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hairmetal4ever

Does it annoy anyone else?

hairmetal4ever
9 years ago

Watching a cheesy Christmas movie with the wife.

So obvious it was filmed around late summer or early fall, with the greenery about and green trees. Sorry, the scarves and fake snow doesn't really convince me its December in a place that gets snow.

Lots of movies and shows do this. Either most people don't notice, except us tree nerds, or movie producers have never left L.A.

Comments (33)

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    9 years ago

    well??

    based on my expectations of hollywood...

    its not surprising at all ...

    seriously dude... what are you expecting from them.. and good christian themed movie for the holiday ...???

    and really.. if you are whining about a chevy chase xmas movie.. think about it.. the setting is as much a spoof as the script ... dont you think????

    merry Christmas .. and happy new year ..

    ken

  • rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
    9 years ago

    It doesn't annoy me, but I notice. Both my husband and I might be the annoying ones, as we both identify trees in the natural areas as well as plants in the landscape to determine where a film or program was really filmed as opposed to where the script says. We compete....how annoying is that? ;-)

  • floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
    9 years ago

    I notice too - it's really amusing when the time of year on location has clearly changed between takes which are supposed to be happening on the same day. My main bugbear is the artificial flowers stuck onto the wrong kind of bushes and the fake creepers used to cover modern lamps, etc. on old buildings. There's a great example in the film Bright Star about the poet Keats where he wanders through an orchard picking cherries ..... off apple trees.

  • floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
    9 years ago

    Deleted duplicate

    This post was edited by floral_uk on Sat, Dec 27, 14 at 10:14

  • hairmetal4ever
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Occasionally, you'll see one that even somebody is a complete plant idiot would notice. Well, if they were actually looking.

    I don't recall what it was, but I remember not too long ago seeing a movie or TV show that was clearly filmed somewhere in Southern California. You could see palm trees in the distance and mountains, but they were trying to pull it off as something like Chicago or New York or somewhere that gets cold in winter and receive snow. But it was so obvious that it wasn't.

    I also seem to remember even as a kid thinking that the scenery in the Dukes of Hazzard looked nothing like Georgia (where was supposed to be set) from what I knew about Georgia, and looked a lot more like the desert southwest or California.

    It was much too dry and dusty looking to be Georgia.

  • krnuttle
    9 years ago

    ken_adrian: What do you have Chevy Chase. His movies were great.

    While slightly exaggerated, many of his movies could have been taken from the stories of our family vacations when we were kids. Except European Vacation. We never got to Europe.

    I loved the part in the first movie where the put the aunt in her rocking chair on the top of the car.

    How can you ever forget, when they went flying through the barricade at the end of the road. That was too real as we nearly did that early one morning going to visit my parents. Fortunately the only thing that happen for us was the family members who were asleep in the back of the van ended up on the floor.

    When my brothers and I are together, the vacation move scenes frequently come up in the conversations as we are reminiscing

  • rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
    9 years ago

    Anyone watch Forrest Gump? Notice the Sabal Palmettos in the Viet Nam scenes. Much of the movie was filmed in and around Beaufort County, SC.

  • bengz6westmd
    9 years ago

    I always notice the fake "rain" occurring in sunny, clear skies (in Hollywood no less). Or the fake "night" when shadows are obvious.

  • mikebotann
    9 years ago

    I look at everything I can to figure out where a movie was filmed. Not only the plants and forests, but houses and the lay of the land.
    I saw a vacuous beach party movie that was supposed to take place in Florida. It had palm trees, but in the background were small dry mountains that didn't look at all like California near the coast, much less Florida. I watched it to the end just to see where it was made. Jerusalem, ..so it must have been made somewhere on the Mediterranean.
    Mike

  • bragu_DSM 5
    9 years ago

    with movies filmed around here, I can tell you the rain is artificial, but it is easier to film in cods and rains than bright sunshine. Also, usually they are filming when the corn is almost done. It is standing tall and proud with huge ears of corn on them. That just doesn't happen. So they break out the green paint: field of dreams is but one example there.

