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Hacking in Hollywood

A

Anonymous

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I saw Swordfish last night, and must say it was all good fun and not half as bad as I was expecting.

But my friends and I still had to laugh at the glowing blue cubes that represented the leads attempts to hack into bank computers. What is it that film makers have against representing computer code realistically (in the case of hacking, a white window with gibberi... er... code). Do they think it is too boring for the audience, can they not pass up the chance to use computer graphics, or is it part of the American paranoia about computer hackers that they don't want to portray it realistically "just in case"?

P.S. I'm fairly sure this is a fortean topic, even if I'm not wuite sure why...
 
I don't think I've ever seen an accurate representation of people using computers in any film. They even create fake OSs, fake programs and fake users. Presumably you've seen the net with ms s bullock. What a heap. The whole concept of the film, it's suspension of belief if you will, is based on the fact she's meant to be shit-hot at computers. Yet she types this sort of pseudo-baby language into her computer (I forget specifics, but it's the kind of 'copy all that cool stuff onto this whatcha call it thingy, oh and make it come out of the computer too' sort of gibberish).

I can't imagine even americans would be that paranoid, like you say, all you'd see is a white/black/blue screen with some code on it. You just make the code rubbish. Or not, if you're feeling subversive.

But as someone brought up on PCs (very chewy I can tell you) I find it irritating to be treated like an idiot, and it ruins lots of otherwise reasonably interesting films. If you're going to do this sort of thing, at least creat an excuse for it - set it in the future, make out the guy/gals a genius and has created their own language, whatever.

Cheers for bringing this up Dan, it really gets my goat!

Dot
 
From what I remember, Takedown was decent, especially as far as hacking in film goes. It was based on Kevin Mitnick, so stuck pretty close to fact.

But as far as Swordfish goes, ahhh....there was infinite mocking about him getting out his haxx0ring turntables and DJing his way into "the mainframe" to hack their text files....
 
One of the worst cases of this I think was in the film 'Indepebdence Day'. One of the lead characters succeded in uploading a virus, via an apple laptop, to an *alien* mothership!?! All kinds of strange symbols/graphics appeared on the screen too.

But then again, these films aren't supposed to be realistic are they??

Bye

Martin
 
On this topic, there was a trailer last night for some cop show or other. One of the detectives was leaning over the shoulder of a
computer-bound phorensic scientist and looking at a screen containing the suspected face of a suspected criminal.
Frowning, the detective asks 'can we see this from another angle'.
The operator clacks at a few keys and wobbles the mouse a bit until that 'thinking...' prompt bar appears on the screen.
When finished, up has popped another pencil sketch of the suspect in another pose. Astonishing!
 
Where can I get such a package?
Save me a lot of time and effort.

Also, computers make a lot of strange noises on films. If you hack in to a computer in hollywood you enter a strange tron-like world of cubes and grids, usually blue and green. When you enter a zone you then zoom through the computer - world with a Zwwwwweeeeeeewwwww wooshing sound.
This is an accurate depiction of computers.

While on the subjects of Hollywood computers and their ilk, have you seen Existenz?
If that is the future of games then you can ferget it. It was rubbish.
No gameplay, no bosses just running around in a fish shop carrying a rather unpleasant controller in an ice skate case.

Imagine the marketing for that!
"Yes I know it looks like a gigantic pulsing genital/inner ear thing but if you plug it into your own spine..."

Jesus!
 
Seems appropriate that Hollywood's view of essential computer
software is based on the screensaver.

Not just Hollywood. I worked for a company that had sold a
roomfull of Apple Macs to a school - a very posh option in the
days of the ubiquitous Acorn. In fact the budget did not allow
for any software, except a site licence for the popular After Dark
screensaver package.

I gather that every year the pristine machines were turned on
for Parents' Evening and the Mums and Dads were suitably
impressed that their little darlings were learning the aerodynamics
of the toaster. :D
 
"But then again, these films aren't supposed to be realistic are they??" said Martin.

While this is indeed true, even for films that claim to be a "dramatisation of real events" or somesuch, there still is such a thing as suspension of disbelief. As more and more of the population become computer literate to some degree, fictional computer systems are going to stand out more, another sympton of hollywoods general shoddiness.
 
I was impressed by the everyday-style use of the internet in 'Hannibal'.
So that wasn't quite a total waste of good money.
 
I am scared.....
The Lone Gunmen is screening here this thursday...
 
just a thought but maybe the reason they do all this computer fakeness on the big screen is that it's not possible to film a proper computer screen? I've seen security film of computer labs and the screens are just seen as flickering blankness. The way a picture is impressed upon the monitor by the cathode ray is as a series of still pictures like a cartoon that is fast enough to fool the brain into seeing a normal flat screen. The frequency of impression could be so out of whack with the recording speeds of film and video that it produces a big smudge. if this was the case it would explain why representations of computers were so crap if they had to make up their own kind of monitor type things?
could be load of nonsense but who knows
 
barndad - could hve a point there. Also I was thinking after I posted earlier that it could also be a copyrigh thing. If MS don't give people the rights to show their software (or the filmmakers refuse to pay a license or advertise it) maybe they're not allowed to show Windows? Plus I was thinking that maybe some of the systems are actually Linux based? be good to get a sample...
 
