Computersystemen in films.

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The Use of Computers in Movies

* Word processors never display a cursor.

* You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.

* All monitors display inch-high letters.

* The most relevant information is displayed in a separate windows right in the middle of the screen, but there's never an Ok button to other way to close it.

* High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces. Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

* Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard.

* Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see Fortress).

* All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.

* Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read.

* The really advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer. (See The Hunt For Red October or Alien)

* All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.

* Corollary: sending data to a modem/tape drive/printer faster than expected causes it to explode.

* People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data. (See the opening credits for The Hunt For Red October)

* A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

* Any PERMISSION DENIED error has an OVERRIDE function (see Demolition Man and countless others).

* Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems (especially the wireless ones they must be using when they're in the car) usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.

* When the power plant/missile-site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

* If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access them.

* No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.

* The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because none of the buttons are labelled.

* Most computers, no matter how small, are able to produce reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics, with little or no detailed input from the user.

* Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.

* Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see Alien, 2001, Jurassic Park).

* Either a Jacob's Ladder or a Van Der Graaf Generator is absolutely necessary for the operation of new, experimental computers (especially when built by brilliant scientists), although in real life, these devices do absolutely nothing.

* One can issue any complex set of commands in a few keystokes (see Star Trek).

* The internet connects to everything in the movies. You can edit credit records, search hotel registries, lookup police criminal files, search (and edit) drivers license databases, edit social security files and more just using the internet! (see The Net)

* Smashing the VDU prevents the whole system from working (see Speed).

* You can launch nuclear missles from any bedroom using an analog modem, but only if you know a single secret password (see War Games).

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 09:24 schreef marcel-o het volgende:
In films zie je vaak, als ze met computers bezig zijn, een vreemd OS.
Dan zie je een bureaublad wat in de verste verte niet lijkt op Win/Mac/Linux.

Wat zijn dat voor systemen?

Zelfs websites lijken niet op websites maar op een heel programma(web 3.1? )
Is dat iets wat verzonnen is? Wat dus eigenlijk een filmpje is waar de acteur z'n verhaal mee synchroniseert?

Een van de weinige films waar je écht een Windows systeem ziet met echt internet(google) is de Bourne trilogie.

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Computer Screens in Movies

After reading an article on Film UI Bloopers I really wondered what goes through the minds of a movie screen maker when they design their computer interfaces for movies? I wanted to go behind the scenes to find out what makes these software genies tick and why computers for movies are often designed with unrealistic user interfaces (UI’s), opposed to the real thing.

A typical example is Jack Bauer’s PDA from the popular series 24. Magically, he is always able to download anything directly to his PDA without having to use complicated conversion software or tools. In real life, applications aren’t always as straight forward than in the movies. Especially between the various operating systems on the market today. Movies often use unrealistic tools which we of the normal kind would love to own but probably never see launched in our lifetime.

To find out I went undercover and to see what I found, please read on.

Interview with two industry experts

I wanted to find out why we keep seeing fancy gadgets (think Bond 007) and not the stuff people use every day. I was lucky enough to be granted permission from two highly qualified industry specialists who were kind enough to answer my questions.

Rory Hinds, Director of Mine Films in London, UK and Canada.

1.) What is the primary reason to design movie computer screen UI’s that seem easy to use on screen, even though the actor in the movie is a total computer novice?

Computer screens for films need to be help the story progress and inform the viewer of what is going on. The design is slick and futuristic, yet simplistic enough for the viewer at home to follow what is going on.

2.) Is it important to stay true to reality in movie computer screen design? If yes, how come time travelers can seemingly morph into current technologies without the need to brush up on their skills?

Films need to be believable yet explore the imagination. Most people know how computers function so if the computer screen design is too out there it becomes unbelievable and you loose the audience. It wouldn’t make much of a film if the hero had computer problems as basic as not knowing how to use the mouse, it would maybe make a great comedy.

3.) Many movies feature extensive 3D data visualizations but they never make it to conventional computer designs. Why?

With films you get to wow the audience and be very creative. 3D animation is a big part of films these days and its a lot easier to design an animation for a film, than to develop a piece of software to be used as a everyday tool. With film-making you have no limitations of the working world, as long as it looks good and helps the story, you can get away with pretty much anything.

To design and develop a real world interface is very costly and it has to be cost effective to sell to a mass audience. The mouse must be the cheapest computer interface device which is on every computer in the world.

4.) Please explain (in your eyes) the need to display the message “access granted” in movie scenes from the perspective of movie computer screen designers instead of moving smoothly to the next step in the process.

Access Granted or Access Denied tells the audience that the hero has encountered a problem they need to solve, showing their skill when they do solve it and gain access. This onscreen message creates tension and the viewer can follow what the hero is doing.

