Gilles Tran <gil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> There's no waiting time for lightning because lightning, to be understood 
> (and impressive) as lightning, is supposed to go "Flash!!! Crack!!!"

  That's the problem: Says who?

  The only one who says that are the movies themselves. It's not anybody's
personal experience of lightning. It's a convention invented purely by
movies (and before that probably by theatre), not by reality.

  If movies always had had a realistic lightning, nodoby would complain
about it or feel it's odd, but just a normal convention of depicting
something in movies realistically. It's a convention which people accept
not because of any real necessity, but simply because movies artificially
have created the convention, and people have got accustomed to it because
of seeing so many movies.

  There are many other unrealistic conventions in movies, but most of them
are dictated by practicality. For example the soundtrack of a scene of
two people talking is usually as if the microphone was about between the
two people, and not where the camera is currently. This is a purely
practical thing, as it would probably be difficult to hear what they
are saying otherwise. This is also an artificial convention created by
movies, but it's caused by necessity, and it works.

  I don't see any necessity in unrealistic depictions of lightning.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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news:48c40bf8@news.povray.org...
>
>    Yes, why do Americans never say "goodbye" to the other person on the 
> 'phone?? They just put the thing down... (in films I've seen anyway), but 
> is this typical in real life?

Movie characters (American or not) are typically rude to each other. Even in 
non-violent movies people do and say things to each other that should land 
them in anger management therapy, if not in court or jail, but other 
characters don't seem to bother that much (unless it's part of the plot of 
the plot). It's an entire autistic world where regular ethics and personal 
feelings do not exist and don't matter. An egregious example (among 
thousands) is Julia Robert's character in "My best friend's wedding", who 
does lots of wrong things (including trying to get her best friend sacked by 
sending bogus emails from his boss' account, and later stealing a truck and 
starting a car chase) and five minutes later everything's forgiven and 
everybody's happy and friends again. Suspension of disbelief is your friend, 
fortunately.
IIRC "True lies" made fun of this convention during the horse chase, with 
Schwarzenegger saying "sorry" and "excuse me" to everyone who got in his 
way, and this was played for comical purpose.

G.

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news:48c41777@news.povray.org...

>  I don't see any necessity in unrealistic depictions of lightning.

Ok, just pick a scene that has simultaneous flash and sound, edit it to make 
them separate and see if it works from a moviegoer's perspective.
Cut to: general view of soldiers climbing up a hill at night. Suddenly the 
hill lits up and there's the deafening, unmistakeable sound of thunder. In a 
1-2 seconds, you've established the context and put your viewers in the 
right mood. Poor soldiers, climbing up that hill, threatened by thunder. 
Then you can cut the a close-up of the soldiers' faces.

Now the edited version:
Cut to: general view of soldiers climbing up a hill at night. Suddenly the 
hill lits up. Nobody knows why because *** there's no friggin sound ***, it 
could be some flares. The soldiers keep climbing up for a few seconds, in 
silence. Then there's some deafening sound except that by then people may 
have forgotten the big light before so the sound could be from something 
else, like a large gun, or a bomb. Not only you took much more time to 
establish the mood and wasted precious movie seconds, but the mood may not 
even be the right one and leave the viewers puzzled or confused.

One big part of the art of movie making consists precisely in understanding 
those conventions and how to use them (ditto for most art forms actually). 
Never compare what's going on in a movie to reality, it's pointless.

G.

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> silence. Then there's some deafening sound except that by then people may
> have forgotten the big light before so the sound could be from something

Are you seriously suggesting that people would forget something that had
happened only five seconds ago?

Not only that, but that they wouldn't recognize an event with practically
everyone has experienced thousands of times in their own lives?

....Chambers

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Chambers <bdc### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: iso-8859-1, 14 lines --]

> "Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > silence. Then there's some deafening sound except that by then people may
> > have forgotten the big light before so the sound could be from something

> Are you seriously suggesting that people would forget something that had
> happened only five seconds ago?

