

Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies - ssp
http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html

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jacquesm
While movies for sure attempt to 'get it all right' they rarely if ever do so
(German soldiers speaking English and so on), I highly doubt that the use of
the wrong lettering in a movie is going to raise many eyebrows in light of the
liberties that the movie industry normally takes when they portray some scene
from the past.

Obviously a plane flying through a middle ages scene is going to stand out,
maybe some car buff will realise that that model car wasn't out yet when the
movie supposedly played and so on. But there are limits to how much research
can be done to get a movie 'right' and I think that this is firmly across the
'don't care' line if only because not enough people would ever notice.

Most movies are made to be profitable, not to be 100% correct.

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MWinther
I don't think the German soldiers speaking English is a research problem, so
it seems to be a rather contrived illustration of your point.

Whereas I can see your point, I don't particularly agree with it. When it
comes to domains where I do have special knowledge of a subject, I see the
errors on my own. When it comes to domains I don't have that special
knowledge, I always find it fascinating to learn that Hollywood are just as
incompetent across those fields as well. As well as finding out how those
domains differ from the Hollywood rendition of them.

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jacquesm
In other countries it is fairly customary for movies to be spoken in the
original language of the locality where they were filmed. I didn't mean it as
a research issue, I meant to use it as an illustration of it being a marketing
decision.

Movies in German subtitled in English are not going to be very popular in the
United States.

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dougp
This is hardly specialized knowledge but in 24 after every commercial break we
were treated to a digital clock displaying the current time. They were using
some digital clock number font that was not monospaced so the numbers spread
and shrink right in front of you as the clock "ticks", which of course would
never happen on a real clock face.

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chopsueyar
This is the only implausible part of '24' I noticed too.

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mseebach
I can understand how something like that jumps out for a person who really
knows his typography. But still, the newspapers says things newspapers would
say, etc. IT people has sat through two decades (if not more) of computers
being fully magical devices, both in appearance and function, with filmmakers
not taking the slightest step towards caring if what they put in the film is
realistic.

OK, I just sounded like a bitter parent that had to walk uphill through the
snow to get to school, but these are really minor points.

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bombs
Typesetters aren't the ones that concern themselves with the _content_ of the
newspaper.

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mirkules
This reminds of astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson's quip with the Titanic,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAD25s53wmE#t=26m12s>

The best part, Cameron: "Last I checked, Titanic grossed world-wide $1.2B.
Imagine how much more it could have grossed if we got the sky right"

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
At least that story has a happy ending.

~~~
chopsueyar
I didn't know if you were referring to Titanic and being sarcastic.

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mkr-hn
It depends on your perspective. The Titanic's sinking was a reminder that
nothing is perfect, and that you should never avoid reasonable precautions
(like having enough life boats).

In the end, more lives were probably saved in the years since than were lost
on the Titanic due to more planners and decision makers being careful.

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hristov
So you noticed the supposedly wrong typeface, but did not notice that the sign
was in the incorrect language.

~~~
thingie
Well, it means, that the viewer can read the sign, which is quite practical.
For example, in Czech dubbed TV series (like The Simpsons), a narrator has to
read every sign that has any meaning to the plot, which would be quite weird,
if you weren't used to it, and then even surprised that this is not the case
in the original version. (As a bonus, it makes the video even more redundant,
so you can take the whole episode, rip the audio track, and just listen to it
:-))

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Groxx
Nitpicking on their review of "Dead Again":

> _Technically, it was possible to kern wood type by physically cutting away
> parts of the type, but it would be a rather impractical practice at a
> newspaper._ [referring to the "LT" kerning in a newspaper]

True. But it _would_ be in their interest to make it into a _single_ glyph for
printing purposes, as it would save space. (not sure if that'd fall into the
"ligature" category or not, as they're not visually joined)

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bombs
Mark wrote a similarly interesting article about the typography in Mad Men a
couple of years ago too.

<http://www.marksimonson.com/article/236/mad-men-mad-props>

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commieneko
I've also noticed a couple of glitches on _Mad Men_. In the first season, the
glass doors of the upscale-wanna-be department store the agency is working
with has machine cut film lettering, a poorly spaced script, rather than hand
painted letters. It's not impossible there was some kind of manual, stencil
based system in use in the 60's, but I'm not aware of it.

Also, a lot of the hand drawn layouts and designs pinned up on the wall in
Sal's office are actually pages from Andrew Loomis's excellent book _Creative
Illustration_. And most of the designs would have been more at home in the
late 30's to mid 40's. But hey, in this case it's just wallpaper...

Still a great series, and as a child of the late 50's, early 60's I can say
they get an amazing amount of details right.

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lwhi
Unless the film is supposed to be a faithful historical reproduction of a
specific period in time; I don't think it matters.

Postmodernism is very difficult to achieve without liberal use of
anachronisms. I think many of the films referenced have postmodern traits.

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julius_geezer
Indeed. Hollywood spends too damned much time trying to get period details
right & omitting what matters. Steven Spielberg puts enormous effort into the
visual details of films that are hollow at the center (Saving Private Ryan,
Schindler's List).

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trafficlight
That's the first time I've ever heard somebody say that Schindler's List is
hollow. I find it to be very moving and an excellent portrayal of the horrors
of the Holocaust.

What don't you like about it?

~~~
julius_geezer
The story itself is moving, as heroism in a good cause will be. But making art
requires more than such a story as its point of departure.

The movie has what I regard as Spielberg's usual flaws: a taste for cheap
trick, the quick laugh, the tremendous visual sense without much behind it.
I'm sure that anyone in occupied Poland who could afford to look like that,
did. I gain no particular insights into what anyone in particular might have
felt or thought. Watch Europa, Europa or The Pianist, and I think you will see
much superior movies--though these are even more on the periphery of the true
horrors than Schindler's List.

~~~
julius_geezer
For "the true" read "worst of the".

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julius_geezer
The novel _Cane River_, inflicted on us by a neighborhood book club, had what
purported to be facsimiles of backwoods Louisiana newspapers of the late
1800s, with typography that looked to me like 1970s phototype. I was pretty
well inured to anachronisms of the novel, of fact and of language both, but
that did annoy me.

"Chocolat (2000, Mirimax) wasn’t a bad movie." Actually, it was pretty dumb.

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thinkcomp
My favorite example is in "The Good Shepherd," when the list of members of the
on-campus Nazi-sympathizing organization is typeset in Times New Roman and
printed on an ink-jet printer...in about 1935.

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paolomaffei
Wait, do you really care about THIS?

