The Coconut Effect: Difference between revisions

** In the making of ''[[WALL-E]]'', the Pixar animators brought in renowned cinematographer Roger Deakins to demonstrate real-world lighting and camera techniques, using real cameras, lenses and lights, which they then replicated digitally in the film. He was highly amused they wanted to duplicate effects that technicians and equipment makers have been trying since the advent of film to eliminate.

** There's been a jarring trend for makers of [[3D Movie]]s to add in lens flare and ''then'' apply 3D effects to it. This makes ''lens flare'' come out of the screen towards you.

* Morse code is always received as through a WWII-era radio: bee-beep-beep-bee-bee-beep.

* Use of defibrillators (those machines that deliver a short pulse of electric current via two paddles when someone has one of a number of heart condition emergencies) always causes the recipient to flex up from the bed. And never in real life. It looks slightly less dramatic in real life, if it weren't for, erm, it being in real life.

** "[[Poltergeist]]" is one movie where lightning flashes silently, followed by the rumble of thunder several seconds afterwards, but this is actually a plot point.

* Swords tend to make [[Audible Sharpness|a metal-on-metal scraping sound]] when drawn, no matter what the scabbards are made of. The first metal scabbards which really do make this sound come from the late 19th century. Scabbards were of leather and wood before that.

** The visual commentary from ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'' states that the metal-on-metal sound is just for dramatic effect; if a scabbard were designed in a way that would produce that sound would likely end up ruining the blade's cutting edge.

** In his Little Movie Glossary, [[Roger Ebert]] describes the application of this cliche to slasher movies as "The [[Alice in Wonderland|Snicker-Snack]] Effect":

** Mountain lions are a victim of this all too often as well. Unlike some of their cousins, the cougar does not roar; instead it shrieks or lets out a growl much like a house cat would, albeit much louder and with a deeper tone. In some movies however, cougars roar like lions but a few notes higher on the octave scale. The ''mountain lion'' name is misleading - bear in mind the [[I Have Many Names|cougar/puma/mountain lion/etc/etc]] is a big small cat not a small big one ... i.e. it is not a slimmed-down version of the true big cats but in fact is the largest of the small cats, with vocalisations to match.

* From vampire stakings to target-sheets at firing ranges, countless film and television images depict the heart as being located in the upper left quadrant of the chest cavity. It's actually in the ''center'' of the chest, and much lower, about where the sensation of acid reflux is felt. (Hence, the term "heartburn" ... which is also anatomically inaccurate.)

** Ultimately, ''any'' recorded media will, by definition, be compromised by the recording and playback equipment used. Different mics have different properties, speakers vary wildly in tone, the media itself will always have an effect, even "lossless." When people say they prefer to hear a "realistic" sound quality, they really mean a quality that sounds pleasing to their ears, hence people who like the "warmth" of vinyl are simply preferring the artifacts of that form.

* The Uzi, vz. 61, MAC-10, and many other submachine guns are shown so rarely with their stocks extended or unfolded in any medium that most people truly believe they're actually pistols and that the folded or collapsed stocks are some deranged-looking part of the working mechanisms. The SPAS-12 and Striker-12 (to a lesser extent) also suffer from it. All folding stocks in movies in general tend to get hit with it but the aforementioned ones pretty much never see any exceptions to this rule, causing the issue.

** The distinctive "ping" sound of M1 Garands make is very soft compared to the round firing. You're more likely to hear it because the clip hit something hard.

* Here are few things about fruit that you may seem wrong if they aren't portrayed wrong:

** ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'' and ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'', on the other hand, actually both got this right. There's even a boss where you're told to hit coconuts back at him. This trope is so ingrained that some players will try to hit the [[Violation of Common Sense|big brown rocks that are clearly on fire]] instead of the harmless green things.

*** Likewise with ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]''.

** ''Airplane 2'' has a similar effect, but on a space shuttle.

* ''[[Cowboys and Aliens]]'' featured incredibly overdone punch sounds, similar to those in ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' (this may have been intentional due to the presence of Harrison Ford in the movie). Jake's punches seemed to be even louder and more exaggerated than other characters.

