
Typecasting: The Use and Misuse of Period Typography in Movies (2001) - matthberg
https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/typecasting
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Animats
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society does an excellent job of providing late
19th-early 20th century fonts and prop documents for role-playing games.[1] I
use some of those for steampunk projects.

[1] [http://www.hplhs.org/resources.php](http://www.hplhs.org/resources.php)

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Aloha
So I collect telephones.

I'll often catch stuff like this when watching period-set movies or TV shows.

Mad Men deserves credit though - in six years they made one mistake - they had
a set with a modular plug in it at Don's house (and it wasn't even a modular
plug, it was an insert that could be replaced with a modular one on a G-Type
handset).

~~~
jkaptur
I think that they also had Joan say "the medium is the message" about a decade
before McLuhan thought it up, but I could be mistaken.

~~~
tokai
The phrase was desiminated my McLean in his 1964 publication "understanding
media". As I understand Mad Men takes place during the 60s, so there is no
mistake there.

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bitwize
One thing I noticed:

People are starting to forget what old computer screens looked like. It could
be because there's a shortage of actual, functional CRT monitors. But these
days when an old computer is called for you are likely to see perfectly
smooth, green text in Consolas or similar composited onto a prop screen,
rather than actual glowing pixels. It's jarring and saddening, and it's
happened in two films that I've seen so far: _John Wick Chapter 2_ (wherein
VIC-20s stood in for the old computer keyboards) and _Kong: Skull Island_.

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PDoyle
\--minor spoilers--

But John Wick Chapter 2 is not a period piece. The VIC-20 is not meant to be a
modern computer there. As I recall, they have women dressed as 1940s
switchboard operators with prominent tattoos using VIC-20 keyboards connected
to modern monitors to take orders for assassination of assassins -- tell me
again which part of this seems out of place?

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bitwize
They were deliberately using old technology, presumably to avoid being traced
by the police. I don't ask that realistic VIC-20 displays be used, I only ask
that if they're going to employ this conceit, the displays be plausibly "old"
and not have nice graphics.

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js2
Ah, so this article looks at anachronistic use of typography in movies set in
the past. In the other direction is:

[https://typesetinthefuture.com/](https://typesetinthefuture.com/)

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matthberg
I just read an article from that site (Blade Runner) which prompted this post!

~~~
js2
Oh excellent. What led you from that article to this post? I don't see a
direct link between the two.

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matthberg
I remembered this website, which I had seen before

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Jaruzel
Being devil's advocate here for a moment... Surely ensuring that the text
shown on screen is easily readable for the audience (especially so for
exposition props such as newspapers), outweighs the need to be temporally
correct with the typeface?

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vacri
If you want to get that level of pedantic with films as the article does, then
few will survive. 'Suspension of disbelief' is a thing for a reason; a movie
maker is after immersion, not strict accuracy. It only needs to be
historically accurate if they're claiming to be some sort of documentary.

~~~
mortenjorck
Suspension of disbelief is always a continuum. A drama set in a hospital might
have some very reasonable efforts at realism, enough to seem believable to an
informed layperson, while a particular procedural oversight might completely
ruin the immersion for a medical doctor in the audience.

As a designer, I might see Futura used in a sign in a period piece set two
decades before Paul Renner designed the font, but not really care because the
grotesks and early geometrics that preceded Futura bear a lot of similarities.
But if I see Futura in a period piece set two _centuries_ before the font was
in use, that completely destroys the believability of the film's production
design.

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matiasz
The typographer Matthew Butterick was so bothered by the use of Verdana in
“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” that he wrote a letter to Brad Bird,
the film’s director.

PDF: [http://mbtype.com/pdf/bird-verdana.pdf](http://mbtype.com/pdf/bird-
verdana.pdf)

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davidgaleano
Did he ever get a reply?

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ecostache
Yes, Mr. Bird was a bit defensive...here's a summary w/ links to the exchange
on Twitter: [http://www.candlerblog.com/2012/01/25/brad-bird-responds-
to-...](http://www.candlerblog.com/2012/01/25/brad-bird-responds-to-
typographer)

~~~
ClassyJacket
I wouldn't call it defensive. Not overly defensive anyway. Seems like an
appropriate response. The guy was needlessly pedantic. His issue wasn't that
it was hard to read, just purely that he didn't _personally like_ the font.
His best argument is seriously that it's the Ikea font? Really?

I can understand it more when it's a tool or something you use frequently like
the font on a phone, but it's literally a few minutes out of one movie.

