The Gun Counter

Maybe Aesop can chime in on this, I've been watching a lot of movies through Netflix and Amazon and have noticed a few disturbing trends.

The first trend is easily explained, the urge, nay NEED, to remake movies and tv shows. The remakes are invariably terrible and only have a vague connection with the original. Hollyweird writers just aren't very good any more.

The low light movie. Can't pay for more lighting? Are you using the "energy saving" bulbs already? Quit with showing 90% of the action so it looks like a black cat, in a coal mine, at midnight. I understand the movie takes place at night, or in a dark room but for pity sake, let the audience SEE what's going on!!!!

Shaky cam. Self explanatory. I can't stand to watch a movie that looks like someone with Parkinson's is the camera operator. Steady the damn thing down so I can figure out what's happening.

Spin cam. This is used in conjunction with "shaky cam" to do a 360 panorama of the scene to try setting things up. Or to show ALL the action from EVERYONE's viewpoint.

Any others I've forgotten? Your pet peeves?

ORANGE AND TEAL!

Make it more suspenseful by whispering all the dialog.

Actors describing emotions and thinking it is acting.


"THAT IS A FRIGHTENING CAVE AND I AM AFRAID TO ENTER IT BECAUSE I AM FRIGHTENED"
"I AM SADDENED BY YOUR FRIGHT< AND WILL COMFORT YOU NOW."
"I AM COMFORTED BY YOU AND AM GETTING BRAVER"

Yogimus wrote:Actors describing emotions and thinking it is acting.


"THAT IS A FRIGHTENING CAVE AND I AM AFRAID TO ENTER IT BECAUSE I AM FRIGHTENED"
"I AM SADDENED BY YOUR FRIGHT< AND WILL COMFORT YOU NOW."
"I AM COMFORTED BY YOU AND AM GETTING BRAVER"

I always thought this was done for laughs. >_>

Sparking bullets. I've seen movies where the bullets spark when they hit TREES.

MarkD wrote:Sparking bullets. I've seen movies where the bullets spark when they hit TREES.

Actually, I've seen that in real life. The difference was that the bullets in question were .50 BMG tracers, and the target range was about 50 yards. The tracers didn't ignite until they were about six inches deep in the trees. (We honestly set an oak stump on fire this way. Is better you don't ask.)

MarkD wrote:Sparking bullets. I've seen movies where the bullets spark when they hit TREES.

There's this tree called the ironwood, locally, that will spark when hit with metal. A forester told me that's because it likes to grow in sandy soil and has large water veins. Sand gets sucked up in the tree and causes it to spark when struck or cut. It's hell on chainsaws.

I doubt most movie producers are smart enough to know about it.

That might be a side effect of the sims used - Cagney had marksmen shoot toward him w special light loads, at least in the movie where he dies in the refinery, as I recall...

I can see why that level of verisimilitude might make an actor a little squeemish...

Howard Hill used to do a lot of movie archery stunts, during the Erroll Flynn era. Because he'd grown up shooting adult-sized longbows, he wasn't comfortable with using the lightweight stuff that the studios wanted.

So shooting scenes in Robin Hood, and They Died With Their Boots On he used the same 80-lbs draw weight bow that he normally shot targets with. (He regularly hunted with a 100-lbs draw weight bow.) The stunt men were equipped with heavy oak "target plates" under their clothes, and that was the target that Hill was supposed to hit with his blunt arrows. The arrow would stick in the plate, the stunt man would do his thing and it was all very impressive, especially since the stunt men didn't know how hard the arrows would hit the plate.

This explains the surprised and pained expressions of the "targets" of the shots in the movies. Some of them were pretty sure that they were dead, or mortally wounded, based on how hard those blunt arrows struck the targets.