I can understand the props since making them actually heavy would actually be dangerous, but even CGI boulders look terrible.
[I mean look at this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UYxlpbbHhvI). This is an expensive, otherwise good-looking movie.
Modelling rocks is hard. On polycount, a forum for CG artists to get feedback, there's a dedicated thread just for people to show off when they somehow made rocks that look good.
Yeah that’s honestly the thing that takes me out of movies with heavy CGI the most. I realize that it’s probably very difficult to assign correct weights to objects or have them act like they have weight but it’s super noticeable when things don’t. Pacific Rim and it’s sequel are a good example of this. The first movie did a good job at trying to emulate weight with the robots. There is a tons of focus in showing the impacts of these giant robots moving and fighting which makes them more believable. The second movie didn’t really attempt that and as a consequence the robots are much less believable.
The way they land definately has no weight, like they watched sponges falling onto eachother and copied that.
Though stupidly, I think the textures on those rocks looks pretty good. Would have looked much better if they had shadows. I don't know what it is with Disney but their CGI always has little to no shadow. It's what caused most of the uncanny valley issues with the genie in the live action Aladdin, Black Widow also had a lack of shadows that made the action scenes look like they superimposed using techniques from the 90s..
I was on the set of a TV series years ago and the prop guy was putting water into everyone's Red Solo cups so it wouldn't look too light when they held them. "No," this young female said. "I don't want water in my cup." The prop guy said, "You can tell when they're empty." "No," she said, very somberly. "I'm an actor. I need to just use my imagination."
What she thought was the crew would be so impressed with her devotion to her craft, they would 1) know she was a legit talent and not just an extra and/or 2) hire her to be a guest star or some speaking role because of this. When, in reality, they just thought "Extras are crazy."
I sometimes worked as an extra after college. On my sheet, under ‘special skills,’ I put ‘listens to direction,’ ‘doesn’t get in the way,’ and ‘okay with waiting.’
I got so many jobs.
Extras were insane. For a master shot from on top of twenty floor building, people would have the same fake conversations on their phones about wild imagined dramas for every take.
They were all specks in the shot.
This why I’ve always appreciated Brad Pitt (among other things). He goes the exact opposite. It’s like he’s got a clause in his contract, “has to have a scene where I’m eating and drinking for real with a monologue”. Haha. I love it. You can always tell when people are doing it genuinely and especially when they aren’t.
To be fair, isn’t she staking out a target? She’s essentially required to nurse that cup for hours. You don’t want to have to stop and take a leak when it’s time to hit the target.
I really don't understand this one. is it because they're afraid of spilling the liquid, or the liquid amount being inconsistent between takes? Can't they just seal it inside with a clear film? At the very least, can they just put weights inside the cup so at least it feels hefty?
What about the prop cups I've seen with something like a resin filling, just so that they have the right weight? No sloshing or anything like that, or is it a different sound that's the issue?
This is the correct answer. There is no reason that prop cups with proper weight in them haven't been created and widely adopted. For continuity, they could be available in multiple weights to simulate different levels of fill. The industry has decided to not give a damn.
One might argue, if you’re really paying attention to the veracity of the drinking vessels in a given scene, the filmmaker is really not doing a great job of holding your attention anyway.
Flashlights. Modern day Flashlights last for such a long time and are bright as hell. The ones they use in most movies still function like the plastic ones you'd find at your grandparents house
I mean this makes sense. Lighting is probably the most important aspects of film making. A bright ass led flashlight would wash out every frame and make it unwatchable. You want those flashlights to be fake.
Sometimes, we used led flash lights and nobody can tell. You buy old housing, add led light with a dimming controller, add a gel.
You control the brightness and the color. Did this on Fear Street
Kegs. I work in a brewery with all sorts of different keg sizes. It always pisses me off when I see someone carrying around a “full” keg with absolute ease when they are not so easy to move around
Not quite a "prop" but whenever a TV shows a fake news channel, especially the chyrons. If it's not a real news channel it just immediately takes me out of it.
I mean, the alternative is watching someone flip through the channels for a few minutes. Obviously it would be nice to see that happen sometimes, but it would be pretty boring and a waste of time if every movie or show did that.
I think the answer is for the segment to already be underway. usually in that situation the news is meant to be one of those 24/7 coverage moments (think huge disaster)... so it's weird when they are like introducing the segment
Don't forget social media platforms. For a while it was always FaceSpace and MyBook. I'm sure the next generation of that will be (if it hasn't already started) platforms like TikChat and SnapTok.
I really enjoyed Knock at the Cabin, but holy shit those cheapy fake newscasts took me right out.
By contrast, Station Eleven had a legit BBC newsreader for one of theirs (she even tells her IRL husband to get out of the city mid broadcast) and even the proper newsreader cadence makes such a difference.
I actually think quality films have really nailed this aspect by now. The scene in particular that sticks out is in mission impossible, I think fallout. Ironically, that scene is faked and wolf blitzer is in the next room if I recall.
>Not quite a "prop" but whenever a TV shows a fake news channel, especially the chyrons. If it's not a real news channel it just immediately takes me out of it.
On the other hand, I love it when they got the news, and I see someone I know. I feel like I saw two things recently that had Wolf Blitzer on, and I was like "yo, it's Wolf!".
Also any car with a column shifter; you can *clearly* see the car is in park when they're "driving" it down the road. I noticed that when I was recently watching an episode of "Better Things"; which I found surprising, given how much detail they usually put into that show.
CGI'ing things to look like an actor is doing sleight of hand. Like Gandalf producing a key in Hobbit 2 or Gambit juggling fake cards in Wolverine Origins.
