- Joined
- Mar 31, 2009
- Messages
- 4,484
- Reaction score
- 437
- Location
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Website
- donnetowntoday.blogspot.com
Just saw this in a Netflix movie ("What Happened to Monday"); I think I've seen it in half a dozen movies:
A character uses a microwave oven as an improvised bomb, by putting something dangerous in it like cans of spray paint. They set the microwave for, say, a minute. The idea is that the local strong electrical fields and the sparks they cause in the air will eventually make the item blow up in a satisfying way.
Now, in real life, either this won't work (the arcin' and sparkin' will just damage the interior of the oven and maybe disable the magnetron) or it'll work after an unpredictable number of seconds. Boom.
But, in the movie, what happens? The explosion waits until the full minute counts down on the microwave, as if it were a time bomb, and goes boom just as it beeps "Done". Whereas, realistically if no explosion has occurred by then, you'd expect that it might not happen at all, since the microwave has now turned itself off and is no longer putting energy into the equation.
Anyway, if you write a scene like that, don't have the explosion magically happen just as the microwave timer gets to zero. It'll piss people off and take them out of the movie. Have it happen when the timer is at, say 37 seconds. Or forget about the timer. Surprise people.
A character uses a microwave oven as an improvised bomb, by putting something dangerous in it like cans of spray paint. They set the microwave for, say, a minute. The idea is that the local strong electrical fields and the sparks they cause in the air will eventually make the item blow up in a satisfying way.
Now, in real life, either this won't work (the arcin' and sparkin' will just damage the interior of the oven and maybe disable the magnetron) or it'll work after an unpredictable number of seconds. Boom.
But, in the movie, what happens? The explosion waits until the full minute counts down on the microwave, as if it were a time bomb, and goes boom just as it beeps "Done". Whereas, realistically if no explosion has occurred by then, you'd expect that it might not happen at all, since the microwave has now turned itself off and is no longer putting energy into the equation.
Anyway, if you write a scene like that, don't have the explosion magically happen just as the microwave timer gets to zero. It'll piss people off and take them out of the movie. Have it happen when the timer is at, say 37 seconds. Or forget about the timer. Surprise people.
But this is good advice for the next time!