
Coding the Movies – Don’t Fake It - pauljm
http://blog.goconspire.com/post/84670090993/coding-the-movies-dont-fake-it
======
tzury
As a coder who get shocked every time those running lines and "ACCESS GRANTED"
pop-ups appear as that guy just break into the bank account and other phony
stuff, I have to say that it did not started in here at all.

Hollywood has been faking it all the way, from ridicules gun-shots scenes,
bombs explosions, cars that keep driving after getting smashed and street-kids
who can shot and kill in one hand.

It is simply that code, software and hacking is closer to us than the other
examples, so we care about it that it will look real.

Also, how would you show an owned server? a prompt that reads:

    
    
      # root
    

This means nothing to the masses.

[1] - regarding bombing scenes, I think is one of those rare directors who
don't fake it, rather make it looks as realistic as possible, see Hurt Locker
and Zero Dark Thirty as examples.

[a]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_3](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_3)

[b]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1)

~~~
jff
The guns thing really is pretty epidemic. There's a huge thread over on
Something Awful about this, hundreds of pages of people pointing out how the
movie's "M-16" is actually an SKS dressed up funny and how it doesn't have any
sights, that kind of thing. Similar thing is most cases: how hard would it
have been to buy a real AR-pattern rifle? And when they hire a consultant,
they ignore them half the time, just like with computer stuff in movies.

~~~
bwhite
This is so true. I remember how irate I was when I realized that Rambo III
insisted that a thinly mocked-up Browning was actually a DShK. That annoyed me
but not nearly as much as Neo's Scorpions ejecting what looked like 5.56
casings on the floor during the lobby gun fight. Maybe necked-down brass looks
sexier pinging off the floor.

But worse than all of this is what happens in movies when people are shot.
People inevitably fly backwards, sometimes tens of feet. There's a nice Quora
answer about this [1]. I get the need for a great action shot, but it's a
thumb in the eye to everyone who actually has even a ballpark concept of
kinetic energy delivery.

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Guns-and-Firearms/Does-shooting-
someone...](http://www.quora.com/Guns-and-Firearms/Does-shooting-someone-
really-cause-them-to-fly-backwards).

~~~
JetSpiegel
Or if you don't want to register,
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlownAcrossTheRoo...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlownAcrossTheRoom)

------
theothermkn
There's a blithe decadence in insisting that the details of movie-making
fantasy conform exactly to your expectations. It's also suspicious that the
complaint is aimed at mainstream movies, rather than, for example, pornography
for a male audience. Would the author want more realism in porn? Should there
be more dates in porn? Awkward moments where the conquering male can't decide
whether or not to pull his date's chair out for her? An inner monologue
wherein he wonders if she's hot enough, chides himself for being so shallow,
and then unconvincingly reassures himself that he's not that shallow and he
still finds her attractive even though he's in the mood for larger breasts?

Of course not, because porn is fantasy that has as a crucial element the
affirmation of male power, validity, and competence. _Those elements of
"realism" would detract from the purpose of the medium._ It's the same with
movies. In the climactic scene where the protagonist is on the cusp of
capturing the Macguffin, what the plot needs--and what needs therefore to be
quickly, visually, and unambiguously communicated to the audience--is that the
protagonist or the protagonist's allies have been granted access to the god-
like computer system that unlocks the whosywhatsit. "ACCESS GRANTED" does
this. Is it realistic? No. Does it matter? Nope! Like an exploding car or a
space fighter that banks like an F-16, it communicates to the audience in a
way that is _immediately recognizable_ and _plausible on a time-scale
consistent with the pacing of the action_.

Complaining about the lack of realism of coding sequences in movies certainly
does not identify you as a "nerd" or "smart person above pop culture." It
emphatically identifies you as an unimaginative dork and a boring pedant.

