The CSI show on TV just had Grissom & the FBI man run down a freight train that had an Amtrack coach in the middle of it. Box car, box car, Amtrak coach, hopper car, etc. No surprises there, coachs get sent through interchange all the time. The funny thing was when they boarded there were passengers. Real ticket carrying passengers not hobos! There’s more, the train was being pulled by some sort of switch engine. Obviously BNSF with the “BNSF” part painted over to solid orange.
Hey, the Hollywood writers are on strike… maybe you should go in and scab together some better scripts!
Lee
I don’t think that the producers/director/whatever worry too much about accuracy when it comes to vehicles and transportation on one of these shows. I’m sure that a small railroad plot point is one of the least important things for them to think about while filming.
Just my [2c]
NYCentral 1 is pretty much right on that-writers/producers aren’t usually train buffs, & will do what it takes to make a good script, accuracy be d**ned.
Reminds me when I was a kid watching “Happy Days” & the gang was going to take the train west from Milwaukee to a ranch in Colorado I believe. I was only 12 or 13 at the time, but remember shaking my head as stock footage showed the gang headed west on a PRR passenger train pulled by a GG1. (as I recall eventually Jim Kelly mentioned this in an old MR article on TV/movie train “mistakes” about a year later.)
What we need in writing/producing, or even starring in a show is a severe train buff that has power/influence like Drew Carey did in his show. Those of you who live in E/NE Ohio know that Drew is a Cleveland native, & pulled out all the stops to make as many local references as possible in his show, going as far as showing an actual WEWS channel 5 news broadcast on the TV at the bar where they hung out. I always thought that was cool as all get out, & who knows, time will tell-we may get a show with extremely correct train references due to a star/writer/producer that knows his stuff & has the influence like Drew. The Rod Stewart article in the latest issue of MR may show things are headed that way. Just my [2c] too.
One of my favorite “accuracy” error in movies/TV is in “White Christmas”. Travelling to Vermont up the East Coast on an SP train. I even think there was a shot of a ATSF later on. (IIRC as I haven’t watched the movie in several years.)
I like to look for errors in alot of the movies I watch. My favorite is in “Spartacus” with Kirk Douglas. In it as a Roman soldier is killed, he throws his arms out and he clearly has on a wristwatch![:P]
I remember seeing a show with a UP passenger train in North Carolina. Of course that may have just been a prediction.
There used to be a show on called Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a guy and two robots would watch bad movies and mock them. There was one where they did a thing at the end pointing out various mistakes (like a person wearing the alien costume only on his head but showing the entire person, or the zippers being visible on the costumes) and kept saying, “They just didn’t care.” The title of the movies was “Attack of the Eye Creatures” but the title at the beginning had “Attack of the the Eye Creatures.” I think that was the same one where they said, “Look, a Snaptite model landed in the woods.”
I never cease to marvel…
They actually have somebody who is supposed to make sure that the burning cigarette in the ash tray is the right length when the take starts. Yet, when the script calls for train footage they will send some script girl down to the storeroom for some, “Stock footage, with a close-up of the locomotive.”
Since both the messenger and the librarian know about as much about trains as I know about subnuclear particle physics, the big surprise is that we don’t see more buffer stock or SAR Bayer-Garratts…
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with rolling stock that actually ran in Central Japan in 1964)
I got a yellow Model Power house as a gift a few years back and suddenly it is staring in ads for home loans, insurance, mortgage reports on the news and other TV bits. I knew it wasn’t unique, but this over exposure kinda takes away from the fun of using it in my 1:87 universe.
Atomic Train, the NBC farce. In one glimpse it looks like an Alaska RR F-unit, then it’s a pair or GPs or SDs(I’m this good at identifying birds and trees as well). The colors shift from bright blue to dirty rusty Rio Grande black. Blink and you miss it.
Hollyweird does it with airliners as well. People board a 757 and they get to their seats in a 747 wide body.
I saw a NS train being lead by a UP engine recently. I know that they lease equipment back and forth, but usually the home road engineers prefer to use home equipment as the lead, right?
CSI seems to be shot in some part of the planet where the desert surrounding Las Vegas includes farm lands aboundant with water. I must have missed that when I was there.
