madly on computer keyboards to do things that the rest of us would do with a mouse. We're in the internet age, everyone uses computers, we know they don't work this way.
kaths also mentioned the way they can zoom in on a small section of a photo, blow up that section, sharpen/clean it up, and suddenly have a incredibly clear and detailed picture. It's the equivalent of being able to blow up my icon for this post to read all the book titles.
So what about you? What regularly used, unrealistic film and tv conceits pull you out of the moment?
To me, if one is going to maintain the suspension of disbelief, you have to obey all the ordinary everyday rules that people know and understand. One can believe an massive alien invasion with giant biomechanoid floating death cannons, so long as the world rules beyond that are consistent. But if a human character, in avoiding one of these cannons, jumps off a ten storey building without any sort of aid, or interruptions to their fall, and land unharmed and run off - that's the deal breaker. One knows that's not possible, and suddenly one is left questioning that moment, and by default, the rest of the film.
I mentioned in a post yesterday that I hate it in films and tv when medics use the defibrillator paddles on a woman to try and restart her heart, and they are using them through material - bras, tank tops, etc. - rather than on bare skin. It pulls me right out of the moment, because I know it's not right.
I also mentioned hating when people can just break passwords when they have no information on the person, which has become really common in shows. Any computer whizz can break any password, within a relatively short time.
Another one I hate is when someone who is driving spends time looking at the their passenger rather than paying attention to the road. Quick glances are fine, but when they're maintaining eye contact for whole big chunks of conversation it annoys me. If you regularly did it in real life there's no way you wouldn't crash.
king_espresso mentioned that he hates when people don't wear ear protection on board military helicopters, which is a great one. Well, except now I'll be looking for it and getting annoyed by it.kaths brought up the way people type madly on computer keyboards to do things that the rest of us would do with a mouse. We're in the internet age, everyone uses computers, we know they don't work this way.kaths also mentioned the way they can zoom in on a small section of a photo, blow up that section, sharpen/clean it up, and suddenly have a incredibly clear and detailed picture. It's the equivalent of being able to blow up my icon for this post to read all the book titles.So what about you? What regularly used, unrealistic film and tv conceits pull you out of the moment?
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and another pet peeve which can be applied to tv shows in general is the "time limit" i.e. "you only have several minutes to the bomb exploding" scenario - it gets to the last countdown of a minute and a few minutes later after initially hesitating the protagonist has of course saved the day, just in the nick of time. What's even worse is usually during the course of this 60 seconds there's an argument between characters telling them to hurry up.
Or another variation is there is a dire situation where someone has been driving/travelling all night and if they don't get help by a certain time they will die... Help gives chase and they only take half as long to arrive and always with a couple of minutes to spare. Not that you want bad guys to win, and as Dr Who points out, time isn't a straight line, it's a wibbly wobbly ball, but still...
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At the thirty second mark, they'd get the shield back up, and everyone was perfectly fine. They've still been exposed to high doses of radiation! They're still going to get very sick and need treatment. And if someone was already sick or weak, then they'll probably die, because people have different tolerances.
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There's a variation of this in some of the Dr Who episodes - usually being too close to the sun in the new series.
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Every bomb that gets stopped with less than a second to go off!
And the 10 second count down that takes 3 minutes!
And one of my favourite peeves - Armageddon - where the precise timing of a nuke to split an Asteroid is the difference between the Earth being Aok versus total disaster! Gah! (Then again, it was Bruce Willis...)
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