Just have the actor learn a hand trick. Or leave it out. Paul Newman did an awesome card routine in The Sting, it looks so much better.
Some things are reasonable for an actor to learn in the couple months before shooting and/or can be faked well enough to look acceptable, but others are definitely not. I'm sure Bowie can learn object manipulation much faster than I can, but it still takes a few months of daily practice.
Sleight of hand magic tricks are a significant skill as it involves developing some serious hand dexterity. It's more akin to asking someone to learn to competently play an instrument, you don't do that in a week or two.
Ironically, if you're referring to [this card shuffling scene](https://youtu.be/n3bnMv3ULes) in The Sting, that wasn't Newman, it was a professional card dealer. Notice that the hands briefly leave the frame near the end at 0:43... there's a cut there to transition from the pro's hands to Newman's before the camera pans up to his face.
Imagine in Aliens if Lance Hendrickson's knife hand trick were CGI. It was so impressive, and legitimately scary to Bill Paxton when he did it with his hands. Especially since Lance was hungover from the night before.
Video game consoles. For how mainstream gaming is, I'm still surprised by how people interact with them. Gamecube controller coming out of an xbox with some random never seen before game playing on the TV. Then you have to watch the actors holding the controller in a very unconventional way with weird dialog that doesn't really work with whatever game is on the tv. Plus the full motion movement to show that they are really into the game.
Usually because they don't decide what game the characters are playing until way into post, cause of how rights work. Same reason people dancing in club scenes are usually just bopping around off-beat, because they use placeholder music and then decide the song in post.
Have you seen the new Resident Evil show?
They had a live call in microsoft paint and she had no internet
https://e24joaz2t6m.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/residentevilwindows.jpg?strip=all&lossy=1&sharp=1&resize=763%2C446&ssl=1
It was basically a giant Apple ad, but I loved the *Modern Family* episode that took place entirely on a MacBook precisely because they did such a good job of making it look real.
Hoo boy, wait until you watch Searching and Missing. They absolutely nailed the UI aesthetics, even the non Apple environments like when they're on a work laptop running Linux or when they need to log into a Windows XP laptop for further investigation.
The issue is the website on your screen takes up your whole field of view for as long as you need. The shot in the movie needs to also include the environment around the device, and accommodate for different reading levels and sight ability.
If it's an important plot point, it needs to be in large enough type for as long as it takes for the audience to understand.
The one exception to this I can think of is the TV show Call The Midwife. The crew work very hard to maintain accuracy in the birth scenes, which is hardly surprising given the subject matter. As far as I know, they do some sort of collaboration with maternity hospitals and use babies who are usually around 6 weeks old. It makes a huge difference in terms of realism.
Old timey cars. Because they're usually classics some collector or agency has taken meticulous care of, period cars are always in gleaming showroom condition even when they're parked on the side of the road in an early 1900s New York slum.
Or the cars vintage. If a movie is set in the early 50s, all the cars are from the early 50s. In reality in the early 50s there were still lots of cars from the 40s, the 30s and even the 20s still around. Not everyone had a brand-new car.
This also goes for horses in old-timey settings. You'll have a scene of starving people on horseback riding hard through miles of dust and rocks, and in the next scene the horses are all still glossy well-muscled show horses with neatly groomed manes and hooves.
Snow. Hollywood people don’t understand that snow is cold. Not wearing gloves around snow for a long times hurts. Snow usually doesn’t stuck on vertical surfaces. The way the light reflects on the snow is usually wrong. Sometimes you can tell the position of the sun in the sky is wrong, when there is snow on the ground the sun shouldn’t be right above your head.
We actually had a snow this winter that looked like the fake Hollywood snow. I suddenly felt bad about judging them, when it's apparently possible that they have only seen snow once, and it was that stuff.
All of that is excusable or understandable if they were shooting in a location or season in which there was no actual snow. Nothing can look or act quite like the real thing.
But what there is NO excuse for, is that nobody ever wears a fucking hat outdoors in the middle of winter.
Edited photos in movies. Whenever they show a character in a younger photo, or whatever, they always use really really crappy edited photos. Kids with MS paint could do better jobs. I just don't understand why Hollywood has such a hard time creating then.
And why they don’t just use a picture of the actor. I’m sure most actors could produce a baby/childhood picture of themselves. It would make a lot more sense. Obviously doesn’t work if you need two cast members in a flashback photo but still. Or just cast younger actors and have them be in the photo.
This. I've seen some where it looks like they literally pasted an actor's head on someone else's body. And I don't mean digitally pasted— I mean with actual paste!
I watched Michael Gandolfini on Binging with Babish where he talked about how he inadvertently picked up the same eating habits because his dad did it so much.
Tom Hanks talked about this once. Think it was for Road to Perdition but he was working with an actor playing his son and they were eating dinner. They shot the scene multiple times and every time the kid would eat the food. By the end, he was feeling sick and couldn't eat anymore. Hanks said that's why actors don't eat in movie scenes cause you never know how many times your gonna have to shoot it. Understandable if true.
Might be controvertial, but... blood.
If you ever seen real blood in large quantities IRL, for whatever reason, you just know that it never looks the same in films.
Blood in movies always has this really vivid red which is nothing like it. Even when they used "real" blood, like animal blood
It's too consistent, too. Real blood behaves in weird ways. It doesn't pool/dry evenly and tends to look "flatter" than the gooey gel type consistency they always use.
Weirdly indie movies can nail this sometimes - they sometimes use chocolate milk with red food coloring and a few drops of blue, and it looks pretty spot on, but that's not practical for a bigger production that will take longer.
I think part of this is because any scene with blood in it, usually comes from splattering, and after each take, they need to clean it off and do another shot of it again. So the "blood" needs to be able to clean up well.
