3 ms·

The number of people who’d appreciate such accuracy would be minuscule.

by f6v 5y ago

Retric 5y ago
Accuracy is great because it’s both consistent and changes expectations. Everyone expects explosions in movies to be giant fireballs so we get more silly giant fireballs. Movies that go for realistic explosions end up feeling shockingly gritty by comparison.
- java-man 5y ago
  I would have preferred more scientifically accurate movies. Judding by the comments, many more prople who prefer otherwise. I hope once day, there will be a movie that accurately portrays the reality. I know I am not alone. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
jfengel 5y ago
Sometimes, an audience can feel accuracy even when they don't know it. A film that has a deep, complex internal consistency can engage audiences and them feel like they want to know more. They don't have to understand the details, but they like to feel that you do. Reality is a rich source of such consistent details. In historical films, for example, few audience members will really appreciate that you got all of the costumes correct down to the specific year, but the film can feel better than one that mixes Georgian with Victorian with French Court styles. Getting the physics right won't automatically make a story better. It can constrain the story too much. But if you choose to go down that route, and can still tell a good story, the audience will benefit even when they don't know what they're looking at. It's why actors like to go into "back story" for a character even when the audience doesn't know what that back story is, and why they work on physicality (walking like the character, holding a fork like the character, etc.) even when nobody will notice. One beautiful example of that: look at the way people moved chess pieces in Queen's Gambit. Even if you don't play, you knew that the actors knew it (and indeed, it came as no surprise to me that they were trained by Gary Kasparov). It's a little thing, but it was just one of a million things that helped that project go right.
- talkischeap 5y ago
  I would argue that the examples don't all apply the same. The successful examples you listed are all about human actions, subtleties about how people are acting and behaving. Humans are just naturally very good at sensing these things, unconscious or not. But something like black holes? The overwhelming majority of people have almost no context and even less intuitive understanding of such an alien thing. I doubt that miniscule details would affect a sense of reality when the subject in question is so foreign from the viewer that it is essentially no different to them than something completely fabricated.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It's entirely possible. I'm just talking about how I would have gone about it. It's not that the audience wouldn't have appreciated that moment or not. It's rather that the film suffered (in my opinion) from a lot of focus on getting the details right, which meant that the things they got wrong jumped out to me -- not as a physicist, but as a storyteller. They didn't want to tell a story about physics -- which is a fine choice. They wanted to tell a story about love in a sci-fi setting -- again, a fine choice. But it meant that the film looked like "Look here at what we got right, look over there at what we got right, NO DON'T LOOK OVER THERE NOTHING TO SEE." It's a choice every sci-fi film has to make. I think that this film was less successful (artistically) than it could have been because they made the wrong choice there. I think they'd have done better not hiring a physics consultant than having one and not giving them absolute control over things -- which shows up in things like those tiny details. This is, of course, just the way I look at it. I'm not here to say it was a good or a bad film, or whether you should enjoy it. I'm saying, "I didn't enjoy it, and I think this is part of why." Not from a physics standpoint, but an artistic one. You are, of course, free to disagree with that on every level. I just thought it might be interesting to hear how a different director saw it.
RHSman2 5y ago
But those souls believe it ruins interstellar
- f6v 5y ago
  I had 3 semesters of physics in the university and can’t tell whether interstellar is accurate or not. Ok, I’m no genius, but this leads me to an assumption most people wouldn’t get the difference anyway. There’s just no point to be very accurate when making a movie. You have to be only approximately accurate.
  - RHSman2 5y ago
    You have to tell a story. And people like it.

The number of people who’d appreciate such accuracy would be minuscule.

by f6v 5y ago

The number of people who’d appreciate such accuracy would be minuscule.

Accuracy is great because it’s both consistent and changes expectations. Everyone expects explosions in movies to be giant fireballs so we get more silly giant fireballs. Movies that go for realistic explosions end up feeling shockingly gritty by comparison.

java-man 5y ago
I would have preferred more scientifically accurate movies. Judding by the comments, many more prople who prefer otherwise. I hope once day, there will be a movie that accurately portrays the reality. I know I am not alone. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

jfengel 5y ago

Sometimes, an audience can feel accuracy even when they don't know it. A film that has a deep, complex internal consistency can engage audiences and them feel like they want to know more. They don't have to understand the details, but they like to feel that you do. Reality is a rich source of such consistent details. In historical films, for example, few audience members will really appreciate that you got all of the costumes correct down to the specific year, but the film can feel better than one that mixes Georgian with Victorian with French Court styles. Getting the physics right won't automatically make a story better. It can constrain the story too much. But if you choose to go down that route, and can still tell a good story, the audience will benefit even when they don't know what they're looking at. It's why actors like to go into "back story" for a character even when the audience doesn't know what that back story is, and why they work on physicality (walking like the character, holding a fork like the character, etc.) even when nobody will notice. One beautiful example of that: look at the way people moved chess pieces in Queen's Gambit. Even if you don't play, you knew that the actors knew it (and indeed, it came as no surprise to me that they were trained by Gary Kasparov). It's a little thing, but it was just one of a million things that helped that project go right.

talkischeap 5y ago
I would argue that the examples don't all apply the same. The successful examples you listed are all about human actions, subtleties about how people are acting and behaving. Humans are just naturally very good at sensing these things, unconscious or not. But something like black holes? The overwhelming majority of people have almost no context and even less intuitive understanding of such an alien thing. I doubt that miniscule details would affect a sense of reality when the subject in question is so foreign from the viewer that it is essentially no different to them than something completely fabricated.
- jfengel 5y ago
  It's entirely possible. I'm just talking about how I would have gone about it. It's not that the audience wouldn't have appreciated that moment or not. It's rather that the film suffered (in my opinion) from a lot of focus on getting the details right, which meant that the things they got wrong jumped out to me -- not as a physicist, but as a storyteller. They didn't want to tell a story about physics -- which is a fine choice. They wanted to tell a story about love in a sci-fi setting -- again, a fine choice. But it meant that the film looked like "Look here at what we got right, look over there at what we got right, NO DON'T LOOK OVER THERE NOTHING TO SEE." It's a choice every sci-fi film has to make. I think that this film was less successful (artistically) than it could have been because they made the wrong choice there. I think they'd have done better not hiring a physics consultant than having one and not giving them absolute control over things -- which shows up in things like those tiny details. This is, of course, just the way I look at it. I'm not here to say it was a good or a bad film, or whether you should enjoy it. I'm saying, "I didn't enjoy it, and I think this is part of why." Not from a physics standpoint, but an artistic one. You are, of course, free to disagree with that on every level. I just thought it might be interesting to hear how a different director saw it.

RHSman2 5y ago

But those souls believe it ruins interstellar

f6v 5y ago
I had 3 semesters of physics in the university and can’t tell whether interstellar is accurate or not. Ok, I’m no genius, but this leads me to an assumption most people wouldn’t get the difference anyway. There’s just no point to be very accurate when making a movie. You have to be only approximately accurate.
- RHSman2 5y ago
  You have to tell a story. And people like it.