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Computer gibberish in movie – part 3

Harald Kraft — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:56:57 +0000

Well, to put this down as “gibberish” would be unfair, because it’s quite reasonable information right there. It’s rather what would be called “continuity goofs” over at the IMDb. Furthermore my remarks in the introduction of the first part of the blog series still apply, that with current HD quality movies, it’s easy to pull up a still and check the information sold to us by the movie makers.

I have to admit, the people responsible for The Bourne Ultimatum have done a pretty good job, both with the movie in general and as far as IT authenticity is concerned. (As a small side-note: sorry, idealists, but I have not read the book)
However, there are a few things (to be followed), where they did sloppy work – remember when Nicky says “it’s being blocked by the firewall”?

To get to the point, throughout the movie we are presented with glimpses of CIA files on the big screen in the operations room. One of them is Nicky Parson’s file, some time later both hers and Jason’s are shown side by side.

Check out the category where it says “Short Summary” (e.g. including the weapons training) and compare the two images:

Note that they just copied Nicky’s information over to Jason and filled Nicky’s file with new stuff? I can’t really find a reasonable explanation why they didn’t just fill the category in Jason’s file with new values …

Oh well, they are forgiven, but stay tuned for another continuity goof in the movie (UPDATE (15/09/2011): this one)

Computer gibberish in movie – part 2

Harald Kraft — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:17:36 +0000

The blog series of computer gibberish in movies began with this post, where you can also find the introduction to the general topic.

Following part 1, where they just punched in random keys and numbers, we can see a higher level of “gibberish” in The Girl who played with Fire, because they bothered to put “real” text:

However, I can’t quite grasp why they put a lot of effort in contents which the viewer can see in documents and digital data (on the screen that is), but had to put a Lorem ipsum on that sheet.
Maybe it was an intern or someone having a lazy day .

Stay tuned for part 3 (which is not in the making just yet, so it might still be a while).

Computer gibberish in movie

Harald Kraft — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:52:20 +0000

We all know those scenes from movies, where we see a computer screen while the NOC-list is being copied or when someone logs into a mainframe in order to disable the power of half a city (via SSH btw). Some are done well or very well (as the mentioned SSH one) others poorly researched or even plain lazy.
While watching such scenes, we usually immediately recognize whether it’s authentic or just crap. Nowadays modern high resolution+definiton movie formats make it even possible to pause the movie and verify all the text that we see on computer screens in such scenes.

Recently, when I watched the (quite brutal) movie “Unthinkable” I saw a real killer:

We see some technician punching gibberish into a spreadsheet already filled with a lot more gibberish, haha.
And it gets even better if you consider what the guy typing is actually doing. See the following spoiler to find out:

Spoiler Inside	Select Show
He is defusing a huge bomb with his hooked up laptop.

Well – so much for today and a real funny idea for a computer screen.
And as a side note: Carrie-Anne Moss also plays the main actress in The Unthinkable .