does your level of expertise in a certain subject affect how you watch films/ play games etc

[The Heik]

i was wondering if you guys had a job or a hobby or even a keen interest in a specific subject which allows you to spot these sort of things

Well I have two main interests

One is science by way of science fiction. I was inundated with sci-fi as a kid, ( the Star Trek "almost real" variety being the posterboy for this). Ever since I've had a fascination with technology, so I've got at least a rudimentary knowledge on most technological things in media (both real and fiction), further supplementing any lack of info as soon as I experience something new. So when I see any form of general tech used in a film or game, part of me will automatically be critiquing it's role and logic in the work, and I'll usually nitpick the hell out of it if I find a fallacy or flaw in the established conpcept.

A la:

YES

The "fusion bomb" plot of Batman TDKR was so bullshit due to my A level physics knowledge. Yes, even A level physics let me see how stupid the plot was. It actually did damage my enjoyment of the film slightly.

Aside to Matthew94: ya this bothered the crap out of me in DKR. Though for it started more from the fact that pretty much all forms of nuclear reactors wouldn't work the way the one in the film does. It being a fusion reactor, as such not self sustaining, is just the icing on the cake. Seriously, they could have just made it a fictional generator, and the whole problem would have been solved because the writers could establish whatever rules they wanted with bomb. But noooooo, they to be "realistic" *massive irony blinkers*.....


But back to my interests. So yeah, tech is one, but my other comes from my chosen profession in life. I'm a game artist, with a lot of experience in concepts and 3D modelling, so when ever I play a game or see something CG a good chunk of my time is spent saying somethings along the lines of "I see what you did there", and deconstructing how it was done and how it might be improved or streamlined conceptually, mechanically, and narratively.

And it's not that I don't enjoy games anymore due to my knowledge in in games, I just can't turn off my brain and simply play a game or watch a film or show, so often my basic experience can be radically different from most people.

For example I spent over half my first hour's worth of Skyrim looking at the world, but in the mental view of the game as animations, body meshes, and level design. I watched a rabbit run to see how Bethesda set up it's skeleton for the animations, using the in game map to see where the designers are trying to nudge me in my first few minutes of play, staring at the mountain to see the ambient effects they used for different distances, closely examining the tree and flowers to see how they maximized form with minimum polygon face count.

So no longer are games and CG effects just media works. To me they're living testaments to all the blood, sweat and tears, and I can see every inch of that on the screen.

 

[JackandTom]

I took Film Studies as an A Level and I am now doing a Film Studies degree. Now, when ever I watch films, I can't help but analyse them; the colours, the positioning the lighting etc... and I also annoyingly point this out to whoever I'm watching with. It drives my brother nuts. Its not even like I'm watching Oscar nominated films where the director may have been bothered doing stuff like that, the films I usually watch are 80's action films.

 

[BlazeRaider]

My level of expertise: I can use a keyboard, not much right? Knowing how keyboards work yeah? Well I'll just leave this here. (Skip to 0:28)

 

[RustlessPotato]

Snip

Haha, I laughed ^^. Next thing you know they'll give us cream with bird DNA in it, so they can say it will give you wings xD.

Yeah. I'm a biomedical student and have been so for 2 years. It's annoying when some shows get some things wrong. (or Shampoo commercials, where the shampoo had special Keratine Amino Acid to strengthen your hair. KERATINE AMINO ACID? ARE YOU SERIOUS ? ). I also hate it when you have "diet shows" or something. I saw it on tv once: a woman who's a nutritionist said that you should eat a lot of spinach, because it has loads of chlorophyll, which is the "blood" of the plant that the plant uses for photosynthesis. So by eating spinach, the chlorophyll would oxygenate your blood more. I have never written so much bullshit in my entire life, but people believe that crap. Pseudoscience really should be banned by the government.

I'm about 99.9% sure the woman you're on about is Gillian McKeith. Or, to give her her full medical title, Gillian McKeith. I'll let Dara Ó Briain explain it, he's funnier than I am.

Yeah, that's the one. I feel angry just thinking about what she's allowed to do. Thank you for giving me a Dara Clip to sooth my anger .

Snip

Or how about the way silencers are portrayed in films.... just ><

 

[Byte2222]

Well I'm currently studying electronic engineering but that's boring at this point. What does bug me is that I do archery (and coach it) and practically nobody know anything about archery or cares. It was especially bad in The Avengers when I was being irritated by Hawkeye's bad shoulder alignment, bad arm rotation, bad aiming, bloody BLIND BACKWARDS SHOT etc. but it can get pretty annoying in games too. In practically every Zelda game Link tilts his bow so the shots should all veer to the side and in the trailers for Assassin's Creed 3 Connor is resting the arrow between his fingers which would be... exquisitely painful. Oh, and the ridiculous ineffectiveness of arrows: if you were really shot in the knee you'd never walk again if you even survived. It does make it all the sweeter when it's done right though, Brave was so accurate (no pun intended) that it gave me bit of a warm glow.

