The Hacker Who Cracked the Code in Iron Man and The Social Network

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2014/01/movie-fake-code/

by jgrahamc • 13 years ago

82 39 13 years ago

trekky17002• 13 years ago

My biggest surprise is that nobody did something like this sooner. Especially how distracting it is when someone in a movie is controlling a weapons system or saving the world with code written in ActionScript.

Unless ActionScript somehow becomes the dominant programming language of the future, in which case the future looks darker than I thought.

phn• 13 years ago

I know it is a little off-topic. But what is so bad about ActionScript?

yareally• 13 years ago

Nothing, when assuming it's being used for an appropriate use case. In the previously mentioned use cases it's likely the wrong tool for the tasks in question.

wanda3• 13 years ago

Nothing. It doesn't seem all that different from JS to me. I think people just dislike the IDEs.

trekky17002• 13 years ago

Nothing in particular, it is very similar to other languages like Java, I just wouldn't recommend it for saving the world. Unless the world is being attacked by Flash game loving aliens.

_ea1k• 13 years ago

I personally feel like AS3 is a less-dynamic version of Java. Making a statically typed language less dynamic than Java does not impress me.

(I know that you can write in the more dynamic Javascript style w/o type markers, but the integration between those two worlds in AS3 is very poor)

wanda3• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure that this will have been done in the many years of newsgroups, IRC, SomethingAwful, 4chan, HN, reddit and random tripod/angelfire/geocities sites.

This guy was the first one to be mainstream. It's like the MP3 player: Jobs had the audacity to say that Apple basically invented the MP3 player because their MP3 player was the best, not because it was the first. Same story with the iPhone. It wasn't the first touchscreen cellular phone, but it was the best. When a product is the best in class, it gets noticed. This was surely the lesson Jobs learned from Microsoft's success: don't worry about being the first, just worry about being the best or, at least, the loudest.

And in this digital age, that's actually fine. If we valued people only because they had ideas first, nothing would actually be done about it and inventions would not be successful because half of the inventors would keep their creations tailored to their preferences rather than extending a generalised product that caters to everybody.

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

I just saw a post on another site where someone did something similar with Chess:

http://imgur.com/a/dVgI4

He said he already has a lot of requests, so I can assume he'll probably do something similar.

actionscripted• 13 years ago

Unless ActionScript somehow becomes the dominant programming language of the future, in which case the future looks darker than I thought.

Agreed, but I am ready for the call from Mr. Stark.

Already__Taken• 13 years ago

Fairly sure I remember the Archer guys pointing out some of the code they wanted to put up on the show needed quite a bit of checking to make sure there's no IP fowl ups. Including the output from the program, it can still need correct licencing.

frik• 13 years ago

Nothing new, we had similar articles and discussion on HN:

https://www.google.com/#q=site:news.ycombinator.com+movie+co...

Movie director David Fincher uses computer monitors with a green/blue Screen, the computer graphic is added in post production. Check out the behind the scene footage of "Social Network" (2 disc DVD ed)!

disputin• 13 years ago

"The 'quality' of the code really comes down to deadlines".

ape4• 13 years ago

So movies are superficial?!

maaaats• 13 years ago

Hmm, ctrl+clicking the links in the article does nothing.

JasonFruit• 13 years ago

Check your popup blocker. I was surprised by that, too.

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

Well if nothing else this suggests there is a lifestyle level business in the Entertainment industry doing "code" inserts. The article lays out all of the things that are challenging (copyright issues, continuity issues, and cost) so building a small consulting firm around providing "code" for these situations cost effectively and reliably solves a need.

The go to market strategy is to get writers in the screenwriters guild aware of your offering, and let the lswyers know you provide guarantees, both that your "set" code will not conflict with anyone else's copyright, but also that copyright can be asserted on it so that the film has greater protection out there. Which gets the lawyers insisting the writers use your stuff.

You'll need a good design asthetic and some markov-chain like software which can generate plausible looking code on demand.

krapp3• 13 years ago

I would suspect they mostly would not care enough about it to spend more than what they already do on what amounts to a special effect which most of the time they could just do without. Bear in mind that outside of programming circles, nobody minds how implausible code actually looks, so long as it looks sufficiently "computery."

Jun82• 13 years ago

That's true, but it's so easy to grab actual code with a permissive license that I don't think either this or the "we have time time constraints" explanation given in the OP can explain this.

tekacs• 13 years ago

and some markov-chain like software which can generate plausible looking code on demand.

