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petermorwood · 11 months ago

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Sound FX oopsie or not?

I was watching a couple of episodes of "The Crown" last week, and picked up yet again on something I'd noticed - heard - before. Unless there's something going on that I don't know about, the sound the show used for phones is incorrect.

They (w)ring wrong. In fact they ring American.

UK / Irish bell-ringer phones, the ones I grew up with - and which you'd expect to hear in Buckingham Palace, Balmoral etc. - had a short double ring, like so: Brringg-Brringg ... Brringg-Brringg ... Brringg-Brringg.

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US bell-ringer telephones had a single long-ish ring, like so: Brrriiinnng ... Brrriiinnng ... Brrriiinnng.

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It probably sounds unimportant for those too young to have heard these phones unless they've installed a "old phone ring" in their mobile.

However for people who grew up with a particular ring (not that long ago, the phones in those pics brring'd on in homes and offices on both sides of the Pond well into the 1990s) the incorrect sound can be as odd as, for instance, seeing US or Irish / UK cars driving on the wrong side.

It takes a couple of seconds, and then "Oh, that's not right..." (or not left, as appropriate).

Despite more on-line searching than I should have wasted time on, I haven't found either "goof" or "reason why" to explain how those phones in "The Crown" rang the way they did, and it's an itch I'd love to scratch.

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Another sound error is depicting modern British emergency vehicles as having two-tone (dee-dah-dee-dah) horns. Not any more - even though an EV going somewhere in a hurry with lights and sounds on is AFAIK still "running blues and twos".

Nowadays "twos" have been replaced by wailer, yelper and oth-er kinds of electronic siren - none of which, IMO, are as efficient as the two-tone either for cutting through ambient noise or indicating which direction the sound and vehicle is coming from.

I've also got a memory of a documentary sometime in the past year about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz (i.e. 1940-41) where whoever dubbed in the sound-effects clearly assumed that a dee-dah tone has always been the British police-fire-ambulance warning.

Ahhh... No.

British emergency vehicles in the 1940s didn't use sirens, horns or klaxons; they were fitted with hand-operated or electric bells. At that period, the two-tone warning called a Martin-Horn...

...was AFAIK exclusively German...!

All this sounds picky-picky, but while using the wrong plane or ship or vehicle because no example of a real one exists any more is one thing, making a mistake in something as inexpensive and easily-reconstructed as a period sound is another matter.

Of course it's a well-known truism that while the contract for a movie / show's historical consultant says they must be paid, there's no matching contract clause that says they must be heeded, so for the sake of their scholarly reputations those consultants sometimes demand to be removed from the credits.

Looking at you, Ridley...

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ETA: Some days later, with that original post still queued, I may perhaps have found an answer. :->

I've just watched "Thirteen Days", that rather good, properly tense movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which Kevin Costner's character had two phones at home. The black one was domestic with a US single ring, the red one was Official...

With a UK-style double ring.

Without bothering to re-watch each relevant episode of "The Crown", I'm now thinking those "incorrect" phone-rings may all have been internal lines and - like the Official phone in "Thirteen Days" - had a different ringing pattern to denote they weren't a "civilian" call.

In addition, the Costner character and his wife both react to the double ring with alarm, indicating they know its significance.

All of the above makes sense when you consider that custom ringtones were half a century in the future, and there's only so much the electrical pulses driving a pair of metal bells can do...

#The Crown series #Thirteen Days film #US - UK telephone ring #on-screen accuracy #sound effects #Youtube

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lyledebeast · 7 days ago

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British Representation in American Revolutionary War Media

John Adams

This might not be clear given how often I write about another text, but my favorite piece of American Revolution media, by far, is Tom Hooper's 2008 miniseries, John Adams. It's not a hagiography. It presents Adams as a flawed, complex man and, by extension, colonial Americans as flawed and complex people. If there is a villain in this series, it is not an individual but any mob that fails to contain its violent impulses. One of the most harrowing scenes depicts a Boston mob tarring and feathering a Loyalist merchant while Adams looks on horrified.

