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And there will be a shot of tumbleweeds blowing across a road with a twangy, bluesy guitar lick on the soundtrack too... Just to drive home the point that this town is way out there in the desert boondocks.
Foley editors dub in sound tracks of birds, frogs, etc. into outdoor scenes. It is hilarious how many times you can hear birds singing in films which do not naturally occur within a thousand miles of the setting.
Most often misused is the very recognizable Cactus Wren, occurring only in the southwestern deserts, but Hollywood foley editors don't know that it is a localized bird, so put it into scenes all over the USA and the world. Loons are also heard in every movie about the southern swamps, but they only migrate through the south, and never vocalize anywhere except on their breeding grounds in northern lakes.
Ever notice when a movie is set in NYC the outdoor scene almost always has a car horn being blown as background noise? Like the audience would not recognize NY without that sound. Really I would like to see a movie set in another boro other than Manhattan. An action film set in the Bronx or Queens (not some back lot in LA)
NYC. It's not so much overrated but so OVERDONE in so many ways. It gets annoying and the depiction of NYC in most movies are corny and always make it seem like NYC is so dangerous and everyone has an attitude of some sort. So stupid.
It's not really an overrated setting as it's not used that often, but San Francisco is sort of abused as a movie setting. Just about every film set in San Francisco seems to treat the place as seen through the local tourst board. With the exception of a older few films it seems like they just use it as a chance to throw in a few shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars going up Nob Hill, a shot of the Victorian houses in Alamo Square--maybe a brief trip to Chinatown or Fisherman's Wharf too. But a lot of the films seem like they could be set anywhere--you could take a script set in New York or Chicago and place it in San Francisco as long as you show a few scenic shots. Maybe at the most there's a cliched joke about hippies or gays. And there's always a chance to copy the car chase in the film Bullit--which can be fairly cool if done right.
There's also the joke of the TV show Full House showing Alamo Square in the opening credits as being some sort of happy-go-lucky middle class family neighborhood--while at the time that the show was being filmed, that neighborhood was mostly a crime-ridden ghetto--the Tanner Family would've been robbed and beaten by a crackhead had they strolled down a few blocks in that neighborhood. There's also the film 48 Hours, where for some reason there's a country and western redneck bar in the middle of the Mission District... Now I was just toddler in 1982, but I sincerly doubt that the Mission had a bar with Confederate flags on the wall catering to cowboy hat wearing rednecks at anytime in the last 50 years.
And yeah, a lot of locations just serve as attractive scenery for a film that could be set anywhere. But at least some cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Boston occasionally get a film that seems to portray the place accurately. I think though, for the most part it's filmmakers from those cities who are writing their own stuff that actually will write something that exceeds just regional stereotypes and a few shots of famous landmarks.
There's also the joke of the TV show Full House showing Alamo Square in the opening credits as being some sort of happy-go-lucky middle class family neighborhood--while at the time that the show was being filmed, that neighborhood was mostly a crime-ridden ghetto--the Tanner Family would've been robbed and beaten by a crackhead had they strolled down a few blocks in that neighborhood.
I'm laughing at the above post about San Francisco! I was all ready to be the first to post about it.
I guess the street with the colorful victorian homes I'm thinking of must be "Alamo Square" though I never knew the name.
After seeing it in numerous movies, I concluded that:
--everyone in SF lives on that street or near it
--everyone goes to the park right in front of it for playful banter, a romantic walk, or to hand over ransom money or a payoff
Even poor, young just-starting-out 20-somethings and artists can evidently afford to live in beautiful old SF victorians, or at least in an apartment in one of those victorians (even though even small condos sell for 1.2 million).
Then everyone in SF decides to have their most important conversations in life on a bench overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. There must be a line of people 20 blocks long all waiting for each person or couple to vacate that bench so they can sit there and have their conversation.
I love So I Married An Axe Murderer, but even its use of SF scenes is trite and overdone.
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