nerds in movies

I think it's safe to say that I'm a nerd. Or a geek if you prefer.

I mean, among my hobbies I include anime and animation in general, manga and comic books, playing computer games, reading science fiction books and making scale models. I also love gadgets, especially PCs and while I wouldn't specifically say I'm a "hacker" or anything like that level of understand I know a few things about them. To cap it all I did a degree in physics, my job is technical and I spend an inordinate amount of time on the interwebs.

So I'm a nerd and I know a fair bit about being a nerd.

Which is why I hate nerds in movies (and on television). Well, no, actually that's a bit wrong - I don't hate nerds in movies, the portrayal of people that are nerds can be quite accurate. What I hate are all the clichés and untruths that go along with nerdiness in movies. I've been compiling a top-three.

First off we have using a keyboard and/or mouse and generally operating a PC.

When they do this in movies it's always accompanied by "the sound of loads of typing on the keyboard." Even if all they're doing is the equivalent of 1 mouse click, or copying and pasting a name into a search field you get a huge rattle of keys.

Partly this is erroneous Foley work (Foley is where they make sound effects for films) but also it's the acting - the actors need to do something to represent "oh, now I'm operating the PC" so they pretend to hammer the keys. No matter how inappropriate that typing actually is.

Second is zooming in on things.

This is worst with video images, especially security cameras, which are generally very low resolution. Resolution is basically the number of pixels that an image contains and therefore defines the limits of the detail contained within an image.

So here's the classic - there's a grainy bit of video footage that shows the villain running to/from his crime. But as you look at it you can't really tell who it is. They then proceed to "blow it up" or "enhance it" and, as they get closer, or press a few buttons, suddenly the image becomes clearer and clearer until -dun-dun-dun- person X is revealed.

Bullshit.

If a picture is grainy and/or low resolution then that's it - you can't "blow it up" or "enhance it" and suddenly all this details appears. That's what low resolution means - the detail is lost. To add it in you have to make it up.

Third is how all unattractive female nerds are always actually gorgeous women wearing glasses and with bad hair, who, having removed said glasses and got a haircut, suddenly turn into sex-bombs they really are underneath. Then, all the men who bullied them or wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole are desperate to get in their knickers.

This is just ludicrous. If a nerd chick is hot, then they're hot - there are such women in existence. If they're not hot then yeah, maybe a make-over and a haircut might help a bit, but it won't suddenly transform them into the world's most gorgeous woman.

Of course there's one fundamental one above all of this, but it's so general and all pervasive it's not worth mentioning. It's the capability of technology.

Written yourself into a hole? Well that's okay, some piece of technology or miraculous bit of software will get you out of that fix.

I actually blame Bond for this one. In every Bond film Q always manages to give him the exact bit of kit that will get him out of the tight spot he finds himself in. I mean is Q fucking psychic or what?

Need the plot to jump to the next exciting event? Well, have some software that, after some keyboard hammering reveals the big secret and sends the hero on his way.

This is basically the entire plot of every 24 episode ever. Ether that or the reverse - the technology give misinformation or it will take exactly 10 minutes to unlock the file with the plans for the bomb in, but Jack only has exactly 9minutes before the bomb goes off.

Need a character (any character that is - except for the ham-fisted ludditic hero, all characters are master hackers) to do some hacking? Or foil a hacker/virus? Well of course obviously he's going to use software that paints a load of pretty pictures on the screen and does fabulous visual things.

Hacking is never a dull exercise of typing shell commands into uninteresting command prompt windows. Ever. It's visually stunning.

And don't get me started on how powerful computers are in films. Even a humble laptop can process 20 gigabyte image file in a matter of seconds.