 

== Literature ==

* [[Crate Expectations]] has become a sort of coconut effect. Almost every game that involves ammo (and many that don't) have crates that must be broken to get ammo. [[Valve]], for example, found this out during playtesting of [[Half Life]]. They attempted to avoid including crates, but so many people wanted something to use the crowbar on and get ammo from that they eventually had to give in.

* [[Exploding Barrels]] could easily be classified as this. By now, most people realize that shooting a barrel won't actually cause it to explode, but for a game to not have explosives that can be triggered by shooting them would be just odd to the gaming audience.

* Every [[Platform Game]] since ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' has had a special sound effect for when the hero jumps, except for some of the ''[[Metroid]]'' games (but the [[Double Jump]] made a woosh noise to indicate the upgrade activating). Then again, [[Jump Physics]] in platformers is generally not realistic.

** This even affects the 'realistic' platformers as seen in the SNES' heyday. Climbing up 3 straight-jump-up ledges in a row makes it sound like the hero of say, Flashback, is attempting to drop a log cabin in an outhouse. The boingy springy sound gets replaced with 'old man toilet grunts.'

** The Blackberry Storm tried to remedy this by making the entire screen a button. Needless to say, the phone didn't really take off.

** Nokia addressed this by using the vibrator to gently shake the phone when a "button" is touched.

** Talk to any serious typist and you'll find just how important physical and auditory feedback is... it's why some people will shell out $70–$100 for Model M keyboards.

** In fact, The Coconut Effect is an ''essential'' component of user-interface design. People (there are ''extremely'' rare exceptions) get frustrated when devices don't behave the way they expect them to, which includes fake buttons clicking.

** [[Mass Effect]] addresses this by stating that a man typing on a holographic keyboard usually wears gloves which provide feedback. A real hacker implants chips in his fingers.

** The Wii remote had an interesting method to simulate the "feel" of buttons: every time your cursor passes over a button, the controller makes a very slight vibration.

* Many low-end digital cameras attempt to simulate the old-fashioned shutter click when taking a picture - some even have inbuilt mechanical contraptions specifically to that effect.

** Consumer digital cameras still ''have'' an old-fashioned shutter click, what with them having shutters, although the noise is practically inaudible in comparison to a $5 disposable camera. The sound they're emulating is more like the action of the reflex mirror in an SLR camera, with a hint of motor-driven film feeding, which is the stereotypical "taking a photograph" sound.

** In the earliest remotes (like the one linked), the clicking sound wasn't just a resultant of a mechanical button being moved, it's how they sent the signal to the T.V. Each button flicked a different tine, setting it resonating (like a tuning fork), and the T.V. was able to detect this sound; different tones would trigger different functions. Naturally, there isn't a lot of bandwith there, so these early remote controls did little more than adjust the volume, power, and sometimes change the channels. It was only later that televisions began to be signalled electrically, first by wired remote and later wireless (via infrared or radio-frequency).

* Oddly, for years after the introduction of early B&W televisions, it was assumed by a significant number of people that dreaming in monochrome was the norm and dreaming in color was a rarity. If you could have asked someone from a time before the age of TV if they dreamed in black and white, they'd look at you funny like you just said the sky is green with pink polka dots.

* Digital telephones have a clause in their governing standards that mandates the use of "[[wikipedia:Comfort noise|comfort noise]]", a soft hissing generated in the receiving end, in order to fake the atmospheric noise from normal land lines. The most often cited reason: in a normal analog telephone, a soft hissing means the line is working fine, whereas complete silence means the line is dead, and the audio data sent by digital phones is pretty much impervious to atmospheric noise and thus it must be added. Another reason is that while the silence is encoded as true silence, transmitted speech always contains some noise from the speaker's environment and speech encoding. If comfort noise was not added during silence, the end result would be a chopping background noise whenever the speaker says something.

** Similarly, Bell System engineers discovered long ago that feeding the speaker's voice back into the earpiece prevented users from shouting into their phones. This feature, called sidetone, actually had to be carefully calibrated; too much and users will speak too softly. Most cell phones are on the soft end of the extreme, which is why people on cell phones in public are often so obnoxious.