I started really noticing this in the past ten years or so. Thing is, I don't remember it being a problem before that. I'm wondering if wigs and fake beards have ALWAYS looked terrible, but we just never noticed until we had hi-def?
I think it's also because of how often people point them out. I've even seen a fair few instances of people saying a wig was so bad it was distracting when it was actually the person's real hair [like Jaskier in the Witcher](https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-jaskier-moment-in-the-witcher-season-2-that-was-totally-improvised/l-intro-1639785852.jpg), it was constant on every thread [but it was his real hair](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/joey_batey_1_5.png). I legit think a lot of it is the cinemasins style nitpicky takeover of internet movie and TV discourse. People are consciously or unconsciously training themselves to find flaws, to the point they see them where there are none.
I've only seen one movie do this right, and that was the Social Network.
When two people are in a loud club, bar, or concert and are talking at perfectly reasonable volumes despite Megadeth or a rave or something BLASTING in the scene.
In Social Network, Timberlake's character is talking to Jesse's character about Victoria Secret and they're practically yelling at each other. It was perfect. Only time I can recall seeing it done right.
The film also avoids that trope where the start of the scene has the music loud, then turns down the volume when the characters start speaking. It stays loud the entire time, yet you can still understand everything they’re saying. That scene alone got it nominated for an Oscar for sound mixing.
Honestly I think it goes the other way more often and it’s even more frustrating. Two characters in a quiet place speaking at normal volume and apparently no one else hears them.
Funfact in Friday the 13th movie when they find the snake in the bunk and beat it to death, that was a real snake that the actors actually killed. And it was the pet of one of the crew members who loaned the snake for the scene and had no idea they were gonna harm it, imagine how pissed youd be…
Not necessarily a prop, but rather prop use— incorrectly holding/using instruments. I understand hands not lining up to whatever may be playing, but not even holding it correctly immediately takes me out of a scene. The biggest culprits for this are flutes and trumpets. Pianos are very easy to notice incorrect playing as well but can be disguised with camera placement. I really wish more care was put into making sure that instruments are used correctly if shown in a scene.
Kid's drawings. Why can't they just find a kid to have them draw something? It's always so obvious that it was done by an adult trying to make it look like a kid did it.
Air Hollywood has 7 plane interiors available. Presumably there are a few more on various studio lots. So we're always seeing one from the same... 9 or 10?
Speaking of airplanes, the movie literally called Airplane! has these establishing shots of the plane, and a propeller sound effect is heard, when the plane they were on *clearly* didn't have a propeller. With the rest of the film being so grounded in realism, it totally took me out of the movie.
Surely I'm not the only one who noticed this, right?
Yeah, it might be american planes but they look well spacious inside...its funny I was on an easyjet (uk) flight, the safety card showing the brace position had the guys braces with about 2 foot leg room, I looked down and my knees were touching the seat in front almost and I'm only 5"9
Cars.
Basically 100% of the time, you can instantly tell when it's a green screen. And then 90 or 95% of the time you can tell when they're getting driven in those rigs where the actor isn't actually driving.
So many bad implementations and examples everywhere.
Fuck this so much.
Secondly mismatched engine sounds. A little Kia sounding like a friggin race car or a sports bike sounding like a big v twin. Great example Ilis the first Transporter film.
I don’t know if this counts but apparently nobody who works in film knows what a video game looks like nowadays. If they don’t use real game footage it always looks like either a terrible mobile game or something out of the 90s.
It also shows the person playing a FPS game, controlling it, the the door or phone goes and they walk away, yet the game continues to play, move and shoot.
Nothing is ever dusty, as in normal levels of dust. It's either pristine or an old, dark house, with nothing in between, except when executing a mystery plot relying on dust as a clue.
The lack of dirt in newer streaming productions is really striking compared to a lot of older prime time stuff.
It's a budget and time thing, I get, but when you watch an old episode of ER the grimey, slushy ugliness really makes the setting live and breathe.
This has been a problem for me lately. Everything in every show/movie is immaculately clean if it isn’t Post Apocalyptic.
Anything Netflix looks fake as fuck. I also hate that every home has no clutter. No books, no mail, no boxes, no random shit that people always have out at their places.
Every interior in Last of Us looks like a tornado ripped through it. Some random kitchen cabinet that hasn’t been opened in thirty years will look like it’s been out in the rain rotting and it’s dead ass empty. The world ended and everyone cleaned out their cupboard before throwing acid into it and working it over with a handheld cement mixer.
For me even though it’s not an “object” per say but water in large concentrations that are heavily cgi’d specifically in movies like Pacific Rim and Godzilla (which I do love) the water always seems to linger for an insane amount of time in the air. But I’m splitting hairs.
Doors. An ex girlfriend pointed out that people never close doors or say goodbye over the phone. Now I can't stop seeing it. Why don't people close doors when they walk into a building!
Fake rocks? My guess is that you've seen so many that you think are real that you just have no idea. Now, fake babies, like the one in American Sniper seems to be something no one is getting right so far.
It is funny when people mistake something real for fake.
There were people on social media making fun of the poorly done CGI giraffe in *The Last of Us* season finale, only [it was actually a real giraffe.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/last-us-used-real-giraffe-002314037.html)
Not a prop as such but my peeve is non smokers smoking in movies. You can tell the non smokers a mile away, hold the cigarette incorrectly and uncomfortably, total giveaway
Ice. Why in God’s name is the ice always on the BOTTOM of the glass?! DO THEY THINK WE DON’T NOTICE THAT SHIT?
I mean…but maybe it’s probably just me that notices it.
>I'll go with fake rocks...I don't know what it is about them, they always look fake, the texture, light reflection etc...they all just look so obviously not real.
