Computers in Movies
 

The weapons forum has their own thread about weapons (and their use/misuse in movies.... ) well, why not computers..

1. Word processors never display a cursor.

2. You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.

3. Movie characters never make typing mistakes.

4. All monitors display inch-high letters.

5. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.

6. Those that don't have graphical interfaces will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

7. Note: Command line interfaces will give you access to any information you want by simply typing, "ACCESS THE SECRET FILES" on any near-by keyboard.

8. You can also infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS". (See "Fortress".)

9. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer even if it's turned off.

10. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. (Really advanced computers will also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.)

11. All computer panels operate on thousands of volts and have explosive devices underneath their surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash of light, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks and an explosion that causes you to jump backwards.

12. People typing on a computer can safely turn it off without saving the data.

13. A hacker is always able to break into the most sensitive computer in the world by guessing the secret password in two tries.

14. You may bypass "PERMISSION DENIED" message by using the "OVERRIDE" function. (See "Demolition Man".)

15. Computers only take 2 seconds to boot up instead of the average minutes for desktop PCs and 30 minutes or more for larger systems that can run 24 hours, 365 days a year without a reset.

16. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.

17. When the power plant/missile site/main computer overheats, all control panels will explode shortly before the entire building will.

18. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (See "Clear and Present Danger").

19. If a disk contains encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you insert it.

20. Computers can interface with any other computer regardless of the manufacturer or galaxy where it originated. (See "Independence Day".)

21. Computer disks will work on any computer has a floppy drive and all software is usable on any platforms.

22. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it will have (See "Aliens".)

23. Note: You must be highly trained to operate high-tech computers because the buttons have no labels except for the "SELF-DESTRUCT" button.

24. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional active animation, photo-realistic graphics capabilities.

25. Laptops always have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and performance similar to a CRAY Supercomputer.

26. Whenever a character looks at a monitor, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto their face. (See "Alien" or "2001")

27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See "Mission Impossible", Tom Cruise searches with keywords like "file" and "computer" an 3 results are returned.)

I never really paid attention to it, now I will, thanks for the post.

my favorite.

28. There is always a front end to the CIA's database with no passwords that can be accessed by clicking on a odd character on a random webpage. (See "The Net")

:) man that was funny

Re: Computers in Movies
 

I also love in Mission Impossible when he types "INTERNET ACCESS" in order to bring up the newsgroups.... classic...

that was great! I coudn't have said it better myself

29. All *REAL* hacker work is done on a consumer-grade slick-looking GUI (Swordfish)

These have gotten so cliche that the times when computers were ACCURATELY portrayed stand out more than the times when they were not:

A. Hackers use command lines to impliment published exploits to gain access to secure systems (Matrix II)

B. Ridiculous shut-down time/save times exist in the office environment (the apple/windows hybrid OS in Office Space)

I'm sure there are others...

Fantastic post, so true :)

30. All of these computers have image enhancing software which turns a low res image into an ultra-detailed high-res pic.

Also, who can forget this classic line?
"Wait. I know this. THIS IS A UNIX SYSTEM!!!"

Great line from a great movie ;)

that LCD display setup in swordfish was fantastic though, i aim for that one day..

Jurrasic Park used a SGI 3D directory navigator to hack into the security system, when she says this is a unix system.

all that said, that computer in swordfish STILL makes my gator drule

No one ever uses a mouse. Screens pop up and rotate and the like just by typing. And notice that they are never doing something simple like pressing an arrow key, they are TYPING as in sentences????


You can use a laptop to access anything, anywhere without any cords.




What is really sad is that one of the more realistic computer movies of our time was "Wargames" At least it had realistic equipment and real-looking interfaces.

"Shall we play a game?"

Most of the OS's are mac's. My god...who uses a mac still geesh...:p
Nah, anytime I see anything computer related on a movie, I cringe...

31. You can destroy a computer simply by shooting or bashing the monitor. (more movies than I care to write here)

32. Everyone has a camera and a t3 line in their house. (american pie -shannon elisabeth scene)

Update, I was up late last night watching a movie, as usual, and there it was, a computer being used. I caught a few of the things that Dimbulb mentioned. What a crack up!!