~~~
DavidAdams
As the article explains, though, including some realism in the way a movie
depicts computing achieves the very same goal as the noisy explosion in space
or banking starfighter. If there's too much physics realism in a space movie,
people will notice that it looks "fake" and their suspension of disbelief will
be disrupted. Space movies have dogfights because war movies have dogfights,
so people know what to expect, and the plot is advanced. Back in the 1960s
when computers were unknown quantities, you could put whatever bullshit you
wanted up on the screen and that was fine. But now that the majority of the
movie-watching public has a pretty good idea of how computers work, having a
"hacker" enter some kind of 3d virtual reality world to hack the NSA is
perceived as ridiculous, even for Joe Sixpack, as if the movie depicted a
scene in a McDonald's wherein the characters talked to a Maitre'd and ordered
Steak Tartare and Chicken Tikka Masala. We all know enough about restaurants
to know that's bullshit, even someone who's never eaten in a four star
restaurant.

~~~
brazzy
> Back in the 1960s when computers were unknown quantities, you could put
> whatever bullshit you wanted up on the screen and that was fine.

Oh could you ever. Except back in the 60s, blinkenlights, tape reels and noisy
dot matrix printers were more likely to be featured than screens.

I distinctly remember a 60s (probably, can't remember the name) movie where
the con man lead character gets himself hired as head of a bank's computer
division despite having no technical expertise whatsoever, and one technician
explains that the computer is totally secure and this is indicated by a
specific red light - as long as that light is on, it's secure!

~~~
tmzt
Fast-forward to today when the red light has been replaced with a picture of a
padlock.

------
bitwize
In the director's commentary for _Swordfish_ , director Dominic Sena outright
admits that he made his computer consultant/animator create exciting
outlandish sequences over the consultant's objections under pain of being
fired, because a realistic sequence would be "just a bunch of scrolling data",
it'd be boring, and the nerds would object to it but they don't really matter
anyway. Pretty much a picture-perfect snapshot of the contempt Hollywood had
for our profession.

It's good to see some studios and directors addressing these issues,
particularly David Fincher but also Disney with recent _Tron_ works (few
surprises there, Disney owns Pixar where many computer graphics pioneers work;
nerds _are_ some of their most bankable filmmakers).

But see /r/ItsAUnixSystem for even more funny sequences even from modern
times.

~~~
tmzt

       Bunch of scrolling data
    

Like in the Matrix?

~~~
bitwize
Yes. :) Remember, this was a movie aimed at dudebros, and was not nearly so
highbrow as _The Matrix_. In fact Sena wanted the scene where Stanley codes
the worm to have graphics that resembled an actual worm. He cited the water
tentacle from _The Abyss_ as the sort of thing he was going for.

------
leeoniya
"I want to see a movie where the protagonist blankly stares at a stack trace
for 30 seconds"

a memorable quote from some forum as best as i can remember it

~~~
tmzt
And intones "there's our way in."

~~~
e_modad
I know it doesn't add to the discussion so much to say this, but I laughed so
hard at your comment.

------
rel
Tron was pretty amazing in not faking it. A post that bubbles up to the front
page usually several times in a year is Joshua Nimoy's write up for the
effects he did for tron
([http://jtnimoy.net/?q=178](http://jtnimoy.net/?q=178))

Incredible stuff and an enjoyable read.

------
WalterBright
Back in the olden days, computer interfaces were an ASR-33 teletype. Movies
showed that. But when computer terminals graduated to DECwriters in the
movies, the sound effects were still ASR-33. The ASR-33 sounds persisted even
when using glass terminals.

Since then, the ASR-33 mechanical chugging sound has been replaced with a high
pitched beep, but the text appearing on the screen still made 'printing'
sounds.

It's only recently that that has started to fade from movies.

------
kiba
I like some amount of realism in the fiction I watch and read? Why? Because I
believe it makes for a world that is much better constructed and is indicative
of quality.

Of course, sometime we don't want realism, because it would make things
uninteresting. For example, it is an acceptable break from reality to have
space ships slugging it out in space opera. Otherwise, space battles would be
mostly about who is the first to shoot their kinetic weaponry against an
opposing side's planet.