~~~
iainmerrick
That's an interesting exchange!

Good points on both sides, but surely the correct decision by Bird would have
been to delegate the font choice, to the head visual designer or some such.

Or maybe he already delegated, asked someone to make a shortlist of 5 fonts
for him to choose from, and for some reason Verdana was the best on the
list...

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imron
In a similar vein, in 50 years, they will be making movies set in the 80s and
everyone will be walking around with iPhones.

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datenwolf
Well maybe not iPhones, but flipphones for sure.

~~~
imron
> Well maybe not iPhones

I'm not filled with confidence

[http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-65-29-historically-
impossi...](http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-65-29-historically-impossible-
details-in-famous-movies/)

~~~
petecox
No 20 is daft given 'Hispania' was used in Roman times, which ultimately gives
us Spaniard, Hispanic, Spain and España.

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kccqzy
I really admire the author for being able to identify so many types with just
a few letterforms. I've had a passing interest in types so I can identify
basic Microsoft/Apple free fonts as well as a few common Adobe ones like
Minion Pro and Myriad Pro. I think I can identify perhaps at most thirty
different typefaces. Anyone wants to chime in on how you are able to be
familiar with so many more?

~~~
mattkevan
Like with most things it's just a matter of practice and knowing what to look
out for. Same as with birds or leaves or whatever.

Firstly, is it serif, sans-serif, handwritten, monospaced etc? This will
narrow it down, but distinguishing between similar fonts, such as
Arial/Helvetica, Avenir/Futura, Garamond/Caslon etc. requires looking at
individual characters.

Lots of characters don't change much between typefaces and can be hard to
identify at small sizes, but others can change a lot so they're the ones to
look out for - including the lowercase g, uppercase Q and ampersand &.

Is the g double storey or single storey? Open Sans and Noto are identical
except for the g (Open Sans is double storey).

What's the tail on the Q like? Does it cross the circle, is it curved or
straight? Open Sans and Droid Sans are identical except that the tail of the Q
is curved in Droid Sans and straight in Open Sans. (Also the uppercase I has
bars in Droid Sans).

Arial and Helvetica can be told apart by looking at the lowercase t. Arial's t
terminal is at and angle whereas Helvetica's is horizontal. Also the terminals
of the uppercase S are at an angle whereas Helvetica's is horizontal.

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kccqzy
Yes Arial and Helvetica are a special case that I learned to tell apart early
on since both are very common. I just use Arial and Helvetica to set the same
letters, but in both different colors and set the transparency to 30% or
thereabouts. Then I position the letters such that their difference is quite
easy to tell.

Thanks for the answer. I guess I just need more practice.

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rbanffy
I abandoned TLC's Halt and Catch Fire when the IBM 3033 started up with a
black on white CGA font on a 3278. And, of course, booting into PC-DOS.

I made
[https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font) for
a reason.

~~~
ch4s3
So a time period error in one scene put you off of the whole show? I mean,
there are a number of errors in any kind of period show, there's just too much
to keep track of on a tv budget.

It's a pretty good show, and worth watching. I'd recommend skipping that
episode if it bothers you and giving it a try.

~~~
rbanffy
Hyperbole. I already had abandoned it, but gave a shot because of the 3033.

But come on... A 370 booting DOS?! After a painstaking physical
reconstruction?

To be fair, I already noticed their use of MDA fonts for the Zenith machines.

~~~
ch4s3
I guess I'm just happy with close enough, and maybe I'd feel different if it
were tech from my own coming of age.

~~~
rbanffy
That's true. Being able to point out the flaws from your own memory
substantially detracts from the enjoyment.

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j2kun
Similarly, I get bothered by movies and television involving the misuse of
(usually decorative) mathematics.

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JoeDaDude
Lol, I remember seeing the film "Helvetica" [1] in which one of the commenters
remarked how anachronistic fonts would ruin a movie for him.

[1] www.imdb.com/title/tt0847817

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raverbashing
Funny how an article about picking errors had gotten the movie distributor for
the first movie wrong (it's Miramax)

