Mistakes made in film and television

Imagine you're a plumber. You spend all day fixing leaking toilets, hooking up new plumbing and cleaning pipes. You come home after a hard day's work, fall on the couch, pick up the remote and turn on the TV. You decide to watch a movie, and the 1986 comedy "Money Pit" catches your eye. After all, it stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, and it's bound to be a good movie.

Except that you reach a scene where the two main characters decide to take a relaxing bath, only for it to fall through the floor. You laugh. But very quickly that laughter turns to confusion...why wasn't the tub connected to any pipes? Where did the water go? Of course, if the tub had fallen through the floor, it would have been because of a water leak, but you don't see any.

Your extensive knowledge of plumbing has spoiled the scene for you as you are baffled by a long string of inaccuracies.

Furthermore, this problem is not limited to the world of plumbing. Writers, directors, and producers make these mistakes all the time, some more often than others. Here are some of the most frequent ones.

Mistakes in poker games

Poker was once a game reserved for the back rooms of Las Vegas casinos, but thanks to the Internet, it's a sport enjoyed by people from all walks of life. It has become infinitely more accessible not only because the World Wide Web has made it possible for millions of people to play Texas Hold'em and Razz without going to a casino, but also because millions of players have access to free online games at livecasinon.net. This means that you can enjoy the game without spending a penny.

Because more people than ever play Omaha high-low and five-card draw, viewers have never had so many opportunities to find holes in poker played on the screen and to spot discrepancies online.

Sometimes they are small, such as in Rounders , when the dealer made a big blind in the final game of the showdown. In a heads-up like the one pictured here, the dealer would make a small tie. In other cases, they are bigger, as in Molly's game, when the $300,000 bet was "raised" to $200,000, when even the most elementary poker players would know that it should be at least double the original raiser's bet. And also read on this site about what video games online that you can use with other users. 

Explosion Mistakes.

Almost every action movie has at least one (and often several) big explosion. This is usually accompanied by the character responsible for this spontaneous eruption confidently walking away as if it were an everyday occurrence for them.

According to Hollywood, explosions are usually accompanied by lots of flame and smoke, though often they are not. Of course, they go hand in hand, but the explosions themselves are actually caused by the rapid expansion of air. In real life, this causes an almost invisible blast wave that does most of the blast damage.

But for filmmakers, invisible shock waves don't work well for the camera, so a lot of flame is added to enhance the effect.

Computer-related mistakes.

Watch any detective show long enough, and you'll almost certainly come across a scene where several people are reviewing security camera footage that shows a blurry face. One will say to the other, "Enhance... Enhance... Enhance... Enhance..." and magically all the details needed to identify the figure are revealed.

This is just one of the many mistakes made in movies when it comes to computers. The outdated cliché of computer hackers sitting in a dark room wearing dark glasses has thankfully lost popularity with most filmmakers, but scenes in which supposed computer geniuses perform miracles with just a few keystrokes are still noticeable.

Take, for example, the long-running series "Bones." In it, Angela Montenegro, an artist and computer hacker, regularly uttered nonsensical sentences like "don't worry, honey, I tripled my firewalls."

The Netflix series "Designated Survivor" (which is very similar to "24 " ) also contains examples of science fiction. In one of the early episodes, a former government employee gives a coin to the president. He tells him that it contains a computer hard drive. Except that computer hard drives are always at least 2.5 inches wide, which is much larger than even the largest U.S. coins.

These types of errors are common, which can be surprising or frustrating to those with experience and knowledge in this particular field. Nevertheless, sometimes filmmakers find it difficult to incorporate all the subtleties of real life while telling a compelling story. So it may be best if we forgive them the occasional inaccuracy, as long as they don't push the boundaries too far.

 

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