Over at Slashdot, there’s some discussion about an article by Jakob Nielsen covering user interfaces in films that are unrealistic and pointing out the negative sides and how this detracts from the films as a whole.
Unfortunately I have to disagree with most of the article, but what annoys me most is how some real, classic computer-in-the-movies nonsense has been missed out.
Before discussing any of this, I should perhaps point out that, unlike the author of the article in question, I don’t really care too much about realism in most films (unless it’s a major, major plot point). I understand that the reason movies often contain unrealistic computer interfaces is because they’re simply trying to move the story along and that the audience needs to understand what’s going on - which probably wouldn’t be very easy to do if the character was using MS Windows.
Quotes are, of course, taken from the original article.
1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI & 2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
The first point - the fact that the hero can use any computer interface - Ok, that’s a valid point, although it is basically re-used as point two as well.
3. The 3D UI
Then onto 3D user interfaces, like the one used in Minority Report. Apparently ‘it’s very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer’ so I imagine that teachers writing on white/black boards and painters, window cleaners, etc, must have hellish lives. More importantly, in the context of the film, this interface is meant to solve a problem very quickly and only be used for a short period of time. Personally, I can see this interface being very, very useful in this scenario. The funnier aspect in the film is how they have to transfer files from one ’screen’ to another, by moving them onto a physical device - are you telling me those computers aren’t networked? Of course it did make it easier for the audience to visualise what was happening.
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
Next up is a point about integration. We all know that integrating different systems/fileformats is a pain and that you can rarely accomplish what you want to do easily when it involves lots of parts, but adding that realism into films would not be fun now would it? The author uses Jack Bauer in the TV programme 24 as an example, when he asks for schematics of buildings to be sent to his PDA in the field.
A much better example would perhaps be the virus in Independence Day, used against the alien ship’s computers, which kills off the alien attackers at the end of the film. Imagine someone from 20-30 years ago trying to write a computer virus to do the same thing to today’s computers - that would be hard enough. But making that leap to an alien species, with technology so far ahead of us… in a day?
5. Access Denied / Access Granted
Then onto ‘Access Denied/Access Granted’ boxes which make it extremely obvious to the character that they’ve succeeded. What the article author fails to realise here is that although this isn’t realistic, the audience also needs to understand what’s happened. If there was no clear, obvious message then the audience would quickly get confused.
6. Big Fonts
Isn’t this the same point, basically? Haven’t we just covered this? We know it’s not realistic, but people need to be able to read this at home, on their TV, in years to come. Computer system interfaces often don’t last more than 5 years, but a movie will be around for decades. The audience needs to understand what’s going on!
7. Star Trek’s Talking Computer
The points made against the talking computer are fairly silly - like the points made against the 3D 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.”
More importantly, it is now. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that a computer could follow verbal commands in 200 years time? Speech recognition is already good enough (with a little training) to understand 99% of what you say and work is already underway to enable computers to understand context, sentence structure, etc. Think about it - if you told your computer to ‘open my finances2006 spreadsheet and sort this month’s information’ it could feasibly find the correct document, open it and sort the column and no doubt do it faster than a human could. In Star Trek they use the computer to find information from enormous sources of data such as ‘Computer: Do any of the Enterprise crew have x in their medical record?’. I won’t go on, you can see the advantage. Of course there’s the possibility of ambiguation and the computer misunderstanding what they say, but they don’t use verbal commands on the bridge, only for particular situations - that sounds more realistic to me?
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.”
It’s James Bond. Do I really have to explain?
9. You’ve Got Mail is Always Good News
And how would the character having to sift through junk mail enhance the storyline? If the audience can see what he/she is doing, it’s probably just going to confuse them. Why put the audience through that torture?
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”
Is it not possible, as the granddaughter of a multi-millionaire who has built Jurassic park, which itself contains the very computer systems in question, that the girl has in fact used the system before? There are plenty of 12 year-olds out there who are in fact familiar with Linux and Unix systems and the interface in question was a 3D visualised image - not a command line, or a complicated, ugly GUI that Unix systems are often famous for. And before anyone questions the realism of the GUI in question, I do have to point out that the 3D file system interface is in fact real. Besides, how can you question the (possible) liklihood of a 12-year old knowing Unix, but not question the basis of the film - re-creating dinosaurs from multi-million year-old dino DNA?
Bigger computer bloopers?
Well, I’ve already mentioned the Independence Day virus - that’s completly ridiculous of course and having to move files around on a physical device in Minority Report (but it did make it easier to visualise). What other, potentially bigger, computer bloopers are there?
Magnifying and ‘enhancing’ an image
This one always winds me up. There’s a grainy image, often from a security camera, and the FBI/CIA agents (or whoever) zoom in and ‘enhance’. While this is possible to a degree, the extent to which these images are magnified and enhanced often virges on the ridiculous. Quite simply, if the information wasn’t there to begin with, you can’t magically ‘enhance it’ and see what’s there in better detail. This technique is really overused!
Space sound effects
Yup, everyone knows this one. You shouldn’t be able to hear anything in space as space is a vacuum, so technically all those wonderful Star Trek and Star Wars battles in space should be completly silent. It’d be dull though, wouldn’t it?
Hacking
Why is it that characters can magically hack their way into (apparently) secure systems in seconds and usually by typing in a password? That really doesn’t make sense. At least the Matrix got it right and in many sequences you can see realistic computer hacking.
I’ll add more if I think of them!