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HI

In the film 'What a Crazy World', Freddie and the dreamers perform 'Who Wear's Short Shorts'. Freddie, at one point, takes their trousers down to reveal brightly coloured boxers. During the part with their trousers on Pete Burrill plays a Red Jazz Bass and during the trousers down bit it is a sunburst Precision!! Must have been done in two different takes on different days!!

Regards

Stuart

Films such as Robin Hood and Titanic which use songs definitely not of the era!
Dialogue such as in a recent Hercules- the Legendary Journeys -"Hey Man thats real cool!"

Iain Purdon wrote:Can you see it?

85A62D47-4950-48EB-82F2-07B2CFD1730B.jpeg

Regarding the bottle, I remembered the true story of a Victorian Gentleman, who after a few light
ales or sherbets, used to pee into peoples fireplaces , hence the origin of the phrase "Oh Gordon Bennett" !!!!!
No doubt the scullery maid left the bottle on the mantelpiece, as she might have had trouble lighting the fire
the next morning !!!!!

Mike

My biggest bugbear is when a film features a steam locomotive and the director uses stock footage. You don't have to be a train-spotter to see that the locomotive is totally different in different shots. Even great directors seem to have a blind spot with this lazy use of stock-film. Hitchcock's original 'The Lady Vanishes' features, for most of the film, one particular steam locomotive but, in one shot, it changes to another one, totally different. Also, quite often you see locos with a British Railways logo in a film set at a time decades before nationalisation of the railways. I've even seen a film where the train is supposed to be from somewhere on the continent but the loco has a British Railways logo!

neil2726 wrote:Films such as Robin Hood and Titanic which use songs definitely not of the era!
Dialogue such as in a recent Hercules- the Legendary Journeys -"Hey Man thats real cool!"

Of course, it isn't really possible for films about Robin Hood to use music from the era, since none, other than religious plainsong and perhaps some oriental court music, is known. For that reason, music for films set in that period or earlier must use "modern" music - modern in the sense that it has been composed far more recently. But that doesn't mean that the production must use modern-sounding music and arrangements. No-one will ever beat the avowedly 19th century symphonic sound-pictures created by people like Erich Korngold (for 12th century England) and Miklos Rozsla (for 1st century AD Rome).

The original ITC "Adventures Of Robin Hood" managed to get away with it by using a (now famous) dramatic instrumental intro and an inoffensive and neutral song - or ballad - for the outro. By contrast, later, less successful, attempts at re-telling the story have used a peevishly trendy music, designed to be a record-selling hit rather than to paint a picture of medieval England.

noelford wrote:My biggest bugbear is when a film features a steam locomotive and the director uses stock footage. You don't have to be a train-spotter to see that the locomotive is totally different in different shots. Even great directors seem to have a blind spot with this lazy use of stock-film. Hitchcock's original 'The Lady Vanishes' features, for most of the film, one particular steam locomotive but, in one shot, it changes to another one, totally different. Also, quite often you see locos with a British Railways logo in a film set at a time decades before nationalisation of the railways. I've even seen a film where the train is supposed to be from somewhere on the continent but the loco has a British Railways logo!

I'm with you on this, Noel. It's been going on so long that now when I see it I just sigh instead of getting worked up about it. It seems odd that TV and film production companies will go to great lengths to get period detail spot on except when it comes to trains. As well as the examples you cite, how many times do you see characters who are supposed to be in an express train then you get an external shot of a little train chuffing gently along a single track heritage railway with a tiny loco which is out of sync with its coaches and the environment its supposed to be in.

Now excuse me while I unzip my anorak.

My opinion of non-diegetic music is that, even though the characters in the production can't hear it, it should still reflect the period of time in which the production is set.

(Worst offender being Chariots of Fire of course.)

Where the production is set before the introduction of written music, then no-one knows what the music of the period sounded like anyway, so the composer can have more leeway.

I can't believe no-one's mentioned the Gibson ES345 in Back To The Future yet, a guitar that didn't exist in 1955!

Simon

Simon Underwood wrote:I can't believe no-one's mentioned the Gibson ES345 in Back To The Future yet, a guitar that didn't exist in 1955!

Simon

There was also the infamous Case of "The Buddy Holly Story", in which Our Hero plays Fender guitars that didn't exist whilst he was alive:

(a) a red rosewood-board Bronco (introduced in the late 1960s)

(b) a rosewood-board Telecaster (introduced some months after he died) and

(b) a rosewood-board Stratocaster with the large CBS-era headstock and heavy block CBS-era lettering (though mercifully, no bullet truss adjuster), introduced in the very late 1960s.

Buddy cannot have even seen a Fender rosewood-board guitar other than a Jazzmaster (1958).

Eddie Cochran is shown in the same film as playing a Gretsch Duo-Jet instead of his Gretsch 6120 (though at least the orange colour was right).

The movie is nowadays held up by the (substantial) Hollywood prop-hire industry as the perfect example of how not to do historical instrument placement.

It was made worse by contemporary press reports which claimed that the Fender Musical Instruments company had co-operated with the producers in order to provide period-correct vintage instruments. In fact, not a single electric guitar was correct, though a Gibson J-45 used by "Buddy" was, for all intents and purposes, the real thing.

You want wrong guitars? Have a look at Birth Of The Beatles!