The series does present the revolution itself as just and necessary, and the crown's government of the colonies as unjust, no British or Loyalist characters are presented as "the enemy." The first Loyalist we meet shows up bloody at the Adams' door having been beaten by his Patriot neighbors for being a friend to the British soldiers on trial after the Boston massacre. Adams agrees to defend these men, but having won the case, he also defends Boston against his client's suggestion that it will no longer be safe for him to practice law there: "You have been acquitted by a jury of New England men." In spite of Adams' confidence, the trial scenes do not present a flattering portrait of New England Patriots. Not only are they baying for the blood of the defendants, many of whom are teenagers, but the men looming menacingly over the African man giving testimony as one of Adams' witnesses represent a chilling portrayal of the danger Black people faced even in the northern colonies.

The series' most outstanding portrayal of a British character is King George III, with whom Adams has an audience after becoming the United States' ambassador to Great Britain. Tom Hollander initially portrays the king as haughty and guarded, but as Adams makes his thoughtful, respectful addresses, his demeanor thaws a bit. He even makes a little comment about Adams being said to be "not the fondest of all his countrymen of the manners of France." They do love a French-hater in the court of King George. He remains emotionally restrained, but as he is the literal king of the Englishmans, this is hardly surprising. What is surprising is Adams' genuine good will towards the man who is the head of the government he so often railed against as a Congressional delegate. He is clearly not what King George expected, and his sentiments about the "culture, religion, and kindred blood" the Americans and British share are quite foreign to the other texts I'll be discussing.

Turn: Washington's Spies

The representation of British characters in Turn: Washington's Spies (2014-2017) is decidedly more uneven. Some are nuanced and sympathetic, like John Andre and Edmund Hewlett, while others are cartoonishly one-dimensional. King George, featured in both seasons three and four, is wholly defined by his erratic behavior. He has none of the humanity Tom Hollander's performance brings to the monarch in John Adams. Samuel Roukin's portrayal of John Graves Simcoe shares little in common with the historical figure on whom he is based besides his name and his Queen's Rangers uniform. And, bizarrely, his fate. All of things Simcoe accomplished that led to his being fondly remembered in Canada to this day are included in protagonist Abe Woodhull's long monologue in the final episode, but happen offscreen and after Simcoe's story ends for the purposes of the main plot. His accomplishments within the context of that story mainly consist of war crimes, many of which are carried out against other British soldiers, and most, if not all, of which are complete historical fabrications.

The character with whom Simcoe most often butts heads is Major Edmund Hewlett, a gentle, scholarly character who is himself a fabrication, not based on any singular, recognizable historical figure. The same may be said of Ensign Baker, the kindhearted British soldier quartered with the Woodhulls in season one. While these men do add nuance to Turn's representation of the British as a group, there is something a little back-handed about the most honorable British characters also being the most fictional ones. Turn's writers had no qualms about making a war criminal out of a historical figure when they needed one; why not do the same when they needed a sympathetic character?In contrast to Hewlett, another character based on a historical figure is also the chief enabler of Simcoe's atrocities. John Andre raised Simcoe to his position leading the Queen's Rangers precisely because of his brutal behavior, and he maintains that position until the end of series, drawing praise from officers like General Clinton and censure from others. Andre describes his a "necessary evil."

At the same time, Turn has a much clearer investment in presenting pro-independence colonials as "the good guys" than John Adams. Even the rare cases where such characters are presented in a negative light--Charles Lee, William Bradford, Benedict Arnold in the last two seasons--it is because they are traitors to "the cause" foremost, and their other unsavory qualities (like misogyny) are secondary. But while Turn's biases are clear in comparison to John Adams,' they pale into insignificance next to those evident in our final text.

The Patriot

The Patriot (2000) stands in contrast to both of these more recent texts in that what the Patriots, and in consequence most of the audience, believe about the British and what the film actually shows are very different. The British are not the most negatively represented here among the three texts; they are just the most hated.

