My favorite hokey bit is when they put a silencer on a revolver (!!!), which doesn't work at all since most of the noise doesn't come through the barrel. That's a howler of a flaw in a lot of cheap 1970s TV shows. I just got in a film to work on a couple of weeks ago where the actors playing cops are walking around with the gun pointed up, and I just rolled my eyes. Some cliches never end.
Back in the day, the engine sounds of turbine helicoptors were incorrect, they would play Be11 47 chopper sound effects on an jet powered copter, truly funny! Haaaa! Ain't no pistons in this whirly bird, its all turbine baby! Now which lever is the cyclic and which is the collective. Haaaa!
They do it on American Pickers all the time. Although to be fair, they're usually driving up to some farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with half a small states acreage as a field. The only time I've heard of someone honking is if someone knows they are the way and should be waiting. So they arrive, honk to say, I'm here and I ain't getting out of the car so hurry up. But as a general thing? Why would you bother?
I'm ignorant about firearms (never even saw one that was not on a cop's hip) so I could be wrong but what is it with the pumping of a shotgun to communicate seriousness. That pump puts a shell in position to be fired right? If so shouldn't it be there already if you're in the midst of a shotgun required job? It seemed odd to me that in the otherwise superb "The Dark Knight" the Joker had to pump in order to shoot the cop during the transport truck scene. And I'm no longer noticing things Hollywood does wrong. It's become is there anything Hollywood does right? From depictions of violence to casual conversation it's strikingly far from reality. Saying that, it's silly to point out a single example of wrong but no one is falling from any height and grabbing onto something to save themselves. Unless they've had a Gibbon monkey arm transplant and somehow massive reduction in weight of the rest of their body. On my fantasy wish list is an action movie where everything is plausible. No jumping from three floors above a moving truck onto its roof, etc. I think if well written it would work. I searched with google but can't find the title of a fairly recent French movie about a hospital orderly who searches for his kidnapped wife. I'd have to watch it again to see if it passes. Or maybe it's time Lars von Trier or one of the torture-porn horror directors to do a straight action film.
Can't turn on the TV without encountering the impossible. "Taken" the TV show is Hollywood right? Scene opens to sounds of hanky panky, preliminary activities kissy kissy, phone rings, duty calls, off he goes. Never! Reality would be time for a quickie. Off he goes before off he goes. Sorry just had to include this.
It's probably already been mentioned, but the young plucky college grad in Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco or Boston who lives in an apartment that would cost 3x their monthly take-home pay. This is a common annoyance.
Woody Allen being the biggest offender. His head is still in the 1970s and inexpensive, rent stabilized apartments (essentially gone in Manhattan since the late 1990s with so-called "luxury decontrol"). In his 2004 movie Melinda and Melinda, I believe it is the unemployed Will Ferrell who lives in a nicely sized one bedroom in a brownstone in the lower 90s on Manhattan's east side (between Lexington and Park, I think). That's been a very nice neighborhood for many years, though not at the level of Allen's multi-million dollar Fifth Avenue digs. At the time of the movie, I'd say that apartment would go for somewhere between $3000-4000 per month. Ferrell would have been laughed out of the broker's office if he wanted to even look at that space.
I had no idea how loud a run really is so I did some googling and came across this Cracked.com article, 5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)
You know, that really does annoy me too. I find it so distracting! I know there's no coffee in that darn cup. It's weird because a lot of the examples in this thread don't bother me much. But this does. I've learnt to live with it.
The coffee cup thing: I was a propmaster for a community theater group, and we were having trouble with an actor who walked onstage carrying one of those cardboard carrying trays with 4 coffee cups. From the way she carried it, not only were they obviously empty, but obviously glued in place. We tried using water, but she sloshed and spilled it everywhere. The solution? Sand! I filled every cup halfway with sand, glued the lids on and sealed up the sipping holes. No spillage, and the weight not only improved her performance, but the scene, as the tray landed on the table with a convincing thud and we didn't have to worry about the slightest breeze moving it. This cost nothing other than a quick trip to the beach, and drives me to distraction every time I see an expensive Hollywood production mess this up.
