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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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This one drives me nuts. I'm pretty sure I've even seen one or two instances where they manage to digitally alter the angle of the shot.
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But yes, licence plates, people's faces. There's only so much that can be done to clarify an image. If the original resolution isn't good enough then you can't magically resolve it.
I'd talk about the apparently tiny time it takes to get DNA samples etc. back but mostly I just go 'meh' and accept it, like wormholes, as being necessary to get everything in on time (though I do like it in some shows where they have the characters moaning about the long time it takes to get results back)
Not sure what else annoys me. Will think about it.
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Also, people never go to the toilet in movies.
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I can think of at least three off the top of my head.
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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.
Oh yes ..just reread your post, l have just redone my First Aid Course and one of the first things you get told is about removing clothing or jewellry, ESPECIALLY items such as underwire bras.
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Outrunning explosions, the ONLY time this is OK is if your in the Millennium Falcon (though i suppose a movie with the Flash in it would
also be ok). A quick Google will tell you that even the lowest energy explosion is going to be tens of meters per second, even an olympic sprinter isn't going to outrun one of those without, say a 100m head start.
I also hate the zoom in, presto clear image, thats some pretty advanced software that can guess what information is missing.
Exploding cars, unless they have been shot with some incendiary weapon or bazooka type thingey.
Barbarians other Fantasy characters with Californian accents and tan lines.
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And of course it's still going on in modern fiction, just in different contexts. Sutherland's example for that was skydiving sequences in action movies, which are apparently prone to doing ludicrous things that nobody in the audience will notice unless they've had a falling-out-of-an-aeroplane experience themselves.
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However, in the non-computer realm, one thing a friend pointed out that I'd never noticed is that hardly anyone ever pays for a taxi. They just get to their destination and leap out. Or, they throw a bill over to the front seat - you know any taxi drivers who wouldn't insist on seeing what the bill was before they peeled away? Or who would wait for you to finish your conversation on the footpath before you get into the taxi?
Another one that really bugs me is women's makeup - women rarely go to sleep with perfect makeup on, and if they did, they'd look like a combination of a raccoon and a clown in the morning, not with miraculous perfect makeup when they wake up.
Regarding apartment buildings, first of all, how can all the loser people in movies and TV shows afford such big apartments? And I really want to live in Alternate New York, where everyone leaves their doors unlocked so their neighbors can come bursting in :->
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Toilet one I'm a little more likely to forgive for the same reasons I'll forgive not showing the whole walk from one side of a room to the other. It's not needed.
That said, when films do the toilet break well, I like it.
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First time I struck this one was in Flatliners, when Julia Roberts needed the defibrillator, and they didn't cut her top. Pulled me right out of the moment, and the movie, especially because these people are medical students! If I knew this was wrong, they certainly should have!
I later read that the actress refused to go topless, or allow a body double for the shot, and it really annoyed me. She'd read the damned script when she agreed to the role, if she wasn't prepared to allow a section of it to be shot properly, then she shouldn't have taken the part.
I've brought this one up before, and had one or two people suggest I just wanted to see her breasts. I really couldn't care less for Julia Roberts boobs, the internet is full of more breasts than I could ever hope to see in my entire lifetime.
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The funny thing is, I've become so used to it that when a car doesn't explode, I'm a bit thrown.
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Another pet hate is how people just hang up the phone without saying goodbye. Not even 'thanks' or some kind of short 'I'm done now, gotta go' kind of noise. I know it's expedient for the plot, etc, but I keep thinking the person on the other end must be thinking 'what happened? I wasn't finished!" I also keep thinking "how rude!".
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(a) don't leave enough time for the person on the other line to speak, and;
(b) never say any variation of "goodbye" or "seeya" when they hang up.
Basically everyone in Hollywood seems to be intolerably rude on the telephone.
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