5.) Could you please finish this sentence for me: the driving force behind a movie computer screen design is…?

The driving force behind a movie computer screen design is storytelling and eye candy.

Derek Frederickson, Multimedia Designer, Art Director of Twisted Media, Chicago, U.S.A.

1.) What are the reasons for enlarging text on movie computer UI’s?

Readability; rarely is the computer screen full frame so you have to draw the viewer’s eye in immediately regardless of whether or not this would happen in real life. It’s the movies after all…

2.) How hard is it really to produce voice operated computers for mass consumption?

It’s not! I wish my iPhone had voice recognition like my old (and much hated) Windows Mobile-based smart phone. I miss being able to say, “Dial Spielberg”. Kidding. But certain things are nice to have as voice-operated functions…especially when piloting a star ship or driving a car.

3.) We were all extremely jealous when we saw 007 use his Ericsson mobile phone in the movie Tomorrow Never Dies to drive his BMW. What is your take in the reality of such a tool and its user friendliness in real life?

My iPhone now controls iTunes on my computer. The capability is already here…

4.) Do movie computer screen designers purposely feed us unrealistic information by having 12 year old kids dismantle a Unix system like in the movie Jurassic Park movie?

Of course! The main problem is that there isn’t screen time to show the kid figuring out how to use the GUI…or hacking in (not that this is particularly realistic with the security employed these days) so you just have to make the ’suspension of disbelief’ as minimal as possible, while still keeping the story moving.

5.) Could you please finish this sentence for me: the driving force behind a movie computer screen design is…?

Make it cool. Make it something you’ll see Apple come out with in 10 years.

In closing

Now that we have the insiders take on what is going on in movie screen design and why, we will hopefully understand the reasons a little bit better. Once again, thank you to Derek and Rory for being so generous to take some time and answer my questions. I think both of you have gone the extra mile and really help us understand the working process a lot better. Next time I’m going to the movies I’ll look at computers from a different point of view.

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 09:33 schreef Ravage het volgende:

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Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers

Summary:
User interfaces in film are more exciting than they are realistic, and heroes have far too easy a time using foreign systems.

The way Hollywood depicts usability could fill many a blooper reel. Here are 10 of the most egregious mistakes made by moviemakers.

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
Break into a company -- possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet -- and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you're a movie star.

The fact that all user interfaces are walk-up-and-use is probably the single most unrealistic aspect of how movies depict computers. In reality, we know all too well that even the smartest users have plenty of problems using even the best designs, let alone the degraded usability typically found in in-house MIS systems or industrial control rooms.

2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
An even worse flaw is the assumption that time travelers from the past could use today's computer systems. In fact, they'd have no conception of any of modern technology's basic concepts, and so would be dramatically more stumped than the novice users we observe in user testing. Even someone who's never used Excel at least understands the general idea of computers and screens.

You might think that people coming from the future would have an easier time using our current systems, given their supposedly superior knowledge. Not true. Like our travelers from the past, they'd lack the conceptual model needed to make sense of the display options. For example, someone who's never seen a command line or typed a command would have a much harder time using DOS than someone who grew up in the DOS era.

If you were transported back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you'd have no clue how to sail the ship: You couldn't use a sextant and you wouldn't know the names of the different sails, so you couldn't order the sailors to rig the masts appropriately. However, even our sailing case would be easier than someone from the year 2207 having to operate a current computer: sailing ships are still around, and you likely know some of the basic concepts from watching pirate movies. In contrast, it's highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens.

3. The 3D UI
In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it's very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems.

Many user interfaces designed for the movies feature gestural input and 3D data visualizations. Immersive environments and fly-through navigation look good, and allow for more dramatic interaction than clicking on a linear list of 10 items. But, despite being a staple of computer conference demos for decades, 3D almost never makes it into shipping products. The reason? 2D works better than 3D for the vast majority of practical things that users want to do.

3D is for demos. 2D is for work.

4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
In movieland, users have no trouble connecting different computer systems. Macintosh users live in a world of PCs without ever noticing it (and there were disproportionally more Macs than PCs in films a decade ago, when Apple had the bigger product-placement budget).

In the show 24, Jack Bauer calls his office to get plans and schematics for various buildings. Once these files have been transferred from outside sources to the agency's mainframe, Jack asks to have them downloaded to his PDA. And -- miracle of miracles -- the files are readable without any workarounds. (And download is far faster than is currently possible on the U.S.'s miserable mobile networks.)

(See also sidebar about excessive interoperability in Independence Day.)

5. Access Denied / Access Granted
Countless scenes involve unauthorized access to some system. Invariably, several passwords are tried, resulting in a giant "Access Denied" dialog box. Finally, a few seconds before disaster strikes, the hero enters the correct password and is greeted by an equally huge "Access Granted" dialog box.

