“Hollywood’s Computers: Telling A Story In A Flash”
H/T to Mike at b-scenefilms.com for sending me this story that was on NPR (1/23/2010): “Hollywood’s Computers: Telling A Story In A Flash:
Picture this: a tense scene in a movie — it could be any thriller you’ve seen in the past 15 years — and there’s an actor, looking serious, clicking away at a computer keyboard.
Maybe he’s trying to hack into the big evil corporation’s database to save the day. Maybe he’s stealing a sensitive tidbit of information from the government. Then, a big red “ACCESS DENIED” flashes across the screen with a flourish of beeps and bleeps.
One thing’s for sure: What he sees on that monitor looks nothing like what you have on your home computer. That’s because it wasn’t designed to surf the Internet or do your taxes.
“The entire point of those things is to tell a story,” graphic interface designer Mark Coleran says. “ ‘I can’t get into the computer.’ How do you tell somebody in two seconds, onscreen, that they can’t get into that thing?”
Coleran designs the fancy-but-fake graphics that flash across computers in the movies. He has worked on a laundry list of blockbusters: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Ultimatum, Children of Men, Mission Impossible III and many more. He says a lot of the inspiration for computer screens comes from video games.
We’ve all been there, right? A scene in one of our scripts where a character has to convey information (almost always exposition) from a computer. Bo-ring. Fortunately there are folks like Coleran who fluff up those moments — and thank God he understands that beyond all the clicks, beeps, lights, and sizzle, what’s important is the story.
For a transcript of the report with Coleran and host Guy Raz, go here.
And you can go here to see Coleran’s own website.