They can get around the filming computer screens thing. I knew a guy who had as part of his job to do that in movies.

But I think the main reason is because Hollywood considers it boring to just sit there and press icons. That is why we have flipper-flapper sounds when you run through an archive. But it does get kinda tiresome, look at Jurassic Park. Who would ever design a graphic interface like the one they had there?

And as some mentioned, computers in movies have that wonderful function of knowing more than you tell them. Wasn´t it in Deep Blue Sea where a woman is looking at a 3D-model of a shark and is amazed at what she finds. It is there because someone spend hours creating the 3D model stupid.
Ahh, yes ID4. Uploading a PC program to a Mac, kind of hard. Uploading a program to a computer made by an ET technology, no problemo.

I also wish I had security cams like in movies. Not only is the image sharp, but it stays that way after having done a 5xzoom.
 
Yeah, I learnt how to film computer screens when I used to do video production at college, but I can't remember how you do it now.

The viewing stuff from different angles was also done in Enemy of the State with wickywickywildwild Will Smith. In it, the Feds have got some security camera footage, and they rotate the image so they can see what's in the Smithster's back pocket! What fun!
 
I think you only have to set the screen refresh rate to match the frames per second of the recording camera and film.

Summat liek that...

Bye

Martin
 
Er.... correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will).... but aren't computer screens refreshed somewhere in the Megahertz range, whereas film/tv run at 24/25 frames per second? (i.e. Hertz)

Which explains why, when I'm watching the news, for example, I can see screensavers on the machines in the background?
 
Well I just pushed the info button on my monitor and it claims to be refreshing at 81.4kHz@100Hz. One is horizontal, one vertical. The page flipping bit is the 100Hz.

The usual range runs 60 to 140 or therabouts with anything under 75/85 producing visible flicker depending on user sensitivity.
 
Er.... correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will).... but aren't computer screens refreshed somewhere in the Megahertz range, whereas film/tv run at 24/25 frames per second? (i.e. Hertz)
Click to expand...

I can't correct you because you are right! But...

I just assumed that there would be some way to syncronise the two... Somehow. Refreshing at 24/25 fps would produce visible flicker to human eyes, but maybe not to the camera... ??

Just speculating...

Bye

Martin
 
-M- said:
Refreshing at 24/25 fps would produce visible flicker to human eyes, but maybe not to the camera... ??
Click to expand...

Maybe I've misunderstood what you're saying here, but....

**TECHIE WARNING**

Cinematic film shows at 24 frames per second. This is just fast enough for persistence of vision to fool the brain into seeing a moving picture, and slow enough that the film doesn't disintegrate on the way through the projector ('cos it has to stop, have a light shone through it, then move to the next frame while the shutter's closed, then stop..... 24 frames a second. That's why the film used to break so often, especially in the little cinemas who got films that had already done the 'major' circuit)

TV (in Europe) has a 25 fps refresh, because mains A.C. is supplied at 50 hertz - on cycle 1, you refresh all the odd-numbered scan lines, on cycle 2 the even-numbered ones, and so on.

That's why there's problems filming TV screens for cinema, or cinema screens for tv - they get out of step.

(To show cinematic film on TV, they just cheat and transmit it at 25 fps - the difference is that small that you can't actually see it, and the only practical difference is that the film's run-time will be 4% less than in the cinema.)

The refresh rate of a computer screen is therefore several orders of magnitude faster than film or TV, and so there isn't a problem - although there used to be, if you ever see a film featuring 70's mainframes!

And, finally, funny shapes and whirring noises may be somewhat unrealistic, but I for one got totally hacked off watching half-inch mag tape decks doing block read-write tests (tape spools one way, then other way, then reverses, then reverses again - cut to 'boffin', who says 'We'll have the answer in a minute, sir...' - back to the tape, which spools one way, then other way, then reverses, then reverses again....................)

Or shots of the end of the CPU (i.e. a big box with lots of lights) while somebody out of shot twiddled with the lamp test switch.....
 
So you´re saying that if a movie is 100 minutes in the cinema, it´s only going to be 96 minutes back home? So it might not be because they have shortened the film.
 
Xanatic said:
So you´re saying that if a movie is 100 minutes in the cinema, it´s only going to be 96 minutes back home? So it might not be because they have shortened the film.
Click to expand...

Exactly! - although films do get shortened for other reasons as well (it was in a Radio Times article a few years back!)
 
According to my sisters boyfriend who is an electro engineer there should also be a difference between European and American movies. Due to them having a different Hz on their power lines than us. Something like 60 instead of 50.
 
Xanatic said:
According to my sisters boyfriend who is an electro engineer there should also be a difference between European and American movies. Due to them having a different Hz on their power lines than us. Something like 60 instead of 50.
Click to expand...