I love the time mistakes in flim as well. I was selling cellphones for that tiny little electronics chain when we sold a Qualcomm “Q” phone. Sprint’s answer to Motorola’s Startac. So a few weeks after we first get them in, a TV show begins with a flashback to “three years ago” and this murderous woman is talking on a Q phone! The Q and the Sprint logo were not very obscured. Sprint as a cell carrier didn’t even exist! In fact, those tiny flip type cellphones were even out. In the next scene, it is labeld, “present day” and another character is alledgedly in NY but the background is clerely Canada(just how many Canadian flags are flying in Manhattan where not one US flag can be seen?)
Producers just don’t care about continuity unless it totally detracts from the story. In Star Wars, A New Hope(the ori
I just watched a movie that was supposed to be set in 1950. In one scene the background depicts a rail yard, and lo and behold I could see a modern Southern Pacific 50’ box car and a few other pieces of 1970s and 1980s era rolling stock.
As railroad enthusiasts we see such things all the time. Imagine those with other interests - ship modelers, aircraft modelers, military modelers, etc. I imagine they see similar things wrong in films they watch.
I have an interest in aircraft, and helicopters in particular, from my days of flying in them when I was with the Canadian Coast Guard. I see all kinds of dumb things on TV and in movies with helicopters, probably most of you would not notice. People sitting next to each other without headsets on, talking just like they were in a quiet car. They are noisy! Turbine choppers motors scrolling down before they land, etc., etc.
It’s all fake!
I drive my wife nuts with this one, too. It’s one of her favorite Christmas movies. They’re supposedly travelling from Florida to New York City, then on to Pine Tree, Vermont. On the first segment they show an outside shot of the Santa Fe warbonnet F’s pulling a train through what appears to be Long Beach, CA (talk about taking the LONG way). The second segment shows an Illinois Central train.
So even back in 1953 they didn’t take too much care to be accurate, just grab some stock footage.
I still remember watching a 60’s station wagon drive past, behind the bushes where a group of soldiers were crouched in the foreground. It was a bit out of place in World War II Germany, of course.
On the other hand, this sort of thing was done to perfection in “Airplane!” Remember the jet starting up with propeller engine sounds?
What amazed me was how all those motorcycles could travel in that box car Grissom and Jack cut thru without being tied down ??
The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe had strong ties to Hollywood, and were largely responsible for supplying the stock footage of their trains and making sure it got used. I’m sure that when “White Christmas” was released in the early '50’s a very large percentage of the audience was aware of the gaffe, but they also were regular rail travelers back then, and the railroads were glad to show off to them.
The cell phone incident you noted was clearly an instance of “product placement.” This is a common practice where commercial products are used by the characters, with logos prominently displayed as part of the manufacturer’s sponsorship of the movie. Next time you watch an action movie, take note of how many Budweiser or Coca Cola trucks you see prowling in the background.
Lee
One of my favorites is the Civil War TV movie about the generals and battles in Virginia. One scene is at the train station and the locomotive is lettered for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. My wife couldn’t understand why I was laughing.
Enjoy
Paul
DON’T YOU JUST HATE THOSE DARN FREELANCERS!!!
[:)][}:)][soapbox][(-D]
Mike
But if they can use inaccurate footage because it is cheaper and we still watch it and they get revenues from the commercials, isn’t that genius?
And the box car was wide open on both sides - just begging for all those nice motorcycles that were not tied down to be stolen. Nice security they have in that yard.
I too noticed how Amtrak must have been in dire straights as they had to resort to their old out of service passinger cars (with paying customers) being pulled around in the middle of a BNSF freight train. [(-D]
Ya, the train in CSI last night was being pulled by a CF-7, then in the middle of a long string of freight cars a 1970’s-era Amtrak coach shows up half-full of people!! The open boxcar with the motorcycles was good too, I wonder why they went thru the cars instead of going to the end and ducking under the couplers??
BTW in “Airplane” the prop sound was intentional, the movie was inspired in large part by a c.1953 movie and the producers liked the droning sound of the propellers/motors in that movie that they used it “Airplane”, even though they knew they were filiming a jet plane. [:)]
& what was the name of that 1953 movie trivia buffs? (actually I just found out earlier this year by stumbling upon TCM) Hint- [:-^]