> Not only that, but that they wouldn't recognize an event with practically
> everyone has experienced thousands of times in their own lives?

  Especially if the weather in the movie is stormy: Dark clouds, heavy
rain, strong wind...

  I find it rather unlikely that in this kind of setting some viewer
would get confused about the lighting or the sound.

  Besides, realistic lightning could be used for dramatic effect.
For example at first there's a long delay between the flash and the
sound, and the sound is rather distant. After a while the delay gets
noticeably shorter, which means that the storm is much closer. At some
point the delay could be just fractions of a second, the flash much
brighter and the sound much louder, and this coupled with a heavier
rain and stronger wind could make an extremely dramatic effect.

  Could work well for a horror movie too.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:48c41c54$1@news.povray.org...
>

> news:48c40bf8@news.povray.org...
>>
>>    Yes, why do Americans never say "goodbye" to the other person on the 
>> 'phone?? They just put the thing down... (in films I've seen anyway), but 
>> is this typical in real life?
>
> Movie characters (American or not) are typically rude to each other.

    Yes, sure, I didn't mean just Americans in films, it's just that those 
films are the only one's where I've seen it happen many times and they stand 
out. And it's not just films either, it's popular shows too. No-one says 
"Goodbye, thanks for calling, speak to you later". Well, not that I've seen 
anyway.




Even in
> non-violent movies people do and say things to each other that should land 
> them in anger management therapy, if not in court or jail, but other 
> characters don't seem to bother that much (unless it's part of the plot of 
> the plot). It's an entire autistic world where regular ethics and personal 
> feelings do not exist and don't matter. An egregious example (among 
> thousands) is Julia Robert's character in "My best friend's wedding", who 
> does lots of wrong things (including trying to get her best friend sacked 
> by sending bogus emails from his boss' account, and later stealing a truck 
> and starting a car chase) and five minutes later everything's forgiven and 
> everybody's happy and friends again. Suspension of disbelief is your 
> friend, fortunately.

   Trying to wrack my brain if I've seen that one. I think I have but don't 
remember it.


> IIRC "True lies" made fun of this convention during the horse chase, with 
> Schwarzenegger saying "sorry" and "excuse me" to everyone who got in his 
> way, and this was played for comical purpose.

    Haha! Yes, he did. It's funny that you mention that because when I first 
watched it, I thought that it was weird having him say those things.

    Actually, thinking about it now, the whole film is a parody.

        ~Steve~


>
> G.

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:48c4531a@news.povray.org...

>  Besides, realistic lightning could be used for dramatic effect.
> For example at first there's a long delay between the flash and the
> sound, and the sound is rather distant. After a while the delay gets
> noticeably shorter, which means that the storm is much closer. At some
> point the delay could be just fractions of a second, the flash much
> brighter and the sound much louder, and this coupled with a heavier
> rain and stronger wind could make an extremely dramatic effect.
>
>  Could work well for a horror movie too.

      Sure, but the film producers are on a budget as pointed out already.

        ~Steve~



>
> -- 
>                                                          - Warp

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And lo on Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:54:42 +0100, Gilles Tran  
<gil### [at] gmailcom> did spake, saying:

> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> a écrit dans le message de  
> news:48c41777@news.povray.org...
>
>>  I don't see any necessity in unrealistic depictions of lightning.
>
> Ok, just pick a scene that has simultaneous flash and sound, edit it to  
> make them separate and see if it works from a moviegoer's perspective.


See I blame the old-time storytelliers - 'And Zeus sent down his mighty  
thunderbolt and the sound of his rage rolled over them... after a couple  
of seconds delay'

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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St. <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote:
>       Sure, but the film producers are on a budget as pointed out already.

  Excuse me? They have enough budget to make photorealistic computer
graphics, but they don't have the budget to add a delay to a sound?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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St. wrote:
>     Yes, why do Americans never say "goodbye" to the other person on the 
> 'phone?? They just put the thing down... (in films I've seen anyway), but is 
> this typical in real life?

No. Except my grandfather, who grew up before there were phones in 
houses. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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