They do, you know. Look good, I mean. Sound good, too.
They’re terrible, mostly. They’re just puerile, pointless Batman movies, the stale, made fresh monthly, I know. But they do tend to look and sound amazing. That’s because everyone but the actors and the people who write the scripts are very talented. The average set dresser, scene painter, soundtrack music writer –hell I bet the catering’s amazing — is so talented, and that talent is so cultivated by education and experience that any dreck you throw at the screen has a thick veneer of wonder on it.
Ever watch those one of those “How They Made This Wonderful Movie” movies? I find the back end of entertainment interesting, so I’ve seen many. Speaking of back ends, you learn that the back end of a horse is in charge of making the movies, generally. They all would be more accurately named if they were called “How This Wonderful Movie Was Made By Idiots By Accident.”
There’s an insanely detailed homage to the making of Raiders of The Lost Ark available on Vimeo. We watched it. If you watch it, and see who the makers of the movie wanted to cast in the movie, but weren’t allowed to, and the ideas they had to make it more interesting, like a robot arm for Indy, who would be played by Tom Selleck, natch, you’d know it’s all the little people that made that movie great entertainment. They eventually wear down the people in charge with their common sense, I think.
I think movies look so good because the people that are charged with making a movie look and sound like a specific period in time and populating it with accurately depicted persons — well, at least the way they’re dressed — have access to reams and volumes of source material. Like that look into a glass factory in Holland in the fifties.
Me? I just watch the glassblowing videos. It’s blissfully free of Batmen, and the leading men look like they could actually grow a beard if they wanted to.
6 Responses
They don't have their egos dependent on looking good on screen, but on the sets, props, backgrounds, sound, clothes, and focus. Likely other things that I have no clue of.
It's like watching caterpillars change into butterflies.
The guy with the pipe? An extinct creature nowdays, sadly. He's been replaced with a foul mouthed, tattoo sporting jackanapes.
cool, er, hot.
Hot glass is a very cool medium. I managed to make one slightly marred Christmas ball. Things weighs about two pounds, and is the model for the one that kills Charlie Brown's tree.
I really don't see how those guys don't hyperventilate. Their cheeks are like Louie Armstrong's.
You can tell, when the credits start to roll and, like Oliver Twist, you sit there with your arms outstretched pleading "more, please."
Mike from "Dirty jobs" has a point that we don't teach from the right point of view. The sign that drives him: "Work smarter, not harder" is the harbinger of poverty. We teach our children to be somebody but don't teach them to make something. Not make something of themselves but just make something.
We are a rich country because our grandfathers, and their grandfathers, made lots of somethings, not because they went to college.
Detroit is when we send out our newly minted college educated brats to rule over those that make things. Detroit is because we hate those that make things.
Brad Ervin
Maybe so, but not for sound quality.
I'm just turned 60. Hearing going.
When I watch movies, and I see Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca era – every. word. clear. as. a. bell.
Modern stuff is unintelligible mumbling, with a few honorable exceptions.
Perhaps it's the actors. Mutter, mutter, blah, blah. Perhaps the sound recordist. Perhaps the director. Perhaps all of the above.
What's my point? Leftism always, always leads to incompetence.
Back when I was a young man, and thought myself smarter than I really am, I wrote an essay about this film and the interplay of the images with the music. Got an 'A' as I recall, which reinforced my belief that I was smart. I've learned a lot since then.