Please take your finger out of your ear
Along the lines of my gripes with cinematic cell phone troubles and air ducts, Lou Lesko takes issue with another movie cliché:
The high technology wireless radio devices that are concealed in the ear canals of the good guys for surreptitious communication work just fine without sticking your finger in your ear. And yet on NCIS Los Angeles last week –- in a pivotal scene where a guy is being shadowed -– there were all the protagonists, obvious as could be, looking like they forgot to take a Q-Tip to their ears for the last month.
For once, writers are off the hook. Nowhere in the scene description do we tell actors to poke their fingers in their ear canals.
Rather, it’s directors who are likely propping up this cliché, worried that the audience — particularly a CBS audience — won’t understand why characters are talking to invisible people.
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October 19th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Great moment at the beginning of Casino Royale where James Bond chastises his fellow agent to get his finger OUT OF HIS EAR, lest he blow his cover. (PS: He blows his cover.)
October 19th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I believe the new Knight Rider (2008) rarely did the “finger in ear” thing. See, it did at least one thing right.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:46 am
mmm… I’ve seen people, dressed in sharp suits, walking on the street and talking to themselves, i thought they were crazy. then I realized they were wearing these tiny earpieces connected to their cell phones. Or something.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I thought this was lampshaded quite nicely in Casino Royale
October 19th, 2009 at 10:13 am
At least they aren’t sticking their fingers anywhere else…
October 19th, 2009 at 10:27 am
“Particularly a CBS audience” — I love it. No offense to CBS, which is very good at giving it’s audience what it wants (and what it wants is 3 team-based cop dramas a night, apparently), but that little jab carries a lot of weighty criticism behind it.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does CBS’ audience want to see visual cues like the ear-poke because they are idiots (as a producer may believe), or are they expecting to see the ear-poke because they’ve been trained to expect it?
October 19th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Since much of the CBS audience still talks about “taking the horseless carriage to Mr. Roebuck’s to get the icebox repaired,” I think you’re spot on.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:12 am
People see me having a conversation with no one at all and wonder if I’m crazy, but they see a pair of standard wired earbuds and think I’m talking to an iPod and not on a stereo hands free to the cell phone in my pocket.
It’s fortunate that Ghost in the Shell takes it for granted that the audience will understand a futuristic Japan with cybernetic prosthetic bodies is going to be talking electrotelepathically via wireless networks and not actually directly explain it to them ala Mr. Exposition.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Have you ever noticed that when ever anyone in a movie looks at their computer it’s always a Mac? Always. I’ve never seen anyone in a movie use a Windows PC. You’d think Apple had like 99% of the home computer market from watching movies.
October 19th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“Have you ever noticed that when ever anyone in a movie looks at their computer it’s always a Mac?”
Unless it’s seen from behind, then it’s always a Dell.
And when opening a briefcase full of banknotes one is obliged to pause briefly and stroke one’s hand across all the paper, unless there’s time to take out one wad of notes and riffle it.
October 19th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Ripper CBS viewer intelligence
October 19th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
9) Ashley…
It’s because 99% of Hollywood uses Mac. LOL!
October 19th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
“I thought this was lampshaded quite nicely in Casino Royale”
Ditto.
But I guess no one goes to see small art house movies anymore. Especially not big budget blockbuster Hollywood directors. I mean, why bother, right?
October 19th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
C’mon people… it’s simple visual shorthand to cue the viewer that the dude is speaking into his phone. Remember Dick Tracy talking into his radio-watch? I know it’s goofy but think about it production-wise. The actor touches his ear to indicate he’s on the phone/walkie-talkie thingy or you need an insert of his actual ear-piece to indicate the same cue. That’s one more shot on a tight shooting schedule.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
WRITER It’s a bloody hands-free kit -
DIRECTOR I know but this way we get everything in the master -
WRITER - people using a hands-free kit in a car DO NOT push a ‘Talk’ button -
DIRECTOR He’ll look like some crazy dude talking to himself -
WRITER But he isn’t -
1AD approaches – clears their throat.
WRITER (leaving) Two words: hands, free.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
There are lot of clichés out there.
I’ve never seen anyone doing mouth-to-mouth rescue the right way in a movie.
There are no apparatus beeping the heartbeats at a hospital.
and
Hackers don’t get nice forms on the screen to fill in the blanks.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:10 am
The “crazy person talking” effect scares the daylights out of me, in fact, I would say that by law we should demand that these “cyborgs”, as I call them, have to cup their ear, especially in airports!
October 20th, 2009 at 4:23 am
I don’t know about some people using Ipods or cell phones or secret radio listening devices, but I put my finger in my opposite ear so I can hear better (a necessity) so using it in a script is fine if you work with it
October 20th, 2009 at 7:06 am
A convention -I wouldn’t call these things cliches- that always amuses me is when someone looks through binoculars and we get his POV: the image is masked in the shape of an “8″ laying on its side. Anybody who’s ever used a pair of binoculars knows the image is framed inside a circle, like if you looked through a telescope. I guess the convention came up as a way to reinforce the idea of looking through binoculars because it resembles its shape. It may not be realistic, but I don’t see anything wrong about it other that it takes me momentarily out of the story. I find fancy camerawork or dialogue that’s too clever does that much more often.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Direct cut and paste from NCIS LA – Ep. 104:
Kensi stands behind the PODIUM with a laptop before her. The CLASS of 67 students filters in. Dom sits in the back of the hall, blending in. She subtly adjusts her earwig radio…
KENSI Dom. Are we up?
October 20th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Not only do I despise the ole “hand to the ear” flag, I absolutely hate it when said “undercover” spy/cop/whatever holds their wrist to their mouth to speak into their “microphones”. A standing standard depiction of secret service agents in film.
Not once while watching live footage of real SS agents have I ever seen one speak into their wrist. Not once. Kinda makes me think that “film technology” is in the dark ages.
I can forgive “Chuck” because that’s a spoof, but when it’s a production that “takes itself seriously”, fa-getta-bout it!
PS: What has happened to the obligatory “knock over a fruit stand cart” in chase scenes??? I miss my moment of hilarity in those intense chase sequences.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I like the way they handle it on Leverage. They distributed the fancy new gadgets and the electronics guy said “Here’s these tiny things that pick up everything blah blah technobabble” and periodically on the show they remind us how they work. So there’s never any fingers in ears.
And as for the air ducts, every time I see that I say to myself, “John August would be so pissed right now.”
October 20th, 2009 at 9:56 am
The good thing is, with the excuse of the invisible phone I can now talk to myself freely without having to worry that people find out I’m crazy.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I just read a script for “Castle.” It was actually in the directions for one of the characters to touch his ear bud. I would never have thought twice about it before yesterday, but then of course I read this, and then scolded the imaginary character for being a tool.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:44 am
When I do this around town it seems to be a good smokescreen for talking to myself. Strangers rarely complain about it, or even come near me.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Same thing: The mikrophone in the sleeve – meaning talking to the wrist of the gun hand … Usually in combination with sentences like: “We have a situation” or “The president is in immediate danger”. What’s next? Bodyguards wearing scuba gear in case the president drowns?
October 25th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Any film that has the finger-in-the-ear scenario is almost guaranteed also to have a character saying, “We got a situation here.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
In defense of this cliché, sometimes when I have a surveillance ear piece in my ear and there’s a lot of background noise, I’ll cover that ear or push the bud in to hear the radio better.