from Hacker News

Coding the Movies – Don’t Fake It

by pauljm on 5/4/14, 5:16 PM with 43 comments

  • by tzury on 5/4/14, 5:52 PM

    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

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

  • by theothermkn on 5/4/14, 6:29 PM

    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.

  • by bitwize on 5/4/14, 5:50 PM

    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.

  • by leeoniya on 5/4/14, 6:04 PM

    "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

  • by rel on 5/4/14, 6:23 PM

    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)

    Incredible stuff and an enjoyable read.

  • by WalterBright on 5/4/14, 6:24 PM

    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.

  • by kiba on 5/4/14, 6:01 PM

    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.

  • by ggamecrazy on 5/4/14, 6:02 PM

    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.

  • by diego_moita on 5/4/14, 7:32 PM

    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

  • by joey_meyer on 5/4/14, 6:19 PM

    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/

  • by drdeadringer on 5/4/14, 7:44 PM

    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.

  • by frik on 5/4/14, 8:30 PM

    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).

  • by frik on 5/4/14, 9:02 PM

    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 ) and an infamous HTML code intro.

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

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/

  • by mwcampbell on 5/4/14, 8:04 PM

    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...

  • by ulisesrmzroche on 5/4/14, 9:25 PM

    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.

  • by nissehulth on 5/4/14, 9:09 PM

    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.

  • by tbrock on 5/4/14, 6:17 PM

    At least the movies that want to simulate Linus making linux can still use http://hackertyper.net/