There was an episode of Scrubs where this was sort of addressed. Main character JD has just shown up one of his grouchy supervisors and the scene cuts to a close-up of him sipping some coffee all cool-like, then the voice-over says something like "There's no coffee in that cup, I'm just trying to look nonchalant."
Good solution. Is it possible that some actors are so picky/paranoid about what they put next to their lips or hold in their hands that often propmasters just hand them an empty cup to be done with it? In college, I worked as an intern on an Off-Broadway production and it was quite the chore settling on what the actors would agree to for fake coffee, booze, etc. (But these were clear receptacles, so something had to be done.)
This is explored in Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book David & Goliath. He makes the argument that David had the superior armament. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said that a simple sling was devastating weapon in the hands of a skilled user, and negated Goliath's strength and armor. Shepherds used them against wolves and practiced constantly, and that a rock flung by a sling could be lethal. Imagine Nolan Ryan throwing a rock at your head. The 2005 film Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang had a wonderful exchange about that. My $2000 ceramic Vektor my mother got me as a special gift. You threw in the lake next to the car. What happens when they drag the lake? You think they'll find my pistol. Jesus. Look up "idiot" in the dictionary. The worst was Stallone's carefully tweezed eyebrows in the otherwise excellent Rocky Balboa. He was playing a mook. Mooks do not have carefully tweezed eyebrows! When I become Emperor of the Universe, use of that phrase will carry the death penalty. You don't even want to know what happens when you use the phrase "...from the studio that brought you." The movie Run, Fatboy, Run (I see a LOT of movies) Dylan Moran's character provides a needle to lance a blister on Simon Pegg's foot. Pegg asks if he sterilized it...and the pause before responds lets you know he peed on it. The whole "White Hat/Black Hat" distinction is lost on Hollywood. And a great director. Sadly, his film "Return To Oz" wasn't appreciated at the time. It was based on the actual Oz books, rather than being a vehicle for a bunch of Vaudeville performers. Charles Dance in "The Last Action Hero" - "Because here, in this world, the bad guys can win!" I get picked up by clients all the time, and half of them honk. In Kansas City. Drives me nuts. The worst offender was the 1993 film "Blink" with Madeline Stowe. She plays a blind violinist...who lives in a huge apartment. Ok, fine. But this huge apartment is in a flatiron building in Wicker Park. Right across the street from the Double Door. What does she need all those windows for? Fresh breeze? If she opens them, it's one of the noisiest neighborhoods in the city, one block from the Blue line elevated train, surrounded by music venues, bars and a 24 hour liquor store.
At least you didn't mention Stallone's rug. The eyebrows are real. Everything above that... not so much. Many producers and directors traditionally reject accurate-sounding gunfire for something that sounds more "dramatic." An old SFX editor/friend of mine once told me he meticulously put in the precise, technically-correct sounds for different kinds of guns in a show, and the producer came in and rejected them all for sounding too much like "firecrackers and cap guns." Basically, the guy wanted everything to sound like a .357 Magnum, even if it was just a small revolver. There's a lotta hype in showbiz.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough. I was never referring to anyone being picked-up, only arriving. In films from the 1940s to the present day, they show people arriving at a house or other social gathering, even a business meeting, honking the horn, as if to say, "I'm so important that you'll want to know that I have arrived, and now the party can really get started!" Clearly it is done in films, again, to make them more interesting with more action, more audio, more detail. But for me it's distracting because in my experience it is unrealistic. No one does that.
People who always walk into a room or a house with the door wide open behind them. They do it all the time on Walking Dead. Who would ever do that?
I think they went for the big kahuna in Shane, using what sounds like a cannon sound effect for a colt handgun.
