Mathematicians Become Hollywood Consultants 521
techstar25 writes "With the recent success of movies incorporating mathematics, Dr. Jonathan Farley, a professor of mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo who is currently doing research at Harvard, tapped into his professional knowledge and headed west to Hollywood, where he and Dr. Elizabeth Burns, founded Hollywood Math and Science Consulting to help television and movie producers portray accurate mathematics on screen. Their first client: the CBS drama Numb3rs. 'In many cases, they want me to elaborate on some of the math already in the script,' said Farley. 'I help add dialogue and fine tune the math already in the script. It's not just about fixing mathematical mistakes . . . It's also about helping them get the culture right.'"
Now if someone (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that I'm not the only one that gets sick everytime I see an actor "polishing" up an image by typing randomly onto the computer while looking at nothing but the image itself. Or someone hacking into a computer with 3 keystrokes.
I guess Hollywood thinks that most of the public are so mystified by computers that they'll believe anything.
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Insightful)
Here it comes (Score:4, Insightful)
GET OVER IT!
It is just entertainment. Does anyone think that anything shown on the large or small screen is real!? You think geeks are the only "insiders" cringing when they see something on screen? If so, don't be so arrogant. Bus drivers cringed through SPEED. Pilots can point out problems in any script. Don't get started on "medicine" on TV. Even tarot card readers think Hollywood gets it all wrong.
Say it with me know, "Window dressing" and for the advanced students, "Plot device".
Re:Now if someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about niche (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now if someone (Score:2, Insightful)
I've read that a lot of computer access scenes are rendered using video editing software, Flash/Director, and other similar products. It's easier on the actors (they don't need to learn how to ACT like they're really using Photoshop), it's cheaper than paying a ton of money to a company for the rights to use their products, it keeps the show/movie flowing without stopping for complex computer tasks, and it can easily be reset/replayed when trying to shoot a scene.
Also, think of all of the specialty software a movie might need, costing a lot of money. It's just easier to have a production department contrive something that's played back for the actors than to try to buy all of the hardware and software needed to perform a few scenes.
Killjoys (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here it comes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Math Culture? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dumbed Down (Score:3, Insightful)
And then he or someone else dumbs it down so that the normies can get it. I may only be a Junior student ME in a math minor, but even I can see that the stuff about Riemann's hypothesis and fluid mechanics is grossly simplified to save time and make it friendly for a greater audience. I expect this for a show like Law and Order. But it is surprising for a show like Numb3rs which is (I thought) supposed to cater to being accurate.
Oh well. We see that once again the need for ratings overwhelms the need for completeness and accuracy.
The actor who plays the "genius" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Insightful)
Why limit to computers? How about relatively simple technologies like radio, or jet engines? For example, it drove me bugshit when a character on that fine piece of TV work that is "Lost" said he needed three people standing out in the boonies with some weird contraptions for him to stand in a fourth location with a handheld radio in order to perform a "triangulation" of an incoming radio signal. WTF? Didn't the scriptwriters even look up what "triangulation" means before they tried to use it as a plot device? And then there's the pilot episode with the jet engine. Yes, a jet engine upside down on the beach still running after the crash made for a very scary noise, and having it explode in a huge fireball when some dude got sucked in was impressive, but they might as well have had a 50' clown catching people in a giant popcorn bag for all the plausibility it had.
Honestly, I can suspend disbelief enough to let it slide when TV/movie writers gloss over a few peripheral technical details; but when they employ patently absurd ignorant interpretations of easily researched technology as the linchpin of that episode's story, there's no good excuse. Having worked around script writers, though, I understand why this is: most of them are fools.
Re:CBS Isn't Listening... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have not seen the show I just see the commercials, and they really annoy me, for some reason. I don't know, maybe I am just a bitter person but I would rather have a specific reason to hate the show
Re:For example? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every specialist sees the errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Cops, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, social workers (I have a friend who can go on about Judging Amy for hours), military people, airline pilots, etc., etc. -- all of them can go on and on about how inaccurate entertainment portrays their job or profession. So scientists and computer specialists are not alone.
