Top 10 things Hollywood thinks computers can do

Posted on 29 Apr 2010 at 12:17

4. The good guys always use Macs

This probably says more about Apple's massive marketing budget for product placement, but the good guys always use Macs. You'll never see a bad guy pull out his gun, shoot a bus-load of nuns and then pull out his Mac Book Pro and send a message.

In particular, good-guy hackers will use a Mac, which seems unlikely as hackers are more likely to have a Linux computer and, failing that, the operating system that they're most likely to attack: Windows.

3. You can zoom and enhance any footage

This has long been the staple of the lazy writer (particularly those working for CSI): a security camera or photo is put on a screen, someone asks for zone G4 to be zoomed and enhanced, then as if by magic stunning detail appears from nowhere and the criminal is identified.

For this system to work it either requires every camera and CCTV system to use Gigapixel resolutions, or such incredible computing technology that Hollywood could throw away all of its expensive HD cameras and shoot everything using £50 camcorders.

As we all know, all zooming into a poor-quality image would do is give a muddled blurry mess on the screen. This technique was recently brilliantly parodied in Red Dwarf.

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User comments

A minor correction: V'ger became sentient because aliens took its hardware and original programming and improved on it. Also, it's supposed to have been the sixth Voyager probe, which means that it could very well have been semi-sentient, or at least adaptive, from the start.

Interestingly, the "hardware failure" part actually happened with V'ger - it was hit by debris and damaged, and was repaired by the aliens.

By Julius on 4 May 2010

Point 8 confirms itself

I'm very fuzz, but I have to point this out in this extremely funny article: I believe that Point 8, "Online chats always display each character as its typed" should be... "as IT'S typed"? If so, I find amusing that an article about typing has a typo. Or maybe I'm easily amused.

By tabonga on 6 May 2010

Re: #3

Zooming in to incredible depths on an image didn't become a Hollywood cliche with computers - check out Jimmy Stewart film "Call NOrthside 777" for a scene in which they do the same with a photograph.

By Fairportfan on 6 May 2010

RE: #3

#3 is actually provably possible thanks to compressed sensing and sparsity.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm
/all/1

By Eosian on 6 May 2010

read before you post...

that technology works on fuzzy pictures... it works to make a sharp image from a fuzzy one, but a picture from say outer space can only be enhance, not zoomed say 2000 times then enhanced.... it won't work.
hence, what the author said.

By toddomy on 8 May 2010

Also for #3 - zooming makes a standard sound

I'm convinced there is a software package sold as a movie and TV "prop", which does almost exactly the same thing on virtually every such scene (boss leans over techie and says "zoom in on this area and enhance!"
Traits of the prop software: zooming uses a rectangular reticle to select the zoom area (corners and crosshairs); and when zooming, the computer always makes this noise: "zug-zug-zug-zug" (as if lenses were being moved by small motors)
If I've seen and heard this once, I've seen and heard it a thousand times.
I just wish I could find out the name of that prop software...

By birdbrainscan on 14 May 2010

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