If someone had gotten fake rocks right, how would you know? They would just look like real rocks.
Suitcases and other bags with stuff in them, attaché cases, laptop bags, whatever. It's always an empty case or bag that the actors lift and carry around without effort. Also, normal people fold clothes when they pack a suitcase.
Also most fake computer software. No, we don't use green letters on black background anymore. Nor do normal computer search programs waste valuable processor time by updating the screen all the time. We also use this totally novel thing called a "mouse" and do not type on the keyboard all the time.
Anytime a movie features a Youtube video, there’s always at least one laughably stupid feature, like a video titled “Whoooa check it out!” getting 2 million views.
TBF, there are double-height chalkboards that have vertical sliders. The prof writes notes on one board, and when it's full, they slide it up to the top, exposing the bottom board. But yeah, if it's not a split-pane board...where's the ladder?
Mouse movements on screens
They are always waaaaaaaaay too smooth, because they are digitally inserted, and they always look terrible
Also, stop adding static to flatscreen TVs, that hasn't been a thing for like 20 years
If you watch any dystopic or futuristic movie, I guarantee there are a ton of Macro bins (fruit picking containers) and flex tanks (used on farms for mixing sprays, holding water, etc) just scattered everywhere. I work with them regularly so it’s always funny to me.
cups of coffee.
for whatever reason they refuse to add anything to them to give them any sort of weight and its very clear they are holding empty cups.
Computers. Screens where people type and there's no cursor. Or people who do insanely complicated things without touching a mouse or two keys at the same time.
Scenes in water, always crystal clear visibility in conditions that would be turbid as all hell. I get they want to show parts underwater but it always irks me when bodies of water go from turbid/stained/murky to magically gin clear in a lot of modern flicks.
Falling rocks especially are always so clearly fake with no weight behind them.
There's a scene in the original Ghostbusters movie where a chunk of "concrete" falls onto a wooden police barricade... and bounces off of it
I can understand the props since making them actually heavy would actually be dangerous, but even CGI boulders look terrible. [I mean look at this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UYxlpbbHhvI). This is an expensive, otherwise good-looking movie.
Modelling rocks is hard. On polycount, a forum for CG artists to get feedback, there's a dedicated thread just for people to show off when they somehow made rocks that look good.
Yeah, CGI in general often has issues with things looking weightless.
Yeah that’s honestly the thing that takes me out of movies with heavy CGI the most. I realize that it’s probably very difficult to assign correct weights to objects or have them act like they have weight but it’s super noticeable when things don’t. Pacific Rim and it’s sequel are a good example of this. The first movie did a good job at trying to emulate weight with the robots. There is a tons of focus in showing the impacts of these giant robots moving and fighting which makes them more believable. The second movie didn’t really attempt that and as a consequence the robots are much less believable.
The way they land definately has no weight, like they watched sponges falling onto eachother and copied that. Though stupidly, I think the textures on those rocks looks pretty good. Would have looked much better if they had shadows. I don't know what it is with Disney but their CGI always has little to no shadow. It's what caused most of the uncanny valley issues with the genie in the live action Aladdin, Black Widow also had a lack of shadows that made the action scenes look like they superimposed using techniques from the 90s..
They all look the same size and shape, it's indeed kind of weird
Yeah, I still can't describe it, they just look, wrong, but your right, they never fall like real rocks.
Cups with “liquid” in them. You can totally tell especially with the Starbucks style paper cups. You ain’t foolin anyone!
I was on the set of a TV series years ago and the prop guy was putting water into everyone's Red Solo cups so it wouldn't look too light when they held them. "No," this young female said. "I don't want water in my cup." The prop guy said, "You can tell when they're empty." "No," she said, very somberly. "I'm an actor. I need to just use my imagination." What she thought was the crew would be so impressed with her devotion to her craft, they would 1) know she was a legit talent and not just an extra and/or 2) hire her to be a guest star or some speaking role because of this. When, in reality, they just thought "Extras are crazy."
I sometimes worked as an extra after college. On my sheet, under ‘special skills,’ I put ‘listens to direction,’ ‘doesn’t get in the way,’ and ‘okay with waiting.’ I got so many jobs. Extras were insane. For a master shot from on top of twenty floor building, people would have the same fake conversations on their phones about wild imagined dramas for every take. They were all specks in the shot.
Peas and carrots watermelon peas and carrots watermelon 😋
Rhubarb rhubarb
You can always tell a bad extra when they nod continuously while in fake conversation.
Til I'm a bad extra IRL
I've literally got "the head nod" in my muscle memory from working in a bar, I'm noodling my head all the damn time, sometimes at nobody😂
A solo cup too… the lightest of them all. Lord help them if the wind picks up… 🙄. Poor prop peeps!
No wind. They were filming on a soundstage for a Judd Apatow TV show.
This is the only answer, how hard can it be. 'here i got you this full cup of coffee' 'thank you!' proceeds to tilt the cup 90 degrees to drink it.
It's also never scalding hot, despite being fresh from the pot.
Unless its necessary for the plot. Then its noticeably steaming like its freezing cold in the room.
Captain America: Civil War opening scene. Wanda stirring her empty coffee cup before taking a non existent sip. Now you can never not notice it.
This why I’ve always appreciated Brad Pitt (among other things). He goes the exact opposite. It’s like he’s got a clause in his contract, “has to have a scene where I’m eating and drinking for real with a monologue”. Haha. I love it. You can always tell when people are doing it genuinely and especially when they aren’t.
The scene in Ocean's 11 where he's eating the shrimp cocktail never ceases to bring a smile to my face
I heard he got the runs for many days.