Also, I've done some study of a martial art (Aikido) with weapons training and am annoyed that no-one seems to understand that a real battle would be over in a few seconds.

 

[Chemical Alia]

I notice every seam, mirrored, tiling, stretched, low res texture, bad collision, alpha planes, cheaply rigged wrists, badly designed characters, etc. on every video game ever. When I play games, I pretty much just see game art and how it was done everywhere. It's a little immersion breaking at times, but not really if the style is done well. And on the plus side, I'm always impressed when I see awesome things, like really nice shaders, lighting, and texturing.

I also see the world in "Photoshop-Default-Settings-Layer Style-o-Vision", which pertains to most ads and graphic design-type stuff.

Chinese and German in movies (those are the only ones I know to a point where it bugs me). When I hear these in movies and the actor speaking them is supposed to be a native speaker but clearly isn't, or when you're supposed to be impressed by a foreigner's knowledge of a language but their pronunciation is painful. Or when they're speaking the wrong language, like that Mongolian bandit in the 2006 remake of Flight of the Phoenix who asked for water in Cantonese, a scene after Hugh Laurie was speaking to them in Mongolian.

 

[Froggy Slayer]

Well I'm currently studying electronic engineering but that's boring at this point. What does bug me is that I do archery (and coach it) and practically nobody know anything about archery or cares. It was especially bad in The Avengers when I was being irritated by Hawkeye's bad shoulder alignment, bad arm rotation, bad aiming, bloody BLIND BACKWARDS SHOT etc. but it can get pretty annoying in games too. In practically every Zelda game Link tilts his bow so the shots should all veer to the side and in the trailers for Assassin's Creed 3 Connor is resting the arrow between his fingers which would be... exquisitely painful. Oh, and the ridiculous ineffectiveness of arrows: if you were really shot in the knee you'd never walk again if you even survived. It does make it all the sweeter when it's done right though, Brave was so accurate (no pun intended) that it gave me bit of a warm glow.

Also, I've done some study of a martial art (Aikido) with weapons training and am annoyed that no-one seems to understand that a real battle would be over in a few seconds.

To be fair, in the Avengers example, they were going to have accurate bow-stuff, had Jeremy Renner not injured himself before filming.

 

[MyOpinionIsBetter]

It rarely effects me. Sometimes I will get annoyed if something is incorrect in a game in regards to history, or incorrect grammar.

 

[Byte2222]

Well I'm currently studying electronic engineering but that's boring at this point. What does bug me is that I do archery (and coach it) and practically nobody know anything about archery or cares. It was especially bad in The Avengers when I was being irritated by Hawkeye's bad shoulder alignment, bad arm rotation, bad aiming, bloody BLIND BACKWARDS SHOT etc. but it can get pretty annoying in games too. In practically every Zelda game Link tilts his bow so the shots should all veer to the side and in the trailers for Assassin's Creed 3 Connor is resting the arrow between his fingers which would be... exquisitely painful. Oh, and the ridiculous ineffectiveness of arrows: if you were really shot in the knee you'd never walk again if you even survived. It does make it all the sweeter when it's done right though, Brave was so accurate (no pun intended) that it gave me bit of a warm glow.

Also, I've done some study of a martial art (Aikido) with weapons training and am annoyed that no-one seems to understand that a real battle would be over in a few seconds.

To be fair, in the Avengers example, they were going to have accurate bow-stuff, had Jeremy Renner not injured himself before filming.

Huh. I didn't know that he had an injury. That would explain why he was shooting left handed as well. On my coaching course we reversed handedness specifically to emulate being a beginner so if he had to change it makes sense that his shooting was poorer. Still, the backwards shot is the script's fault so I'm not letting that off.

 

[Eddie the head]

Uhhh, no.

Everything I've acquired in my years at college do not tend to ruin stuff for me...because I am a writer, and I believe in the fun of the story, the amusement of narrative, and the wonder of WHY NOT. I have a good suspension of disbelief in that sense. Except when the game cheats. That's just dirty.

But suspension of disbelief just means you will accepted, that a guy can fly, or that aliens lived on mars. It don't mean you have to accept that some guy reversed the magnetic poles of earth and caused a tilde wave, or that taking off a helmet in space will make your head turn to ice in a second. Superman flying falls under suspension of disbelief, Superman catching some guy falling 5ft before he hits the ground going 100mph and not braking the guys spine dose not.

