And now for something cheerfully entertaining. When I go to the movies, I freely admit to being obsessive about the biology, which is often completely ignored by most movies — although something like the X-Men movies really has me climbing the walls and moaning and gritting my teeth. But what happens when a typographer watches a movie? Every movie has letters and logos on the screen somewhere! So go read this obsessive, fanatically detailed analysis of Bladerunner. Everything he points out completely sailed by me when watching it.
You get to hear about every font choice on signs and labels, and somehow, it’s entertaining. There’s a bonus discussion of Letraset, which I remember well (every science lab I ever worked in was typographically consistent, at least: they all used Futura. Had to be Futura. None of those fiddly serifs, and besides…the name. Perfect. If only we’d known about Eurostile).
It’s interesting mainly because it’s mostly foreign to my perspective, but there’s another intersection, when he discusses image “enhancement”. I’m a video and image processing guy, so that scene in Bladerunner where he zooms in on one tiny reflection of a reflection in what looks like a holographic polaroid always bugged me. Here is that entire sequence with just the enhancements to show the magnitude of what the movie was doing.
Another bonus! A collection of “Enhance!” scenes from TV and movies.
I’d sit here all day reading Typeset in the Future articles, but now I have to go to work. And then I have to download the Eurostile Bold Extended font set for my laptop so I can make my work look futuristic.
Oh, I’m so happy to see a new post from Typeset in the Future! It’s a great blog, but not exactly frequently updated.
You’re not the only one who fixates on weird biology in movies… In particular, I can’t watch Pitch Black without being overwhelmed with questions about the ecology of the creatures.
Or Avatar, another movie that disappointed on the biology front.
Not seen it. I developed a severe case of hype poisoning when it came out, which kinda put me off.
Just once I would like to see the steely jawed hero-type in a movie ask the technician to “freeze and enhance the image on that spoon on the table”. The technician does so, to the extent that laws of physics allows. Upon seeing the blurry, pixelated image the hero, Drake Brannigan, asks “Ok, now enhance it some more. There might be a face reflected on that spoon on the table!” The tension in the crime lab mounts. Even the music becomes, well, more tense.
But the technician just looks stunned by the stupidity. She rolls her eyes and says with strained patience “no. You cannot get details that are smaller than the pixels that are already there. “
Fonts are like the songs of your youth. People get very attached to them but they mean nothing to others.
I clicked on the links but the site is setting off alarm bells on my browser, so I’ll have to avoid it for now…
@6: I’m running FF 47.0, with SSL Everywhere, and I’m not seeing any issues.
I’m no great fan of the biology taught by our entertainment industry either. While I can almost suspend my disbelief for movies like the X-men series (obvious fantasy that they are) there are others that really bother me because they’re likely to spread terrible misconceptions about biology. Even in the X-men, despite the implausibility of mutant powers, at least they postulate that these are genetic changes that mutants have from their parents (i.e., they’re at least using the basics of real genetics, even though the results are pure nonsense.) It’s the movies and TV shows that cast everything we know about genetics aside or stand them on their heads that make me walk out of the theater or reach for the remote.
The number one culprit on this front currently is the awful TV series made from James Patterson’s Zoo. In this one, they’re postulating changes to the genetics of existing animals (i.e., somatic cell genetic changes) that reprogram their pheromones to produce killer behavior that only manifests itself toward humans (but not other animals.) There are so many things wrong with the concepts involved in this process that it would take far more than a comment to break them down. Just the idea that you could have the same genetic changes to produce the same exact results across the entire animal kingdom is laughable, andit gets worse from there. I have had to spend way too much time already as a biology teacher shooting down this nonsense for my students. This is the sort of entertainment that actually makes people more ignorant. That’s worse than any poor font choice ever made (and I say that as someone who’s collected cool fonts ever since I got my first real computer.)
No, it’s not real genetics at all. Did you know the X factor is, logically enough, on the X chromosome? That it shows no discernable pattern of inheritance?
Not to mention that a single gene give you the magical powers of flight, teleportation, zapping things with your eyes, or control of the weather.
PZ Myers @ # 9: … the X factor is, logically enough, on the X chromosome…
Then shouldn’t at least some of the female mutants have twice the powers of any male mutant?
I suppose it’s a bit different with the sciences, but as an historian I tend to find a lot less of this sort of attitude when it comes to the historicity of films.
