Coding the Movies – Don’t Fake It | Hacker News Reader

Coding the Movies – Don’t Fake It

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106 pointspauljm43 comments

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

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.

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....

Or if you don't want to register, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlownAcrossTheRoo...

I also think it's interesting how TV and movies portray caring for gunshot victims.

In the movies, the first priority is to remove the bullet from the victim, usually in a dramatic and agonizing way. Once the bullet is removed, the victim is miraculously cured.

In reality, the first priority is to stop the bleeding. Most of the time, doctors won't even attempt to remove the bullet. The bullets are sterilized from the explosion, and you'll generally do more harm than good by trying to remove it.

I assume “ACCESS GRANTED” is preferred over your root prompt because it is more legible to the vast majority of viewers.

In fact, I suspect one noble goal in ItsAUnixSystem-style sequences is making sure everybody watching understands what’s going on: The access was granted, dummy.

Of course sometimes that’s gonna conflict with realism.

http://hackertyper.net/

Indeed, the whole point it to make it easier for the view to get what's going on.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewerFriendlyInt...

Not only is the hacking and programming in most screen flicks fake or far from reality, it also continues to amaze me how some shows are completely dependent on the falsehood that some people can use a computer to hack, mine and get everything they want as long as it has a keyboard.

Take for example "Criminal Minds". It is about a group of profilers at the FBI who catch serial killers. There is this one girl on the team who consistently manages to find out ANYTHING with the computer she owns and greatly assists the team of profilers; she can access ANY database on ANY computer. So the team says "give me a list of people with x and y from z between 2000 and 2002" and she gets it (after, of course, fast scrolling green text on a black background).

Rambo movies must give the same feeling to people in the military. A scene which might be cringe-worthy to anyone in tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqtbN_VHXVA

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.

What's more is that expecting realism from Hollywood productions is, quite aptly, unrealistic. Hollywood films aim at targeting large masses of people. As such, their medium is in creating exaggerated escapist fiction with intense SFX and formulaic plots that do not require thought to follow, but can instead be passively consumed.

If you want realism, then start watching more art films and start supporting the independent film industry.

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.

This is an easily-pierced trope of this kind of discussion.

"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..."

Are we in the future? Or, are we trying to destabilize the audience's expectation of what's possible? Or, are we trying to communicate to the audience that computing is so ubiquitous and so disposable that society has spent its resources on superfluous displays? Is the protagonist a fish-out-of-water invited into an enclave of super-advanced geniuses situated in otherwise present-day America?

Narrative is craft, and it's subject to expedience. The question to answer, in any given instance, is not, "Is this use of technology realistic?," but, "How does this element of technological unrealism operate within the wider context of the (obviously unrealistic) fantasy world of the movie?"

Anyone can come up with an instance of how this has failed in a movie, but the title of the article is "Coding the Movies: Don't Fake It." This person wants code to look real in movies, and that's a profoundly stupid generalization to insist on.

It's worth noting, too, that the author's "blog post" is really an advertisement for his consulting service. In a Habermassian sense, we would be suspicious that this element of the Lifeworld, this Communicative Action, has been colonized by the System, namely his need to get work.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

> 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!

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

(Not the author, obviously, these are my own opinions)

Would the author want more realism in porn?

Yes, please!

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? (...)

You're confusing "realism" with "boring stuff nobody cares about". A biography is no less realist because it doesn't include the person going to the bathroom.

In fact, I'd say the best porn out there is less shitty because it does away with some of the unrealism that permeates the industry: it allows the performers to acknowledge that they're doing a porn video instead of forcing them to act on a grotesque script written by the directors cousin, all the while sounding like morons because they're told to never shut up.

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

Good directors can do that without making its audience to be idiotic.

By the way, I'm not saying realism is above everything; like in your space fighter example, I think disregarding realism to achieve a particular stylistic effect is perfectly valid. But it should be a deliberate and well reasoned choice, not something bred out of ignorance and negligence.

The trouble is that the line between "realism" and "boring stuff nobody cares about" is a thin one that the film-maker has to tread carefully, and this is an exceedingly difficult task, as this line varies from person to person: it is highly subjective. Film is a mass medium, so it is difficult for the film-maker to 'get the balance right' for all (or even just the majority of) the viewers.

Moreover, when you say that "the best porn out there" is characterized by a particular description, you have to remember that this is your own, highly nuanced, subjective view on this. There are other people who probably hold an opinion that is a direct inversion of yours.

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.

   Bunch of scrolling data

Like in the Matrix?

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.

Oh please. Hollywood doesn't have any contempt for computer scientists or their profession. It's you who has contempt for Hollywood, which seems to stem from a misguided belief that the Hollywood action flicks are meant to be realistic. They're not. They're meant to entertain the audience. No one wants to watch some hacker hack into a database because the realistic representation of that would be boring and -- more importantly -- it isn't actually important how any of that happens. They're just events used to drive the plot forward. Obviously this isn't true for all movies, but thinking Hollywood gets the details wrong because they hate you reeks of self-importance.

"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

And intones "there's our way in."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can do realistic combat like Acts of Valor that's still exciting, though the movie's plot is terrible and unrealistic.

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

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

So the reality is even wilder than the movie.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Only reason why people notice the fake code is probably because they're not paying attention to the plot.

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/

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.

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.

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).

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/

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...

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.

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.

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

or decrypt.py ;) https://github.com/jtwaleson/decrypt

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

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