Yup, the US uses 60Hz for AC mains - according to a friend of mine, because they originally bought the equipment from the UK, and it was slightly - er - goosed! ;)

It wouldn't affect cinema film - still 24fps - but I don't know what they do about showing cine film on TV. (Maybe they just ramp it up 20% and hope no-one notices! It would maybe explain why everyone seems to do a lot of running around on American TV progs - that's how the films end up! :D )
 
to derekH

And, finally, funny shapes and whirring noises may be somewhat unrealistic, but I for one got totally hacked off watching half-inch mag tape decks doing block read-write tests (tape spools one way, then other way, then reverses, then reverses again - cut to 'boffin', who says 'We'll have the answer in a minute, sir...' - back to the tape, which spools one way, then other way, then reverses, then reverses again....................)

I used to work at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, near Didcot, UK where JANET is based, and where the first Crays' were (and some still are) housed. I remember working in the tape room where the astronomical data from sites all over the world was stored on those huge tape spools (forget what they're called now...) and people would send in requests for particular info, we'd manually track down the tapes, whack 'em in an appropriate machine, and off they'd go. However, being a dr who fan from my earlier days I was confused. Instead of whirring backwards and forwards, as I expected, they clicked back and forth a few cms and would then spool on a bit and slowly revolve, all quite random looking.

I asked a colleague about this, and they told we this brief, but interesting, story. Apparently, some time in the late sixties the producers of doctor who came to the lab. They asked some people to supply them with impressive looking machines, ones that would look realistic, and give an air of technological superiority. Those tape-spoolers were pretty cutting edge at the time (imagine using DAT machines, or equivalent now), and so they flogged the beeb a load of slightly out moded machines that were going to be upgraded. Several months later the guys from auntie came back. Apparently, they figured out how to get the machines to respond to commands, but someone had to sit backstage and constantly ask the tape to go to sector X, then Y etc, which was time consuming, and didn't look like the hive of space aged data processing they had in mind (it was too boring click, whirr, click whirr). So they asked a few guys at RAL to write a program that would make them look busier. Thus the ingenious idea came to the programmers to simply get it to rewind and then fast forward at the begining and end of each tape (I think the commands were actually on special tapes). Bingo! The pointlessly spooling uber-machine was born.

dot ;)
 
I heard the Dr. Who tape spooling story from an ex-colleague. Not sure who he had it from but he used to hang about with all sorts of undesirables.
 
for un realism check out VIP (with pamela anderson) they can hack with out being connected to a telephone line and manage to get in to cia interpol and the FBI with out being detected oh by the way when they do this not only are they walking around near the beach but they werent even using a lappy they were using a HP jordana but still they didnt have a hard wire connection to the net and yea they do have the wonderful blue squares and the red pulsing lines and as we all know thats very realistic nothing like the boring lines and lines of code that people get when they do hack
casio
it doesnt matter to me though there are 4 women who punch kick and look fantastic so that makes up for it (boy does it make up for it!!!!!!!!!)
 
There are of course only 2 types of computers in modern TV, the steam powered one thats a green screen VDU and the Cray 6 beating 3d powerstation that sits on leading actors desktops - it'll rotate 3d images and throw polygons around faster than any modern day console or geforce.

I think it's down to simply trying to make something just look more interesting, a command line and various trace programs/dns transfer sessions/brute force password hack windows does not make for amazing viewing...

Jolly
 
FWIW video game systems also run slower over here and with borders as there's another 100 lines on the TV picture - games have to be rewritten to either output to a higher resolution/lines and to run at the same speed or they run in large black borders and 17.5-20% slower.

When a pal optimised game runs on an NTSC system it overscans the screen (the picture jumps off the end/appears half way down) and runs faster than it should (the systems running faster, 60hz, 8 mhz cpu clock speed as opposed to 50hz 8 mhz cpui speed for instance).

One other interesting development is a Certain camera that can run at 24 fps to mimic film and there's also (maybe another or the same one) a camera that at the press of a button can match it's scanning to the scan on a tv screen thus you can film tv screens almost indetectebly.

It's thought that the mexican ufo film (the one with the big wobble and vanishes behind the tower) was done like this, to hide the raster information that would have showed conclusively if it was faked.

Jolly
 
yeah i know what you mean

ha ha ha i know exactly what your talking about. i remember the film hackers well. yes it is indeed annoying. but i have a certian fondness for odd ball films. one of the types of films i try to find are the "sucked into the computer world" films, like tron, a classic example. strange that theres people in film studios that must think that theres people out there in the world who think their calculator, computer, ofr gameboy is a gateway to a new dimension if numbers and muderous geometry. but then again there probably are people like that in the world. if you realy want to see these things in obnoxious excess check out the lawnmower man films. the most over the top example of this kind of thing i can think of.
 
because of the glamour hollywood makes around hacking kids (script kiddys) dl a prog off the internet and start hacking to show off to their m8's and to just cause trouble for other peeps the reality is that hacking isnt glam its dull and full of code and unless you like and enjoy the challenge of by passing the security check's and writing code thus exploring the bounderies of your own pc (hacking is illegal and shouldnt be condoned :D )
then it can be very very dull and that is why peeps stop after a while and come back to it sporadically there are only the hardcore that keep at it and get good

cas






to all those who know cdc rules- from a former 2600 member
 
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