 

[dimensional]

I am a practitioner of ninjutsu, and I really can't help but notice how incorrectly ninjas or their arts are portrayed in movies and video-games. Say, TMNT. Or for example, games like perhaps Mortal Kombat.

Sorry that cracked me up I think I get what you are saying but those are some terrible examples what ninjutsu being shown incorrectly in TMNT or Mortal Kombat WTH are they playing at and they are so believable otherwise. Everyone knows real ninjas wear orange and talk about friendship all the time anyway.

I would say that most fight scenes of any kind are misrepresented in films and games though as real fights are generally not as entertaining to watch as well as being a hell of a lot shorter I just deal with it and enjoy the ride even though I know it is complete bullshit. Even a real portrayal of a fighting style is extended most of the time as well as carefully choreographed (obviously) to provide a spectacle and a showcase of ability rather than as a literal depiction of an actual fight.

 

[Winthrop]

I cringe a little whenever genetics comes up in X-men. I'm fine with the whole mutations give superheroes thing, but whenever they start getting into details it really falls apart.

 

[Ljs1121]

Nah. As long as the movie or game is enjoyable to me then I'll overlook a few physics bloopers.

If I dislike something, though, anyone and everyone is gonna get an earful of how inaccurate it is.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

I am a practitioner of ninjutsu, and I really can't help but notice how incorrectly ninjas or their arts are portrayed in movies and video-games. Say, TMNT. Or for example, games like perhaps Mortal Kombat.

Sorry that cracked me up I think I get what you are saying but those are some terrible examples what ninjutsu being shown incorrectly in TMNT or Mortal Kombat WTH are they playing at and they are so believable otherwise. Everyone knows real ninjas wear orange and talk about friendship all the time anyway.

I would say that most fight scenes of any kind are misrepresented in films and games though as real fights are generally not as entertaining to watch as well as being a hell of a lot shorter I just deal with it and enjoy the ride even though I know it is complete bullshit. Even a real portrayal of a fighting style is extended most of the time as well as carefully choreographed (obviously) to provide a spectacle and a showcase of ability rather than as a literal depiction of an actual fight.

You can laugh as much as you like. However, you are laughing at a fact. Technically, there is nothing that is even remotely tied to ninjutsu in my examples. And no, those are not terrible examples. Those examples are examples of media where ninjas are a big part of the world. And yet they aren't even ninjas. Only by name. Ninjutsu is meant to be subtle, quiet, practical and not as flashy as it is presented. And when it comes to combat, ninjutsu is very simple. Real ninjas do not do a thousand flips and then dance on their fingers before killing an opponent. That is retarded. Flips are a part of ninjutsu, yes, but they are used for something else entirely.

You also said that it is altered in movies and games to look more entertaining. That is true. That's exactly what the thread is about. It's asking you about your thoughts when a subject that you know of appears differently on-screen.

So, I still stand by what I said. There is nothing ninja about ninjas in media.

 

[targren]

It depends on the tone. If it's lighthearted and comedic, then no, not really. I can sit through the six good seasons of Red Dwarf and not be ripped out of my enjoyment by the time paradoxes, physics errors, and general silliness of it, because it's supposed to be silly.

Something like Die Hard 4, on the other hand? Good gods, it seemed like EVERYTHING was wrong in that move, and they can't even use the excuse that it was supposed to be an "Action flick with Bruce doing lots of one-liners" since there weren't even any of THEM worthwhile.

So basically, yeah... if you're taking yourself too seriously, I'm going to as well, since that's the tone you're setting, and you'd better get it right.

If not, then I'm all good with the MST3K Mantra.

 

[DarklordKyo]

Some films have become much more predictable due to my frequent visits to tvtropes.org.

 

[The_Echo]

Knowing a little more about general technology than the average guy, it's really easy to point out when a movie or TV show is just pulling it out of their ass. Especially when they don't even try (NCIS, I'm looking at you [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ]).

Normally, though, I won't notice things like that in a work of fiction until someone points it out or I look at it critically. It's never much more than small details, anyway.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

medieval combat, although they are progressively getting better at it.

still, cant play dynasty warriors because of it.

 

[Yopaz]

It happens to me all the time. Watching CSI is probably the worst. The things that they do there are so incredibly stupid at times. Manage to find the structure of a rare polymer and then by some coincidence you manage to recognize that it has to be from a certain company's products? If only things were that easy...

I can't think of any other examples at the top of my head, but it happens quite often.