The Patriots view Colonel Tavington's brutality as normal conduct for British officers, but apart from a couple of unrelated instances described by French Major Villeneuve and a South Carolinian enslaver we never see again, all violence against civilians is carried out on his orders, often to the horror of the men carrying them out. Commentary on this film is often very hard on the lieutenant taking Gabriel Martin into custody and Captain Wilkins burning the church, but ignores two key points. First, Tavington is the highest ranking officer on site in both scenarios and could easily give the same order to someone else if they refused, and second, Tavington is already flouting the rules of conduct regarding civilians. What is he going to do to subordinate officers disobeying him?

Protagonist Benjamin Martin condemns General Cornwallis for not restraining "your officers" (Tavington) from targeting civilians, but it is clear to the observant audience that he and General O'Hara (the only two characters in the film who keep the names of the historical figures on whom they are based) do restrain him. Martin, meanwhile, makes no effort to restrain his men from killing surrendering British soldiers even when he is present to do so, and his order forbidding them from doing so in the future proves very controversial.

These examples suggest very different moral codes operating in British/Loyalist and American/Patriot societies. Honor is of the utmost important to the British at large. While The Patriot does not depict George III, General Corwallis tells Tavington, "His Majesty, like history, rewards men who fight with honor." When Loyalist Captain Wilkins balks at Tavington's orders at Pembroke, the reason he gives is "There's no honor in this." Even as Tavington has little use for the concept of honor personally, he acknowledges that it is important to his culture of origin: "If I do this [ . . . ] I can never return to England with honor." Meanwhile, Martin's neighbors have been buying him drinks for years to commemorate his carnage at Fort Wilderness and it's impact on the French and Indian War's outcome. Patriots judge men for their results, not the conduct that produced them.

I have made a bit of fun of Tavington in the past for being so confident his prospects are better in America where he committed these atrocities than in England where people read about them in newspapers, but maybe he's right. He expresses no wish to remain in South Carolina following a British victory. He wants land in the Ohio territory. Considering the brutal conduct of newly minted "Americans" to the Native population of that region after the revolution, his credentials as a war criminal would likely have proven an asset rather than a burden.

The trouble is, he would still be British in this scenario, which is the true measure of a man's depravity according to The Patriot.

Conclusions

As much as I would love a British-made film or series presenting the American Revolution from the perspective of British soldiers serving in it, I think it is unlikely to ever happen (and if YOU know of one, please let me know!). John Adams, Turn, and The Patriot all have more to say about American Patriots than their British and Loyalist foes, although what they are saying about them is very different.

John Adams ends with a warning to future generations of Americans to use our freedoms wisely, or the sacrifices of those who shaped our origins as an independent country will all have been for naught. The implication is that if we cannot, it will be our own fault and not that of any other nation. Turn ends with flurry of nods to historical events to gloss over all the unhinged liberties it takes with historical accuracy in its main narrative, but it is consistent in viewing these events through America-tinted lenses. There is a reason the camera never shows us Simcoe's face as Abe Woodhull describes his role in making Canada a safe place for those escaping slavery; the brutal British thug of the series would be unrecognizable as such a benefactor. The Patriot ends with Martin and his surviving children and comrades in arms celebrating a "new world" that is identical to the old one in every respect except for not having British people in it.

What really separates these texts is perhaps not so much their generosity towards the British, or the lack thereof, but their degree of willingness to criticize Americas founders. John Adams the series, like John Adams the man, is nothing if not critical. Turn's criticisms are present, but they are very mild and avoid suggesting difficult questions to the audience (where were the formerly enslaved people Simcoe's Canada welcomed into its bosom fleeing from, exactly?). Perhaps the best way to characterize The Patriot's engagement with criticism of America is to point out how similar the militiamen are to the mob presented in the courtroom scenes in John Adams. The more vocal men of Boston seek to punish these young soldiers for the crimes of the crown, which Adams decries as dangerous and antithetical to the principles of a civilized society, which he believes Boston represents. The militiamen seek to punish Cornwallis's army for Tavington's crimes against civilians in lieu of doing anything to protect civilians from future war crimes, and this is presented as not only justifiable but heroic. Consequences who? Criticism? Never met her.

#american revolution #american revolution on screen #john adams 2008 #turn: washington's spies #the patriot 2000 #british representation #american representation #historical accuracy

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