... or you could even just write some code for the occasion on the occasion - it could be quite fun. :)

bazzargh2• 13 years ago

Did you see the article by the guy who did the effects for Tron: Legacy? Brilliant stuff.

http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178

Not a markov chain, he just recorded himself at the shell. It made me grin when I saw that bit in the movie and the commands actually made sense (the rest of the film... not so much)

sorahn• 13 years ago

Wow, that is obnoxious to read the whole thing in that font.

jliechti1• 13 years ago

I wonder if the show CSI used a Markov Chain to create the last line in this scene:

"For weeks I've been investigating...the killer with a certain morbid fascination..."

"This is in real time!"

"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic...see if I can track an IP address!"

Link to clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

This isn't an important enough specialty to make a living out of, because the number of people who are about what the actual code is such a tiny % of the viewing audience that it's not going to have any meaningful impact on sales. If there's a big budget with lots of VFX (like Iron Man) the VFX crew will get the job of sourcing 'teh codez' and most likely will just use some deprecated code of their own since high-end VFX software is all script-based anyway.

For non high-end productions (eg where you just have one person with After Effects or suchlike) you can just buy/rent/pirate sample material or fake it up quickly with some 'computerish' looking font - hence the proliferation of fake smartphone screens. It's a pain to photograph a real smartphone with an actual camera; they're usually too bright (even on minimum setting), the screen has reflections, and there are often awkward interference artifacts between the camera's frame rate and the refresh rate & lag of a phone. So if you're doing things on the cheap it's usually easier to just use some color app and make the whole screen a dim green and then match in a generic screen showing a text message or picture of the character who is supposed to be calling.

While this is certainly something a video graphics person could develop a specialty in, you'd have a hard time making it your only thing, same as being a sound designer that only does automobile noises or something. Likewise, when you look at a shot of someone fixing a car you probably don't pause to eyeball the diameter of the nuts and bolts lying on the ground, though pro car mechanics probably hate watching such scenes.

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

That is an interesting position. My reasoning is that more and more people are becoming "developers" of a sort, certainly being exposed to this stuff earlier, and that makes them more discriminating consumers. Nothing quite takes me out of my suspended disbelief like a botched 'tech' reference. So as the pool of moderately computer literate people expands, the impact of 'bad tech' in the movies will hit more audiences negatively.

To use a classic example, the computer "interfaces" of Star Trek the original series were perfectly serviceable for people who had never seen an actual computer, but trying to use them on an audience that got their first laptop in grade school just doesn't work.

My speculation is that as people become more sensitive to 'bogus' code standing in for some prop, they will become more put off by it and set designers are going to have to work harder. If you're a shop that can amortize the cost of developing the tools to create 'realistic code inserts' across a number of customers, you can achieve ramen profitability or better.

bazzargh2• 13 years ago

Be a movie hacker: http://hackertyper.net/

the code it's using - http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/kernel/groups.c - is GPL so hollywood may choke on the copyright issue. Press alt x 3, caps lock x 3 or esc for special stuff

Jun82• 13 years ago

I don't get it: If you're some bored (and/or clueless) computer consultant for a movie, isn't it much easier to randomly google "C++ code" or grab from github, or, even better, grab the source code from the Linux kernel than pasting from an obscure Intel Architecture Manual?

Do you think this manual was just sitting on the guy's desk when his manager came with the request "Create an authentic looking code snippet, you've got 5 minutes"? Who are these people who create these "code" snippets anyway? If anyone with knowledge enlightens me I'd be much obliged.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Maybe it was decided by a non-technical person. "Code? I have no idea, grab an Intel manual!" This sounds plausible from someone who would have never heard of github.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

Nah, the guy probably just looked at his PC, saw the "Intel Inside" sticker and started Googling. It wouldn't have taken him long to find something that looked realistic.

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

Who are these people who create these "code" snippets anyway?

Junior visual FX slaves straight out of art school. Picking it out of an Intel Architecture Manual is the sort of thing you do to neutralize producer/director/supervisor insecurities about authenticity: 'yeah, this is the stuff that the engineers at Intel use, this is as real as it gets.'

merak136• 13 years ago

Am I the only one thinking " Who cares "?

matsur• 13 years ago

The Social Network paid particular attention to this, to the point that they tracked down[0] the actual slides[1] Zuckerberg would have seen in his Harvard OS class for the scene in the classroom.

[0] http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/10/in-defense-of-mark-zu... [1] http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/course/cs161/notes/vm.pdf

The Hacker Who Cracked the Code in Iron Man and The Social Network

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