CURRENT MOVIE CLICHES

Tools    





Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
I'd say the use of very shallow focus is becoming rather overused now. It can obviously be very effective but a lot of the time these days it feels like an excuse to not to anything else that interesting visually.
I agree with this. If a movie shot like Citizen Kane came out nowadays, where you have shots with three people in, it would rack focus from one to the other as they spoke.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Another one I thought of while watching Once Upon a Time in America, like that movie, a lot of older movies have a cliche where whenever a character has a flashback, he/she would look at candle, and the camera will zoom into the candle, before the flashback.



Seems like for the past year or two every time someone is killed in a movie or series, they always are shown face down with a large pool of blood under their head....... even if they're shot in the back...



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
But doesn't the bullet likely exited out the front, causing the blood to drain out the front?



But doesn't the bullet likely exited out the front, causing the blood to drain out the front?
Forget the "shot in the back" part... The cliche is showing a person on the floor, dead, with a pool of blood forming. It's become way overused IMO.

~Doc



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
But if they didn't have any blood around them, wouldn't people just complain it was fake though, since people bleed when shot?



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Another cliche is when characters are framed in a way, in which there is a lot of extra space at the side of the frame, so you know that someone is going to sneak up behind them, way before it happens. Alien (1979) for example.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Or two guys get into an argument in a bar, which they feel they have to fistfight over, just because they are in a bar.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Someone investigating something and finds a USB stick. They then hold the stick up for a highlight framing, look at it curiously, slide the cover to reveal the USB port, then finally acknowledge it must be a USB stick after all and must have some important information on it. All before a fade out.


As if they've never seen one.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Someone investigating something and finds a USB stick. They then hold the stick up for a highlight framing, look at it curiously, slide the cover to reveal the USB port, then finally acknowledge it must be a USB stick after all and must have some important information on it. All before a fade out.


As if they've never seen one.
What movie has done this?



I actually thought of one that used to be very popular but you hardly see at all anymore...it used to be whenever a female character took a phone call, she would always remove the earring on the ear that she would put the phone to before actually putting the phone to her ear.



⬆️ Mary Tyler Moore frequently did this on the MTM Show.
__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Another is, whenever someone goes to prison in a movie and is new, the other prisoners chear on his/her arrival like a bunch of cheerleaders full of pep, like in The Shawkshank Redemption for example. Where as in real life, they probably wouldn't even care to waist their energy.



Drives me nuts when an actor starts crying, particularly females, & she keeps rubbing the tears away from her face with her hands. This can go on for several minutes. Anyone heard of tissues?



Watching Homeland and Carrie breaks into someone’s ground floor apartment looking for evidence. The apartment is in a very upscale area of D.C., but Carrie easily finds an open window. She climbs in & manages to roam all over the apartment gathering what she needs. She then exits the same way.

Now my house - first, you won’t find an open window. Duh. Second, if you break any window in my house or breach any door my alarm will go off & can be heard two towns away. Five minutes later cops will be swarming all over my house looking for the intruder.

This is real life, but, apparently, not in Carrie’s world.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
In movies based on true stories, almost all of them have short texted epilogue summaries at the end of them for the last couple of decades it seems.



You see this all the time in American movies & tv shows: people jump out of bed (men & women) & immediately start making pancakes for breakfast. Do people really do this?



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
You see this all the time in American movies & tv shows: people jump out of bed (men & women) & immediately start making pancakes for breakfast. Do people really do this?
*Did. Did people really do this?

Back in the 80s, every adult American had a portable hot pan on the nightstand next to the bed just for that purpose. You would wake up to an alarm and immediately have available to you a quick and cheap meal that all Americans could have access to. The new wave birth of U.S. consumerism excess.

That's about the time the phrase, "A good breakfast is the most important meal of the day" took hold. There was, then, a huge campaign by the milk industry to sell more product. Teamed with several top brand pancake mix companies of the time, they flooded the airwaves and news papers highlighting the new marketing campaign in order to convince the American public that breakfast was in fact the most important meal of the day. With the popularity and growing reliance on the microwave oven as it increased evening food productivity, the idea was that bedside hotplates would similarly offer an affordable and convenient morning meal compliment. All to be eaten from the bed ("breakfast in bed" sound familiar?), on a T.V. dinner stand while watching morning game shows such as The Price is Right. Which, ironically (or cleverly?) pitched brand sales and product placements for just the type of household goods we were being directed to buy---all to make life more convenient.

This cultural shift became so accepted that it found its way to be represented in media, first through game shows as noted earlier, then daytime drama, followed by evening sitcoms and finally into cinema itself. All to sell the idea of an ideal life ...if you buy these appliances and food products. It was a good strategy. Right up until Eggo Waffles dominated television advertisement with their catchy tag line, "Leggo my Eggo!" leading a toaster oven revolution across the nation.

Now, similar to the Wilhelm Scream, directors just throw someone making pancakes into a scene as a background setup. And as a nod to a nostalgic lost decade.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers...s_Eggo_waffles

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065667/...-valley-design

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_...e_belong_to_us

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Gonna_Give_You_Up