Hahaha, I was going to say that! Funny stuff "Hey, this is unix, I know this!!!"

You can turn them off incase your wondering

so thats not too bad really

but the rest are good

How many people do you know that can actually do that though ;)

its a basic function in word

I would like to know how they get rid of the annoying scrolling line that occurs because the monitor's refresh rate is much faster than the camera's. News stations don't bother to get rid of it so I wonder if it's that complex.

i love watching computers in movies, mostly because i'm a big nerd, but also because it's obvious that the actor doesn't know how to do much more than checking his or her AOL email account.

not to sound like an elitest here, but come on, some of these operating systems are brilliantly simple to use, yet some how can only be managed by the "super hackers".

this thread is definitley worth a chuckle ;)

It's called MovieOS.

But how many people know that? lol

true, ill give you that

I had to be in a commercial once, and they wanted 'computery' looking stuff, so i just carreid on doing what i was doing, and they said no computery stuff, i just looked blank, then my boss said load up debug and make it scroll pages and page of hex dumps and tap the keyboard a lot... the film people went yeah thats it, computery stuff.

that's so bad. :lol:
What was this for anyway?

It was a documentary for the BBC on making video games, as per usual with those the programmers get to sit in back looking all shifty with scrolling hex.

they just have to match the refresh rate of the monitor frame rate of the camera and then tune it so each frame of film corresponds to the end of the crt scan.

or get an expensive digital camera

you can also buy screens for your monitor that will have the same effect

adjusting the shutter speed of the camera to sync with the refresh rate of the monitor.... it's pretty easy can be done by the camera operator.

i used to insist on them doing it all the time back in the day when I was on the studio floor every day... now it's just set like that from the beginning of the day.

*EDIT* damn.. didn't get all the way down to the bottom of the thread before i posted this...

owned :D

Didn't they make a virus in CAD3D in Swordfish?

Duh, I should've figured. The shutter speed needs to be slightly less than the inverse of the monitor's refresh rate. I guess there are just some lazy cameramen in television because even my parents' camcorder can shutter as briefly as 1/4000 of a second.

My favorite was always in the movie Hackers, they didnt even have an operating system really, it was just them typing and pictures of the pi symbol flying all around and E=MC2 etc. That movie was great

Save for the "Gibson" almost every computer in that movie was a apple.

When I took my dad and brother to see that movie, my dad (who has a PhD in geek-related stuff) and I stood up and cheered. We got so many weird looks from the random... users.

*sudders in distaste*

Well, the sshnuke exploit didn't actually exist - but the vulnerability that it exploited was real.

Still, it was a lot of fun to see them use nmap and then actual procedure to exploit a host.

Re: Computers in Movies
 

Maybe it's just because Jeff Goldblum plays such a clown even when he is trying to be a hero, but this is still my favorite. My son and I still laugh at the image of him sitting in the alien fighter ship (that he managed to "hotwire") and uploading a killer virus from his Macintosh laptop into the central computing system of the alien mothership. :p

Re: Re: Computers in Movies
 

TCP/IP it's a UNIVERSAL protocol... :)

I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't like how Hugh was dancing as he was programming in Swordfish. Does anyone really dance around his computer as he is typing?

33. All laptops are Mac Powerbooks/iBooks

all technology represented in movies/TV are skewed... I'm sure when The Original Start Trek aired... lots of people were like ::giggle:: WTF is that thing he's talking to in his hand?

I find it worse when most movies try to use "real" terminology. Most of the time, when they use real terminology, they use it wrong. Or worse, by the time the movie is out, that technology/terminology is already out of date or changed.

Remember "Hackers": everyone Oooing and Awwing over the "new Pentium Five" notebook...."RISC is good". Wrong and obsolete by the time it came out on video.

Movie makers should either do a computer scene REALLY well (like Matrix II) or they should leave it all abstract and try not to be "computery" at all.