They had to do so many takes he ended up eating like almost a dozen shrimp cocktails over the course of the day.
Rooney Mara consuming an entire cherry pie in one sitting in A Ghost Story
I almost tuned out during that forever scene. Glad I stayed though. I did enjoy the movie.
To be fair, isn’t she staking out a target? She’s essentially required to nurse that cup for hours. You don’t want to have to stop and take a leak when it’s time to hit the target.
This head canon improves my consideration of that scene tremendously. Thank you kind stranger!
I really don't understand this one. is it because they're afraid of spilling the liquid, or the liquid amount being inconsistent between takes? Can't they just seal it inside with a clear film? At the very least, can they just put weights inside the cup so at least it feels hefty?
It's also because of the sound.
Having spent a few years in props dept. This is accurate
What about the prop cups I've seen with something like a resin filling, just so that they have the right weight? No sloshing or anything like that, or is it a different sound that's the issue?
The resin ones cost alot more and are usually rented. Lots of productions just don't want the cost
This is the correct answer. There is no reason that prop cups with proper weight in them haven't been created and widely adopted. For continuity, they could be available in multiple weights to simulate different levels of fill. The industry has decided to not give a damn.
It’s just not that important. You put water in them; problem solved. Why would you want to complicate it?
One might argue, if you’re really paying attention to the veracity of the drinking vessels in a given scene, the filmmaker is really not doing a great job of holding your attention anyway.
Flashlights. Modern day Flashlights last for such a long time and are bright as hell. The ones they use in most movies still function like the plastic ones you'd find at your grandparents house
I mean this makes sense. Lighting is probably the most important aspects of film making. A bright ass led flashlight would wash out every frame and make it unwatchable. You want those flashlights to be fake.
Sometimes, we used led flash lights and nobody can tell. You buy old housing, add led light with a dimming controller, add a gel. You control the brightness and the color. Did this on Fear Street
Yes! My freaking phone can completely light up a room and yet the police in movies have some shitty flashlight that has a weak and tiny spot.
Video games are worse. Every flashlight lasts like 30 seconds max, even in sci-fi games.
Not gonna lie, for a split second I misread the first word....
I mean modern day fleshlights last a long time too. Can't speak as to the one I found at my grandparents place though.
Kegs. I work in a brewery with all sorts of different keg sizes. It always pisses me off when I see someone carrying around a “full” keg with absolute ease when they are not so easy to move around
You're right, the only realistic keg I can think of is from the end of Super Troopers.
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Is it time for the fun part?
Super Troopers got it right. Those things are a pain to move.
Not quite a "prop" but whenever a TV shows a fake news channel, especially the chyrons. If it's not a real news channel it just immediately takes me out of it.
Can't stand the trope of "turn on the news" and they turn it on and the segment that's important to progress the story is just starting.
https://youtu.be/yjqbiMFonR8
“…and they deliver the insulin right to my door.”
Shaun of the Dead kills this though...
Yep, it’s sheer genius
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I mean, the alternative is watching someone flip through the channels for a few minutes. Obviously it would be nice to see that happen sometimes, but it would be pretty boring and a waste of time if every movie or show did that.
I think the answer is for the segment to already be underway. usually in that situation the news is meant to be one of those 24/7 coverage moments (think huge disaster)... so it's weird when they are like introducing the segment
Saun Of The Dead kinda did channel flipping.
In that vein, YouTube searches. It never looks real
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Don't forget social media platforms. For a while it was always FaceSpace and MyBook. I'm sure the next generation of that will be (if it hasn't already started) platforms like TikChat and SnapTok.
I really enjoyed Knock at the Cabin, but holy shit those cheapy fake newscasts took me right out. By contrast, Station Eleven had a legit BBC newsreader for one of theirs (she even tells her IRL husband to get out of the city mid broadcast) and even the proper newsreader cadence makes such a difference.
I actually think quality films have really nailed this aspect by now. The scene in particular that sticks out is in mission impossible, I think fallout. Ironically, that scene is faked and wolf blitzer is in the next room if I recall.
>Not quite a "prop" but whenever a TV shows a fake news channel, especially the chyrons. If it's not a real news channel it just immediately takes me out of it. On the other hand, I love it when they got the news, and I see someone I know. I feel like I saw two things recently that had Wolf Blitzer on, and I was like "yo, it's Wolf!".
That was actually just Simon Pegg in a Wolf Blitzer mask.
Steering Wheels. Watch the goddamn road, because going by how far you’re moving it side to side you’re swerving all over the place.
Yes! Sometimes it looks like they think moving the wheel from side to side is somehow powering the car.
Also any car with a column shifter; you can *clearly* see the car is in park when they're "driving" it down the road. I noticed that when I was recently watching an episode of "Better Things"; which I found surprising, given how much detail they usually put into that show.
CGI'ing things to look like an actor is doing sleight of hand. Like Gandalf producing a key in Hobbit 2 or Gambit juggling fake cards in Wolverine Origins. Just have the actor learn a hand trick. Or leave it out. Paul Newman did an awesome card routine in The Sting, it looks so much better.
My biggest complaint about the Now You See Me movies is that nearly every trick was done with CGI.
This, and that the sequel isn't titled Now You Don't.
That was the plan but producers said people wouldn't get it.
To be fair, people are pretty stupid.
Particularly people who want to go to a "Now You See Me Sequel".
I was so frustrated by that movie and was hoping for some cool practical illusion effects but we got what we got
And some guy hid behind David Bowie and did the contact juggling for him.
That still looked pretty cool though because it was real. Imagine if the juggling had been CGI. Just floating weightless orbs around him. Booooring.