    Continuity issues bug me most: like when there is an object on the counter when they film a scene, break away, and the item is gone, and then break away and the item is back.

    I want to got to a movie as a 2-hour diversion and want to stay with the show plot. I gauge the success of the movie by how many times I look at my watch.

    Never: movie is a ten.

    Two or three times: it gets no better then a 5-6-7.

    On occasion, I will leave the theater, if the movie really pulls.

    dave

    But then, that's me.

  • ghostlyvision
    9 years ago

    I only watch A Christmas Story, that scenery and weather always looks realistic. lol

    Merry Christmas, my tree peeps!

  • jujujojo_gw
    9 years ago

    â¢Posted by ghostlyvision 8b/9a (My Page) on Thu, Dec 25, 14 at 17:59

    A friend of mine works for a company running several porn websites. You sound like their VP :-)

  • ghostlyvision
    9 years ago

    Jujujojo, the closest I've come to having anything to do with a porno company was taking a bath on some stock in one. That was a rough ride! ;)

    Happy New Year!

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    9 years ago

    ken_adrian: What do you have Chevy Chase. His movies were great.

    ==>> great fun.. but i dont watch them with nomenclature in mind...

    ken

  • wisconsitom
    9 years ago

    Movies? Hell, Faux News had an item about demonstrators behaving badly, and to back their claims, they provided footage of people pushing and shoving, complete with palms in the background....in Madison, WI!

    +oM

  • gyr_falcon
    9 years ago

    What bothers me is that every soaring bird (various species of hawks, eagles, falcons, vultures, etc.), no matter the length of the film clip they are in, comes with a sound clip of a red-tailed hawk. Even genuine red-tailed hawks have a call of the same pitch and length as every other individual; apparently, only a single call was ever recorded for the species, and I have heard it for decades.

    And then there are (unseen) cactus wrens calling from the middle forests, California Quail singing well outside their range, whip-poor-wills for every night scene, etc.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Red-tailed Hawk (one call fits all!)

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    9 years ago

    Back to the topic at hand...I have always wondered if there's a professional scouting company in the LA basin that finds (residential or commercial looking) areas devoid of palms. Because many times over the past decades I've seen shows supposed set in the One of the funniest examples I remember was some cheesy made for TV movie, supposedly set in New England. That would have been in the late 90s. However, for some reason it had been shot in Ireland. I saw that in the closing credits. Probably the environs of Dublin. So, the gardens were full of 15-20' Cordylines, towering hedges of Fuchsia magellanica, giant clumps of Phormium and other things you would never see in New England.

  • aegis1000
    9 years ago

    Movies are about PEOPLE.

    Most of the viewing public is clueless abut anything else.

    You don't know what you don't know ...

  • saccharum
    9 years ago

    That one drives me nuts too, Gyr_Falcon. So often I'll see a clip of a turkey vulture soaring through the sky, and hear the majestic shriek of a red-tailed hawk. For a birder, that's jarring!

    I remember that on the Stargate: SG-1 series, nearly every planet had the vegetation (and weather) of the Vancouver, BC area. It was a nice change from all the Southern California planets on other shows.

  • bengz6westmd
    9 years ago

    Saccharum, I agree. The outdoor scenes in Stargate were often very majestic, unlike SoCal. Nice change. The area around Vancouver could even make a plausible scene for the east US -- like shown in the X-Files.

  • poaky1
    9 years ago

    I wasn't aware of the wrong trees in the Forest Gump Vietnam scenes, but I loved the Live oaks, which were appropriate for SC or Alabama. I don't know much about palms and Cycads.

  • cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
    9 years ago

    try watching ANY WWII film (even some documentaries) with shots of airplanes with a former AF pilot-"that's not a Japanese Zero! It's an American...French...Russian..." He even does it with James Bond or other action movies-those aren't MIGs! Sheesh. At least now I know that all those shots of pilots in the cockpits without their visors down are ridiculous. ;)

  • bjb817
    9 years ago

    Little House on the Prairie was one of the very worst for this. If you've ever been to the real Walnut Grove, there's no mountains or hardly any hills for that matter. All corn fields. I wonder how many people assumed that's really how MN looks because of that...