The bottom line, IMO, is that hey, it's entertainment, not a documentary, and whatever the *thing* is -- whether it's computers or legal procedure or spy technology or whatever -- is supposed to be in service of telling the story and revealing character, not the other way around. Yes, Hollywood makes lots of mistakes that could be fixed very easily, but the majority of any given set of viewers probably won't know or care -- in fact, they might even think something's wrong because the entertainment didn't conform to the cliche.
The way entertainment shapes real life expectations is a real issue, and one lawyers in particular are concerned about -- they call it the "CSI effect" on juries, the expectation that fancy forensics will be present in every case, when they usually aren't.
But as for the entertainment itself, it's usually good if the "stuff" is used in service of the story. I sucked at math my entire life (until prob/stat in college, which I was actually good at) but I really enjoy Numb3rs. The math -- whether it's real or not -- is used very effectively in service of the story, and there's a nice dynamic between the FBI brother and the math professor brother. And the professor Peter MacNicol plays reminds me of a brilliant but absent-minded professor I had once. On the library steps, after a conversation: "When you first saw me, was I going into this building or coming out of it?" LOL.
Two words (Score:2, Insightful)
Involuntary Celibacy.
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's real damage done here--- for instance, how many americans serving on jurors believe that fingerprints can be used to tie someone to a crime? Probably almost all of them-- and because they've seen a lot of BS TV shows where fingerprints are "proof" that the bad guy did it.
Hell, I bet most slashdot readers are under this misimpression.
But the reality is, fingerprints are not unique.
Hell, not even DNA is unique in the way that it is used. (To do an actual DNA match, you'd have to sequence the entire genome... which was only done finally within the last decade and they used a bunch of people's DNA, not one person's.)
Also the odds given for false matches are completely absurd, based on pseduo science.
But all this pseudo science presented in fiction is taken as reality.
Real people think that computers can be hacked really quickly and locks picked in 30 secons and fingerprints are unique. (And even more absurd, that you can tie a gun to a crime based on the markings on the bullets-- reading tea leaves is just as fruitful.)
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have two thoughts on this. First, I hear you. We've already started to read the stories of juries who expect case evidence akin to what they see in CSI, etc. The unrealistic techniques can make you cringe or even take you right out of the show as well.
Second, let it go. What do you propose they do instead on 1-hr tv dramas? Should they show the tech prepare the sample for DNA testing, then fade to black and when they come back to the tech have the words "One week later" at the bottom of the screen? Should they start scanning the figerprint DB, cut away to a seperate story thread, then cut back to the tech still watching the screen, cut away, cut back to the screen (the tech wandered off), cut away, cut back "One week later", ad nauseum?
Maybe all the CSI shows can just work one case a season, like 24, the we can get something more realistic.
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:For example? (Score:1, Insightful)
Pi
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/ [imdb.com]
not exactly recent but superb and successful none the less
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:1, Insightful)
it was SCI fi. hence holgraphic fractal storage or whatver.
So why show it at all then? (Score:2, Insightful)
While true, the problem I have with this argument is that in the vast majority of cases of bad science/math on film/tv, the part that was so mind numbingly bad was not necessary in the first place.
I mean, for the car exploding from a gunshot problem, you can justify it from an entertainment/action movie basis. But showing some dork cracking a password in 5 seconds or a common bank black and white security camera having seemingly infinite resolution, well, half the time the audience doesn't give a shit and it's not essential to the plot anyway. The end result (we got the guy's bank accounts from his computer or we were able to get the license plate of that speeding car from the video tape) is what the plot needs. The technical details of how you get it are wholly irrelevant. So why show the dude cracking the password? Why show the guy typing on a keyboard at random with nothing else on the screen but this image and magically "enhancing" the picture to get the license plate number?
It's not a matter of bad writing. It's a matter of bad directing, it's a matter of bad production, and it's a sign of a filmmaker not knowing WTF makes a flick good in the first place.
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because current entertainment is focused on instant gratification does not mean that it is necessary for it to be entertainment.
Summer popcorn movies are not the only kind of movie, and to say that those movies are dumb is legitimate-- how can you say that any other kind of movie would not be entertaining?
Intelligent drama is quite possible. It could also be quite profitable.
But too many people think that people are stupid and so they won't watch it.
Our society is oriented around breeding stupid sheep... and it is pretty successful at it.
But they being the majority does not make them any less stupid.