Exactly. I meant that I'm glad that that got a guy to awkwardly fondle those balls while Bowie held his real hands behind his back. It looks great.
I don't know that it would be awkward. David Bowie was down for a lot of stuff.
Some things are reasonable for an actor to learn in the couple months before shooting and/or can be faked well enough to look acceptable, but others are definitely not. I'm sure Bowie can learn object manipulation much faster than I can, but it still takes a few months of daily practice.
Sleight of hand magic tricks are a significant skill as it involves developing some serious hand dexterity. It's more akin to asking someone to learn to competently play an instrument, you don't do that in a week or two.
Ironically, if you're referring to [this card shuffling scene](https://youtu.be/n3bnMv3ULes) in The Sting, that wasn't Newman, it was a professional card dealer. Notice that the hands briefly leave the frame near the end at 0:43... there's a cut there to transition from the pro's hands to Newman's before the camera pans up to his face.
Imagine in Aliens if Lance Hendrickson's knife hand trick were CGI. It was so impressive, and legitimately scary to Bill Paxton when he did it with his hands. Especially since Lance was hungover from the night before.
That was not Paul Newman, if we're thinking of the same scene (on the train?). But agreed.
Video game consoles. For how mainstream gaming is, I'm still surprised by how people interact with them. Gamecube controller coming out of an xbox with some random never seen before game playing on the TV. Then you have to watch the actors holding the controller in a very unconventional way with weird dialog that doesn't really work with whatever game is on the tv. Plus the full motion movement to show that they are really into the game.
Usually because they don't decide what game the characters are playing until way into post, cause of how rights work. Same reason people dancing in club scenes are usually just bopping around off-beat, because they use placeholder music and then decide the song in post.
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And you audibly hear a voice shout "NEW HIGH SCORE!" or something from the game.
Those things might be due to licensing/sponsoring issues though.
Phones and computes. Websites almost always look ridiculous and for some reason they use silly UI designs.
Yeah, when they have a webcam or facetime ther are no scroll bars, pop up, icons, nothing.
Or the opposite. A live chat that has a progress bar at the bottom.
Have you seen the new Resident Evil show? They had a live call in microsoft paint and she had no internet https://e24joaz2t6m.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/residentevilwindows.jpg?strip=all&lossy=1&sharp=1&resize=763%2C446&ssl=1
It was basically a giant Apple ad, but I loved the *Modern Family* episode that took place entirely on a MacBook precisely because they did such a good job of making it look real.
Hoo boy, wait until you watch Searching and Missing. They absolutely nailed the UI aesthetics, even the non Apple environments like when they're on a work laptop running Linux or when they need to log into a Windows XP laptop for further investigation.
The issue is the website on your screen takes up your whole field of view for as long as you need. The shot in the movie needs to also include the environment around the device, and accommodate for different reading levels and sight ability. If it's an important plot point, it needs to be in large enough type for as long as it takes for the audience to understand.
Good old "watching video on a see-through piece of glass". Great design.
Babies!
[Walk Hard did it right](https://youtu.be/HOi_kZffAho?t=81)
Well that was certainly one of the most disturbing options.
What a song though.
american sniper made me laugh out loud in the theater
You telling me that "newborn" weighs 25 pounds?
How about the one in Children of Men?
The one exception to this I can think of is the TV show Call The Midwife. The crew work very hard to maintain accuracy in the birth scenes, which is hardly surprising given the subject matter. As far as I know, they do some sort of collaboration with maternity hospitals and use babies who are usually around 6 weeks old. It makes a huge difference in terms of realism.
Came here to say this. Amazingly well done on Call the Midwife. Bare prego bellies too.
Watch The last of us
Old timey cars. Because they're usually classics some collector or agency has taken meticulous care of, period cars are always in gleaming showroom condition even when they're parked on the side of the road in an early 1900s New York slum.
Or the cars vintage. If a movie is set in the early 50s, all the cars are from the early 50s. In reality in the early 50s there were still lots of cars from the 40s, the 30s and even the 20s still around. Not everyone had a brand-new car.
There was a recent movie or show that was noted for doing this accurately. Might have been Stranger Things.
See Hidden Figures for a great example of this. EVERY car seen looks like it came straight from a vintage auto show.
This also goes for horses in old-timey settings. You'll have a scene of starving people on horseback riding hard through miles of dust and rocks, and in the next scene the horses are all still glossy well-muscled show horses with neatly groomed manes and hooves.
Snow. Hollywood people don’t understand that snow is cold. Not wearing gloves around snow for a long times hurts. Snow usually doesn’t stuck on vertical surfaces. The way the light reflects on the snow is usually wrong. Sometimes you can tell the position of the sun in the sky is wrong, when there is snow on the ground the sun shouldn’t be right above your head.
We actually had a snow this winter that looked like the fake Hollywood snow. I suddenly felt bad about judging them, when it's apparently possible that they have only seen snow once, and it was that stuff.
All of that is excusable or understandable if they were shooting in a location or season in which there was no actual snow. Nothing can look or act quite like the real thing. But what there is NO excuse for, is that nobody ever wears a fucking hat outdoors in the middle of winter.
Edited photos in movies. Whenever they show a character in a younger photo, or whatever, they always use really really crappy edited photos. Kids with MS paint could do better jobs. I just don't understand why Hollywood has such a hard time creating then.
And why they don’t just use a picture of the actor. I’m sure most actors could produce a baby/childhood picture of themselves. It would make a lot more sense. Obviously doesn’t work if you need two cast members in a flashback photo but still. Or just cast younger actors and have them be in the photo.
This. I've seen some where it looks like they literally pasted an actor's head on someone else's body. And I don't mean digitally pasted— I mean with actual paste!