  • poaky1
    9 years ago

    I noticed in reruns of Little House that it seemed like a dry more Western area. They did have some nice oak Savvanahs where Laura rode the Ill-fated horse Bunny, which could have had Burr and Alba oaks, and other large shade trees,which would thrive in Minnesota. I wouldn't have noticed hills or no hills, but I guess there are prairies in Minnesota, so I likely questioned it cause I knew (lately) they likely filmed in California, if not for that I would've never noticed anything saying it wasn't Minnesota, I've never been out west. Minnesota could be dry in summer.

  • bjb817
    9 years ago

    Well, in fairness, there are oak savannahs in MN, but the southwest part on the state, where Walnut Grove was tallgrass prairie back in the day. Gently rolling in places, but no big hills outside river valleys.

    MN is definitely not arid either. Unless it's an unusually droughty summer, things stay nice and green throughout the season.

    It's like Hairmetal mentioned about the Dukes of Hazzard. Considering where they were supposed to be, there should be pines all around. I even noticed watching re runs once where a palm tree snuck in. Oops.

  • alabamatreehugger 8b SW Alabama
    9 years ago

    Anybody here remember 'Meet The Parents' with Ben Stiller? There's a scene in the backyard where they're setting up a fall wedding, and it's obvious they took artificial orange and yellow Silver Maple leaves and tied them into the trees. I had no idea Silver Maples turned that orange! LOL

  • floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
    9 years ago

    I've just been to see The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking. The Cambridge University May Ball scenes take place against a background of Autumn leaves.

  • poaky1
    9 years ago

    There is a commercial for a car search website that features the Duke boys, and there are Pines in the background for that commercial now, I purposefully looked because of this thread. Poaky1

  • famartin
    9 years ago

    I agree about being annoyed with Hollywood getting background on Christmas movies wrong. One thing I've always appreciated about Home Alone (the first one) was that it was filmed in Chicago in winter (February, not December, but close enough).

    As for other movies/TV... it annoys me somewhat that two TV shows set in the New Jersey Pine Barrens (X-Files and Sopranos) were not filmed in locations that remotely resembled the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Maybe X-Files gets a pass, but Sopranos should have done better, the whole damn show was filmed in New Jersey! (But because they wanted snow, they went to upstate New York for that episode... ugh).

    This post was edited by famartin on Sun, Jan 4, 15 at 20:31

  • corkball
    9 years ago

    The trees are part of it, but when the whole landscape is wrong, it really twerks or tweeks me or whatever the kids say these days, when they don't even TRY.

    'Little House on the Prairie' as someone said was bad - just plain bad, but even when they try using CA for FL scenes it is bad. There are no giant hills in Miami or the Keys or freakin' anywhere south of Ocala! Cripes.

    On the other hand, has anyone been to the Canada pavilion at EPCOT? They really tried hard with what they could get their hands on, using red maple, river birch and Sycamore - stuff that could PLAUSIBLY exist in Canada. At least they put some EFFORT in to it, right?

  • beesneeds
    9 years ago

    Heh, I saw a movie recently where it was supposed to be winter in a northern city... Hero zipping down the road downtown.

    They got the CG snow right... but the street was lined with palm trees!

  • poaky1
    9 years ago

    I do think one of my new Favorite shows "NcIS New Orleans may really be filmed there, and CSI; Vegas the original CSI, appears to be filmed in the west or maybe really Vegas, so they tried to make it realistic. They DO have lots of abandoned buildings to use for when a house gets exploded in their story line like what happened in the last episode of NCIS; New Orleans

  • Embothrium
    9 years ago

    Silver maple turns a nice mixture of colors in my area.

    There's a latter day Dr Who where it is supposed to be Christmas and conspicuous, spring flowering trees and shrubs like deciduous magnolias and forsythias are clearly visible along one of the streets in the background.