Re: Computers in Movies
 

That's the truth! I love in movies when any computer at all makes a sound as text is displayed across the screen. I need to make my computer at work do that.

Re: Re: Computers in Movies
 

arrgh! i'd be aggravated at it more than i already am...

I'm with ya, Cynthetiq. In my last post 'love' = love to laugh at how stupid it is.

How did that infamous line in The Lone Gunman tv show go? MY GIBSON HAS BEEN HACKED!!@#!

Or something like that. Gave me a good chuckle.

I also look to see what OS they use too. It's either a Mac OS or something that resembles Linux.

Swordfish was the worst example of hacking I've ever seen in a movie. Made me cringe.

They filmed a movie here a few years ago called "Pass the Ammo".

Our C language instructer worked for ATT who provided the computers for some scenes.

He wrote a program that was basicly a slide show for a alarm system. You press space bar, it moved the "alarm" on the screen. The move made it look like as alarms went off, the computer reported it.

And there was a room full of printers running. Well, actually, they had a bunch of people lie under the printers and pull the paper through by hand. Then they added sound effects later to make it look live.

I still have a copy of that program somewhere :)

How about in wargames when Broderick has to hook up a voice thingy for his home computer and when they go to norad they get the same voice. I guess the one at home was still hooked up.

--and why does every puter have the software to
isolate a frame and the blow it up--and very clear...

Re: Re: Re: Computers in Movies
 

Classic!!!!

LOL
thats so true.
love it

Even PC's run MacOS.

And any file, whether it's a document or 3D blueprints to a top-secret government facility, can fit on a standard floppy disk

34. all the bad guys use IBM, all the good guys use Apple

ha ha, i never paid attention before, ,i guess now i am going to be pointing out everything i see.

hi-tech sophistimicated enhancement algorihms...duh! :D

35. All viruses display graphics on-screen at time of infection, taunting the gawking sysadmin with a 3-letter password and the backlit, sphere-keyed plexiglass keyboard. (Um, Hackers, duh.)

36. The most daunting task is to hack "THE MAINFRAME".

I loved in Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 where they're hacking into an NSA spy satellite and you see seemingly random text scrolling down the screen - it's actually a parody of the dreaded Microsoft EULA.

Apple is the 1000 pound gorilla of product placement in movies and TV. If you can identify a computer in a movie or TV show, it's likely an Apple. Odd how they still don't get market share!

As for screen protrayal on the big and small screen, they never are real - no matter what type of computer is supposedly in use! I expect that the software makers want royalties for use on the screen which producers don't want to pay... furthermore, it's likely that the actual screens wouldn't work well on the camera - and made-up ones (larger font, better colors for the camera, etc.) work better.

While I'm on the subject of product placement: If you watch movies/TV you'd seriously doubt the existance of hand-helds or PDAs. They're NEVER used! Is the handwriting on the wall saying they're soon to go the way of the dodo bird and Beta?

James Bond?

(and you mean Betamax)

apple has a recognizeable brand and philosophy of easy use. But you still don't see the Apple GUI.

Royalties don't have much to do with it since product placement means either a Thank You in the credits or a bunch of loaners and a payment depending on how much screen time they actually get. I worked out a deal with Compaq when I was at VH1. I got tired of them not leveraging getting some new and exciting computer systems for on screen. If they don't want to pay, then they get the gaffer tape across the logo. Watch how many times you'll see the apple logo blacked out. It happens.

I know this has been said once...but I have to repeat it..

I was watching Sister Sister with my little ones...and Tia has a laptop, she setting up a date with some guy outta nowhere...and she's online using some kind of im..and I had to look twice..as there are NO wires..or from what I could tell external wireless cards anywhere near this thing...and when her sister Tamera walks in the screen is till on...after a while...that battery shoulda been dead!!

So yeah, I know what you are talking about...asshopo..my SO talks about it ALL the time when we are watching movies! Programmers...go figure!

It _IS_ a windows EULA....

Lotsa laptops have internal wireless cards.

But not those featured in a show that was around before the Pentium2 was on the market :P