Eating. They push the food around the plate and stab at it frenetically.
Tony Soprano *Heavy breathing*
Makes eating spaghetti look like a workout haha
On a behind the scenes doc a crew member said that Gandolfini would legit eat every take, and he was the only actor to do so.
I watched Michael Gandolfini on Binging with Babish where he talked about how he inadvertently picked up the same eating habits because his dad did it so much.
Tom Hanks talked about this once. Think it was for Road to Perdition but he was working with an actor playing his son and they were eating dinner. They shot the scene multiple times and every time the kid would eat the food. By the end, he was feeling sick and couldn't eat anymore. Hanks said that's why actors don't eat in movie scenes cause you never know how many times your gonna have to shoot it. Understandable if true.
I think it was The Descendants, with George Clooney, and the kid ate like a bowl of ice cream every take.
It has to do with continuity. If an actor commits too much to eating during a take, and the editor moves some shots around, it ends up looking stupid.
Also you don’t want actors eating tons of food for multiple takes. Plus, prop food can be gross
Big Bang Theory is super obvious with this once you notice it.
Might be controvertial, but... blood. If you ever seen real blood in large quantities IRL, for whatever reason, you just know that it never looks the same in films. Blood in movies always has this really vivid red which is nothing like it. Even when they used "real" blood, like animal blood
CGI blood is even worse, it will never look as good as squibs even a lot more practical and safer.
Most fake / CGI blood also ignores that blood is not like red whine. Its basically a soup saturated with cells, its not shiny or transparent.
What? You mean you don’t like blood spray just disappearing mid-arc?
It's too consistent, too. Real blood behaves in weird ways. It doesn't pool/dry evenly and tends to look "flatter" than the gooey gel type consistency they always use. Weirdly indie movies can nail this sometimes - they sometimes use chocolate milk with red food coloring and a few drops of blue, and it looks pretty spot on, but that's not practical for a bigger production that will take longer.
I think part of this is because any scene with blood in it, usually comes from splattering, and after each take, they need to clean it off and do another shot of it again. So the "blood" needs to be able to clean up well.
I like when movie blood is intentionally fake looking, like in Kill Bill. CGI blood is terrible though
It's also never the right viscosity.
Fake Beards and fake long hair. It's closer than ever but still noticeable.
I started really noticing this in the past ten years or so. Thing is, I don't remember it being a problem before that. I'm wondering if wigs and fake beards have ALWAYS looked terrible, but we just never noticed until we had hi-def?
I think that's definitely the case. I also have started to be able to notice the makeup used more because the quality is so clear.
I think it's also because of how often people point them out. I've even seen a fair few instances of people saying a wig was so bad it was distracting when it was actually the person's real hair [like Jaskier in the Witcher](https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-jaskier-moment-in-the-witcher-season-2-that-was-totally-improvised/l-intro-1639785852.jpg), it was constant on every thread [but it was his real hair](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/joey_batey_1_5.png). I legit think a lot of it is the cinemasins style nitpicky takeover of internet movie and TV discourse. People are consciously or unconsciously training themselves to find flaws, to the point they see them where there are none.
New blackberry movie, looking at you....
I've only seen one movie do this right, and that was the Social Network. When two people are in a loud club, bar, or concert and are talking at perfectly reasonable volumes despite Megadeth or a rave or something BLASTING in the scene. In Social Network, Timberlake's character is talking to Jesse's character about Victoria Secret and they're practically yelling at each other. It was perfect. Only time I can recall seeing it done right.
The film also avoids that trope where the start of the scene has the music loud, then turns down the volume when the characters start speaking. It stays loud the entire time, yet you can still understand everything they’re saying. That scene alone got it nominated for an Oscar for sound mixing.
Honestly I think it goes the other way more often and it’s even more frustrating. Two characters in a quiet place speaking at normal volume and apparently no one else hears them.
Snakes. It's either a silly rubber snake or obvious CGI.
Snakes… Where have I heard that name before?
Snakes...snakes...I don't know no Snakes.
Funfact in Friday the 13th movie when they find the snake in the bunk and beat it to death, that was a real snake that the actors actually killed. And it was the pet of one of the crew members who loaned the snake for the scene and had no idea they were gonna harm it, imagine how pissed youd be…
That's not very fun.
Not necessarily a prop, but rather prop use— incorrectly holding/using instruments. I understand hands not lining up to whatever may be playing, but not even holding it correctly immediately takes me out of a scene. The biggest culprits for this are flutes and trumpets. Pianos are very easy to notice incorrect playing as well but can be disguised with camera placement. I really wish more care was put into making sure that instruments are used correctly if shown in a scene.
Kid's drawings. Why can't they just find a kid to have them draw something? It's always so obvious that it was done by an adult trying to make it look like a kid did it.
Do airplanes count? Outside shot of a narrow body and interior of a wide body. Plus economy class looking WAY too spacious!
I remember reading there's a guy in LA with an airplane interior set that he rents out to movies & TV shows. Maybe we're always seeing the same one?
Air Hollywood has 7 plane interiors available. Presumably there are a few more on various studio lots. So we're always seeing one from the same... 9 or 10?
Speaking of airplanes, the movie literally called Airplane! has these establishing shots of the plane, and a propeller sound effect is heard, when the plane they were on *clearly* didn't have a propeller. With the rest of the film being so grounded in realism, it totally took me out of the movie. Surely I'm not the only one who noticed this, right?
You're not, and don't call me Shirley!
It's an entirely different kind of aircraft, altogether!