I mean, sure, the phrase “Hollywood History” exists for a reason. We know that most historical films take huge liberties with their representations of the past, even the ones that employ eminent historians to consult (Robin Lane Fox on Oliver Stone’s Alexander for instance, or Paul Cartledge on 300). I suppose the difference is that historians tend to be very familiar with how societies view, interpret and transform their pasts, and don’t find it at all surprising that we continue to do so today. Shakespeare’s take on Julius Caesar was very inaccurate, but it is absolutely of a piece with the popular Renaissance classicism of Tudor England – reinterpreting the past through modern eyes is just what human societies do. Historians do it too – just read Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and try to picture Rome as anything other than 18th century Europe. In a couple of centuries’ time I’m sure future historians will be saying the same about our own academic output.
Of course, we can and often do take issue with the modern preoccupations that such films bring in. But on their own terms, not because they’re anachronistic. To use the above examples, 300 uses the Spartans to make a piece of violent, fetishistic pro-war Americana, while Alexander is a paean to a very mid-20th century American ideal of masculinity that is both utterly unlike masculinity as Alexander’s contemporaries would have conceived it and dated and boring to us now.
Aw, they forgot “Blow-Up” (1966).
The zooming in sequence seemed (to me ) to be modelled on a similar one in Blow Up
@ PZ
The zoom sequence of Blade Runner really bothers me. How did zooming change the angle at which the reflection was viewed? How did zooming gain vision of someone directly behind an obstruction??
at least S. Holmes could deduce incredible detail from small details clearly observable he did not have to distort reality so much to make the impossible happen like what is often done with photo-enhancement for example.
I like the Hulk but where does all that mass come from and where does it go really?
uncle frogy
My go-to font for futurism is an extended version of Neville Brody’s Industria I made a few years ago, which I used to use in handouts for sci-fi RPGs and the like. Mind you, Industria‘s getting a bit long in the tooth now, almost as old as Blade Runner. Maybe I should revert to Eurostile.
Holms @16: The photo is meant to be holographic, according to Typeset in the Future, albeit recreated by the effects department with flat picture technology. When Deckard tells the Esper to pan, it’s doing so within the 3D space of the hologram, rather than just moving across the flat plane of a photo.
S. Holmes as in Sherlock Holmes
the guy with the holographic mind and not special effects Dept. making implausible things ordinary.
uncle frogy
Kagehi @ # 14 – I fear you sadly underestimate the power of a superpower gene.
I haven’t followed the chronicles of the X-persons for several years, so the only superhybrid I know of is Franklin Storm-Richards (neither of whose parents gained their powers through mutation as such). Unless the Danger Room includes much more education in contraception than depicted so far, surely some of the rustling in the bushes around the Xavier mansion has produced spawn, and I strongly recommend you not antagonize any of same, even in the absence of their extended family.
I was waiting, waiting, waiting …but to no avail. The greatest ‘enhance’ scene in cinematic history:
Ramathorn enhances
Or there’s the Red Dwarf version.
I have not watch any of the Red Dwarf in a long time I think I will go and catch up on some high brow sci-fy.
thanks
uncle frogy
I’m gonna defend Blade Runner’s enhance scene because it’s meant to be a futuristic technology not available today. (Light-field cameras show that technology can do amazing things in photography — not at the level of the holographic pictures in Blade Runner but still pretty damn astonishing.) Of course, most TV/movie versions of “enhance” are pure bull dust.
I had no real problem suspending my disbelief watching Blade Runner though there were lots of it seemed to be stretching just a little and having red the book it was based on, the world created which was very different I liked it.
It was easier to show a dark future by being dark then it is being bright and alien more like “Brazil” It was a choice of the director and screen writer and designers. There was no way I could follow the geometry of that photo scene it was an interesting to advance the plot not unlike the effects “Ming the merciless” used to spy on Flash Gordon did not make that much difference how real it looked, it advanced the story without being so intrusive as to drive me out of my seat.
which is I guess the important part if the effects eclipse the story or try to make up for the story it will fail.
you need more than car crashes!
uncle frogy
“Legolas! What do your elf-eyes see?”
I used to be semi-professional performer of ‘early music’ and get the same feelings when watching some movie set in Mediæval or Renaissance times. Seems like they put a lot of effort into costumes and then either have characters playing something wildly anachronistic or HORRIBLY new-sodding-vomity-agey!
And since Sili mentioned the LOTR-inaccuracies movies, I have to add that I found that the music left me with an overwhelming need to go have a shower — using Oirish Spring soap!
Hmm. Well, all I know is what I have seen, which is that at least “one” of the alternative futures from the x-men franchise included the idea that, yeah, some of the newer generation might actually get more powerful, but they also tended to be more unstable – with, ironically, given Magneto’s obsessions, a “dead end” result. That the spread of those abilities was also on a path to become most/all of humanity at some distant point too.. not so good an outcome.