Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2003 1:20 pm Post subject: Computers in movies.
lil' something from my college's CIS mailing list:
Quote:
1. From the Desk of David Pogue: Hollywood's Unreal Computers
===================================================
Last week I watched "Swordfish," the 2001 John Travolta
movie. It's about a super-hacker (the hopelessly miscast Hugh
Jackman) who's hired by a super-villain (Travolta) to break
into the U.S. government's computers and steal a bunch of
money. Or something.
Anyway, I could have lived with a few of the plot's
implausibilities -- this is Hollywood, after all. But one
point drove me nearly to distraction: The computers in
"Swordfish" behave like no computers on earth. They behave
like all computers in the movies, which is to say, with a
great deal of noise and animation. Text chatters as it spills
onto the screen, dialog boxes appear with a whoosh, the
insertion point beeps and a huge, blinking ACCESS DENIED
message appears onscreen when you guess the wrong password.
In the olden days, when computers were unknown and
mysterious, I could have forgiven some of this nonsense.
Moviegoers, for the most part, didn't really know how
computers worked, so it was OK to depict PC's as blinking,
chattering, beeping, all-powerful (and apparently crash-
proof) machines.
But these days, about 60 percent of American homes have
computers in them. And I'll bet close to 100 percent of
Americans have seen computers in operation at some point.
Who, exactly, does Hollywood think it's fooling?
I don't mean to pick on "Swordfish," by the way -- or at
least, not only on "Swordfish." This is a chronic problem
with the depiction of computers in movies. On real computers,
text just pops onto the screen all at once, much the way this
column did when you opened it. But in "Jurassic Park,"
"Mission: Impossible," "Disclosure," "Broken Arrow" and many
other movies, text chatters onto the screen one letter at a
time, as though it's being typed by an over-caffienated
typing champion. In "The Net," Sandra Bullock's keyboard
actually chirps as she types. Imagine how crazy that would
drive you in real life.
I've corresponded with some of the people responsible.
"Computers are inherently boring," they always say. "We can't
just film somebody staring at a screen. We need to jazz them
up so the audience won't lose interest."
To which I say: Nonsense, you cowards!
I submit that virtually anything can make a compelling plot
element if intelligently presented. The halls of box-office
records are lined with the titles of movies that took
audiences deeply into the realistic technical minutiae of
unfamiliar worlds: Amish communities in "Witness," rocket
construction in "Apollo 13," war in "Saving Private Ryan."
Clever directors and screenwriters have even kept audiences
enthralled with subjects that you'd think would be every bit
as intellectual and static as computers: sound engineering
("The Conversation"), television news production ("Broadcast
News") and even chess ("Searching for Bobby Fischer").
Heck, the entire movie "My Dinner With Andre" is set at a
restaurant dinner table. That's it. The camera never budges,
the scene never changes, there's nothing but talking between
two men -- but it's not boring. So don't tell me that 20
seconds of a recognizable operating system would be boring.
In the meantime, depicting computers realistically would make
the movie much more compelling for people who do know
something about computers, because in recognizing fleeting
glimpses of familiarity, they'd find the story more
plausible. (People who don't know anything about computers,
meanwhile, wouldn't care one way or another. Presumably, they
wouldn't recognize either realistic or fantasy computers.)
I'm guessing that a great movie would still be great if its
computers acted realistically -- greater, in fact, because of
the heightened plausibility. But I'm also guessing that we
won't see computers behaving normally any time soon. Few
filmmakers have the guts to put my theory to the test.
Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2003 8:27 pm Post subject: haha yea
haha yea I agree with you. Right when I read the title "computers in movies" I was going to bring up Swordfish. Now I dont mind the warning boxes and that other stuff because I've never tired hacking anything. But would any hacker ever use a hacking tool with an interface? I dont think so! At most it would look like the dos prompt with a bunch of text no one understands. _________________ Rob
haha - funny about sword fish I thought the same thing
Why do you need like 7 monitors all with complex 3D renderings (actually the computers so powerful so it can keep up the framerate of that mad interface I think ).
Jurrasic park and hackers, heh, there must be some people who think hacking envloved navigating around a 3D interface full of graphics - anyone seen lawnmower man? thats the same as well :p _________________ »Design Services »Hosting »Personal »Platinum-Central
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
Posts: 89
Location: Atlanta, GA
Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject:
I don't know what you're all talking about.
My computer has 14 monitors connected to, all of which constantly display rapidly changing, vital information. The OS is acutally a 3D rendered virtual world which I navigate through by mashing random strings of keys on my keyboard. Whenever I get mail, or a message, or an assignment from the Uplink corporation its always displayed in the loudest, most eye-catching way you can possibly have. A giant envelope pops up on my screen.
I don't know what kind of tinker-toys you guys are running over there but if you can't hack three major banks, communicate with a huge syndicate of other hackers/geeks, view the trace progress on you connection and order a large peperonni pie it's time to upgrade your HUD.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