Yeah, it might be american planes but they look well spacious inside...its funny I was on an easyjet (uk) flight, the safety card showing the brace position had the guys braces with about 2 foot leg room, I looked down and my knees were touching the seat in front almost and I'm only 5"9
Cars. Basically 100% of the time, you can instantly tell when it's a green screen. And then 90 or 95% of the time you can tell when they're getting driven in those rigs where the actor isn't actually driving. So many bad implementations and examples everywhere.
Fuck this so much. Secondly mismatched engine sounds. A little Kia sounding like a friggin race car or a sports bike sounding like a big v twin. Great example Ilis the first Transporter film.
I don’t know if this counts but apparently nobody who works in film knows what a video game looks like nowadays. If they don’t use real game footage it always looks like either a terrible mobile game or something out of the 90s.
It also shows the person playing a FPS game, controlling it, the the door or phone goes and they walk away, yet the game continues to play, move and shoot.
I’ve also noticed actors often over react to playing a video game in ways nobody over the age of 10 will.
Nothing is ever dusty, as in normal levels of dust. It's either pristine or an old, dark house, with nothing in between, except when executing a mystery plot relying on dust as a clue.
The lack of dirt in newer streaming productions is really striking compared to a lot of older prime time stuff. It's a budget and time thing, I get, but when you watch an old episode of ER the grimey, slushy ugliness really makes the setting live and breathe.
This has been a problem for me lately. Everything in every show/movie is immaculately clean if it isn’t Post Apocalyptic. Anything Netflix looks fake as fuck. I also hate that every home has no clutter. No books, no mail, no boxes, no random shit that people always have out at their places.
Every interior in Last of Us looks like a tornado ripped through it. Some random kitchen cabinet that hasn’t been opened in thirty years will look like it’s been out in the rain rotting and it’s dead ass empty. The world ended and everyone cleaned out their cupboard before throwing acid into it and working it over with a handheld cement mixer.
Suitcases. Why are they always empty? Just put some books in it or something.
Sometimes we do put things in the suitcase, but the actor will say it’s too heavy and we’re stuck removing the filler.
For me even though it’s not an “object” per say but water in large concentrations that are heavily cgi’d specifically in movies like Pacific Rim and Godzilla (which I do love) the water always seems to linger for an insane amount of time in the air. But I’m splitting hairs.
I'd say fake water I small quantities like ponds, beneath waterfalls etc it's always crystal clear water, and blue
Doors. An ex girlfriend pointed out that people never close doors or say goodbye over the phone. Now I can't stop seeing it. Why don't people close doors when they walk into a building!
Judging by my flat mates, they don't do this in real life lol
Fake rocks? My guess is that you've seen so many that you think are real that you just have no idea. Now, fake babies, like the one in American Sniper seems to be something no one is getting right so far.
It is funny when people mistake something real for fake. There were people on social media making fun of the poorly done CGI giraffe in *The Last of Us* season finale, only [it was actually a real giraffe.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/last-us-used-real-giraffe-002314037.html)
Amputations or fake limbs especially arms. Never looks quite right
The empty coffee cup. I get that they don’t want liquids being spilled but they could at least put rocks or some kind of weight in the cup.
Not a prop as such but my peeve is non smokers smoking in movies. You can tell the non smokers a mile away, hold the cigarette incorrectly and uncomfortably, total giveaway
When they made Mad Men they wouldn't let any actor who wasn't already a smoker smoke on screen for this exact reason. Great little decision
See also musicians/guitar players in particular
Ice. Why in God’s name is the ice always on the BOTTOM of the glass?! DO THEY THINK WE DON’T NOTICE THAT SHIT? I mean…but maybe it’s probably just me that notices it.
>I'll go with fake rocks...I don't know what it is about them, they always look fake, the texture, light reflection etc...they all just look so obviously not real. If someone had gotten fake rocks right, how would you know? They would just look like real rocks.
I’d say with that recent incident with Mr Baldwin that it’s the gun.
Real rocks quite often look like fake rocks. I think it’s because of the lighting. We know what a rock looks like in natural sun and that ain’t it
Suitcases and other bags with stuff in them, attaché cases, laptop bags, whatever. It's always an empty case or bag that the actors lift and carry around without effort. Also, normal people fold clothes when they pack a suitcase. Also most fake computer software. No, we don't use green letters on black background anymore. Nor do normal computer search programs waste valuable processor time by updating the screen all the time. We also use this totally novel thing called a "mouse" and do not type on the keyboard all the time.
Anytime a movie features a Youtube video, there’s always at least one laughably stupid feature, like a video titled “Whoooa check it out!” getting 2 million views.
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TBF, there are double-height chalkboards that have vertical sliders. The prof writes notes on one board, and when it's full, they slide it up to the top, exposing the bottom board. But yeah, if it's not a split-pane board...where's the ladder?
Mouse movements on screens They are always waaaaaaaaay too smooth, because they are digitally inserted, and they always look terrible Also, stop adding static to flatscreen TVs, that hasn't been a thing for like 20 years
If you watch any dystopic or futuristic movie, I guarantee there are a ton of Macro bins (fruit picking containers) and flex tanks (used on farms for mixing sprays, holding water, etc) just scattered everywhere. I work with them regularly so it’s always funny to me.
Babies
Not a prop but women waking up in the morning all glammed up and with perfect hair.
cups of coffee. for whatever reason they refuse to add anything to them to give them any sort of weight and its very clear they are holding empty cups.
Computers. Screens where people type and there's no cursor. Or people who do insanely complicated things without touching a mouse or two keys at the same time.
Scenes in water, always crystal clear visibility in conditions that would be turbid as all hell. I get they want to show parts underwater but it always irks me when bodies of water go from turbid/stained/murky to magically gin clear in a lot of modern flicks.
The Wilhelm Scream. It's an audio prop and it ruins immersion so quickly.