------
ggamecrazy
As a vet it guns that don't eject casings, recoiled fully automatic weapons
and unrealistic explosions irk me just as much. But alas it's Hollywood and
realism doesn't sell... well.

~~~
kiba
You can do realistic combat like _Acts of Valor_ that's still exciting, though
the movie's plot is terrible and unrealistic.

------
diego_moita
This is silly. The realism of code in "Social Network" is secondary and
irrelevant.

What really matters is that the movie's characters, plot and dialog are
inconsistent and formulaic cliches.

I wrote a post about it before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134065)

~~~
frik
You should read the book "The Accidental Billionaires", the screenplay is
based on that book.

As with every movie, they had to shortening some scenes like "hacking" houses
websites and coding Facemesh in one night (in the book and in reality it was
not that case - it took several days/nights).

And the book is missing a side-"story" too. There was already a "Face Book"
kind of website called houseSYSTEM. And Zuckerberg tricked this guy:
[http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80](http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80)

So the reality is even _wilder_ than the movie.

------
joey_meyer
The alternative is to go halfway and just use nmap regardless of the context,
apparently it's the way to go:
[http://nmap.org/movies/](http://nmap.org/movies/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's still much better than pasting HTML and/or JavaScript taken from a random
website all over the computer screens. It's the most common "code" I see in
the movies and TV series made in this decade in last 10 years.

------
drdeadringer
I recall part of the Dr Who documentary-ish flick "An Adventure in Space and
Time", where the Hartnell character is being given direction to press buttons
for a shoot.

"You'll flip a few switches and then do the button for opening the door. OK?

"No... no no, I can't do that. The switch for the door is over there, that
panel over there. I have to move around for it after I stand here. The kids
will notice, so we have to do it that way. Hm? Yes?"

"... uh... ok sure. Whatever. Go ahead"

I still notice, and it's a more rewarding experience.

------
frik
In the Social Network DVD commentary extras you can see the monitors with a
green screen. All computer scenes have been edited in post production.

You can check the Full HD version, frame by frame and read real perl code and
shell commands like wget. The screenplay even is based 1:1 on the real blog
posts of Zuckerberg (except the girls name).

I wonder if they were able to reuse Facebook website design by using
archive.org. Shortly after the movie was released Facebook changed the
robots.txt to disallow and prevent archive.org.

But there are some minor errors. Like later in the movie somehow Zuckerbergs
PC runs Windows XP instead of Linux. And in one short scene the Windows XP
screen is not completely visible, the right side is cut of (like the clock of
the taskbar).

------
frik
_Antitrust_ (2001) is also great.

Scott McNealy (of former Sun Microsystems) and Miguel de Icaza (creator of
GNOME, and Mono) supervised the movie. Several computer scenes involve Gnome
Linux desktop, realistic IP address input sequences (though non-public IPs
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_IP_addresses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_IP_addresses)
) and an infamous HTML code intro.

Btw. the art style of buildings and interior was awesome.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/)

------
mwcampbell
The level of realism in The Social Network is uneven. See this analysis of the
scene in the operating systems class (about 20 minutes into the movie):

[http://chomaloma.blogspot.com/2011/02/social-network-
inaccur...](http://chomaloma.blogspot.com/2011/02/social-network-inaccuracies-
regarding.html)

------
ulisesrmzroche
I dunno, I think It's actually more much of a waste of time and money to write
functioning code than to put real old-timey horse saddles from the Wild West
on Dances with Wolves. It's far better to bank on suspension of disbelief.

------
nissehulth
This is a good start. Next, could we have some decent, at least semi-
realistic, dialog? I made the mistake to watch CSI this week, which was some
kind of pilot for the new "Cyber crime" spinoff. Yuck.

------
tbrock
At least the movies that want to simulate Linus making linux can still use
[http://hackertyper.net/](http://hackertyper.net/)

~~~
jtwaleson
or decrypt.py ;)
[https://github.com/jtwaleson/decrypt](https://github.com/jtwaleson/decrypt)

~~~
cantfindmypass
Someone showed me this a while ago. Apparently it's an actual attack.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G50typU3mLg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G50typU3mLg)