A better user interface would proceed directly to the application's home screen as soon as the user has correctly logged in. After all, you design for authorized users. There's no reason to delay them with a special confirmation that yes, they did indeed enter their own passwords correctly.

6. Big Fonts
In addition to the immense font used for "Access Denied" messages, most computer screens in the movies feature big, easily readable text. In real life, users often suffer under tiny text and websites that add insult to injury by not letting users resize the words.

Large text is an obvious concession to the viewing experience: moviegoers must be able to see what's on the screen. Still, enlarging the information that much makes for an unrealistic UI.

7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
The voice-operated computer in Star Trek is an even more egregious example of designing an audience interface rather than a user interface. Spoken commands and spoken responses make it easy for the audience to follow the action, but it's a very inefficient way of controlling a complex system.

In predictions about computing's future, voice interaction is a perennial favorite -- it probably even beats 3D, which is the other top contender for most over-hyped UI technology. While voice has its place, it's even less suitable than 3D for most everyday interactions because it's a less data-rich channel and it's harder to specify something in words than to choose it on a graphical display.

8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond drives his BMW from the back seat with an Ericsson mobile phone that works as the car's remote control. And 007 drives fast, while also evading bad guys.

In practice, there's a reason we use steering wheels to drive cars instead of joysticks, touchpads, or push-buttons. The steering wheel is an excellent input device for fast and accurate specification of directionality.

Many other films feature other types of remote control, which always work with high speed and accuracy despite input devices that are suboptimal for the task. Designing good input devices is a tricky human factors problem, and you can't substitute devices willy-nilly and retain the same performance. A foot pedal, for example, is not as good as a mouse for text editing, because you can't move your legs as accurately as your hands and fingers.

9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam. No ever-changing client requests in the face of impending deadlines. And you never overlook information because a message's subject line violated the email usability guidelines.

10. "This is Unix, It's Easy"
In the film Jurassic Park, a 12-year-old girl has to use the park's security system to keep everyone from being eaten by dinosaurs. She walks up to the control terminal and utters the immortal words, "This is a Unix system. I know this." And proceeds to (temporarily) save the day.

Leaving aside the plausibility of a 12-year-old knowing Unix, simply knowing Unix is not enough to immediately use any application running on the system. Yes, she could probably have used vi on the security terminal. But the specialized security system would have required some learning time -- significant learning time if it were built on Unix, which has notoriously inconsistent user interface design and thus makes it harder to transfer skills from one application to the next.

Do the Usability Bloopers Matter?
Does it matter that most films offer such an unrealistic depiction of usability? Mainly, no. A movie's purpose is entertainment, not task performance. So, go ahead and employ user interfaces and interaction techniques that are entertaining and would never work in the real world.

Films are littered with so many other unrealistic plot details: you'd imagine, for example, that the ability to shoot straight might actually be a primary job requirement of Imperial Stormtroopers.

In the film context, unrealistic usability is only to be expected. Still, I see two real problems with it:

* Research funding and management expectations are subtly biased by the incessant emphasis on unrealistic UI design such as voice, 3D, avatars, and AI. When you see something work as part of a coherent and exciting story, you start wanting it. You even start believing in it. After all, we've seen 3D and voice so often that we've developed an implicit belief in their usefulness.

* Users blame themselves when they can't use technology. This phenomenon is bad enough already; it's made worse by the prevalence of scenes in which people walk up to random computers and start using them immediately. We need people to start demanding easier design and blaming the technology when it's too hard to use. Movies make this change in attitudes more difficult.

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 09:59 schreef Phreakingout het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 10:27 schreef Fluffy_Augurk het volgende:
Zeer herkenbaar allemaal. Vind het zelf ook altijd zo belachelijk. Van die hele 3d schermen om een simpel iets te besturen. Bijvoorbeeld in Jurrasic Park toen dat meisje de beveiliging van het park weer aan probeerde te krijgen

Geloof dat ze in Swordfish wel op een paar momenten echte linux/unix (console)schermen laten zien met realistische commando's...

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 11:17 schreef Qwea het volgende:

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daarin had superhacker Hugh Jackman minimaal 6 42" schermen nodig

te suf

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 18:28 schreef marcel-o het volgende:

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met n laserstraal ja dat vond k nog t mooiste...

CSI gebruikt wel dat nieuwe van Microsoft (ff naam kwijt) soort tafel waar je n mobiel op legt en dat je dan de info ziet.

Bij The Bourne Supremacy zag k Win XP en Google. Da's de enige waar t me opviel.
Zelfs GTST( ! ) gebriukt Mac's met n onbekend OS en webbrowser

^{erger nog : een Nokia waar een Sony Ericsson beltoon uitkwam (nog uit de monotoon tijd ) (maar da's een heel ander verhaal)}