watching TV and the movies

[Cedarman]

Do any of you find your mind wondering from the plot while watching TV or movies and start looking at the lumber in old buildings?  Was it band sawn or circle sawn? What kind of wood is it? I look at stockades, fences, log trucks, sawmills etc.  Noticed a sawmill along side the road in Easy Rider.
I know I look at trees while traveling or flying.

[Buzz-sawyer]

In the movie OPEN RANGE, there is a sawmill in the town in the story. I studied it closely, and wondered why they had an insert tooth blade on the wall (historically inaccurate) :D :D :D :D

[Part_Timer]

I start watching for different styles of furniture in westerns.  I like the old simple ructic style.  Even the worst of westerns usually has 2 or 3 ideas for the workshop ;D

[Jeff]

Another movie I have seen a few times, that I just noticed had a sawmill at the beginning was Once Upon a Time in the West. 

[Tom]

I don't watch too many movies, bu, I am constantly cleaning the grass and brush out from under my fenders.  It seems that I get so enthralled examining the trees on the side of the road that wander over onto the shoulder.   It's a failing that I experience more on the woods roads rather than the hi-way.  I try to follow the lines when the road is paved.  :D

[Buzz-sawyer]

OK,
another  western is DANCES WITH WOLVES.it has an interesting powered pit saw type deal running in it.

[Ernie]

The Last Samurai  was filmed just up the road from us.  A mate of mine sold prunings from some willows near the river for a fortune for the buildings (They set the price and he just agreed) they did all the work and he banked the money.  They also dug up some old trees on another friend's farm and stuck leaves and blossoms onto them.  All those "cherry blossoms" are just stuck on fakes as are the leaves.  You can't tell them from the real thing even in closeups.

All I managed to do was lease them some cattle, but they pay well 8) 8) 8) 8)

Ernie

[Fraxinus]

I don't watch too many movies either, but one of the hazards of my occupation is that everywhere I go, I'm looking up at the utility poles and and what kind of shape the right of way is in.
Once when we were riding in Virginia, I said to my wife  "That's a cooperative line".  She said "How can you tell?"  I told her I could just tell by the way it was built, the hardware they used, etc.

[Patty]

This is a fun thread. When we are watching tv or a movie, I am always looking at the design of the house ; the furniture that is in it, etc. I love to look at house plans and designs. It is a habit I picked up from my mom. She would bring home stacks of house plan books and we would scour the pages looking for new ideas. My folks have built a few homes, Norm's dad was a house builder, so I guess we come by the house building trade naturally.

From the sounds of this thread, we all watch the tv, but don't seem to know what the show is about!  :D

[Brad_S.]

Ernie,
I was an extra once in a made for TV miniseries. I thought it was facinating to watch the behind the scenes, how'd they do that kind of Hollywood stuff, didn't you?
It changes the way you watch movies as much as sawing makes you change your movie watching habits.

Sawing is my job, so I try to leave it behind when I watch movies, but restoring antiques and old gas pumps is my hobby. Like Patty, I look at the furniture and also watch for gas pumps. I also watch to see if the props being used match the time period portrayed.

Worst offense I ever saw was "The Seven People You Meet In Heaven". They used an art deco diner set in a flashback of a Victorian couple meeting for the first time. :D

[Rockn H]

As a freight relocator, you have no idea how hard it is to quietly watch Black Dog with your kids.  They  r e a l l y  needed some advisors on that one, I tell ya.  ;D  On the other hand, I really enjoy watching TNT's westerns and find myself enjoying the props and settings as much as the story line itself.  Sometimes I wonder if the props used fit the era, but when you don't know, well, you don't know. : : : ;D

[Ernie]

I spent a fair bit of time with one of the special effect guys who was renting a place from a friend.  We got the low down on how they do a lot of the stuff, since I love explosives and making big bangs,  it was really interesting.

Ernie

[ohsoloco]

I can't even remember the name of the movie, but it was a foreign film playing here in town set back when they still executed people with a guillotine.  There was a close up of someone standing in a doorway, and the first thing that popped out at me was the power planer marks in the jamb.  I know that's a very small detail, but I'm so critical of planer marks in my furniture that they stick out like a sore thumb.

[populus]

My favorite movie featuring logging and mills is Sometimes a Great Notion (also called Never Give A Inch). 

My problem in watching movies is the trees - the vegetation is never quite right. In The Deer Hunter, we're expected to believe that the characters are hunting in Pennsylvania, but they're walking through spruce-fir forests, obviously the Rockies. In Last of the Mohicans, the characters are racing through upstate New York, but through thickets of rhododendron and sourwood (North Carolina). The Year of Living Dangerously is about Indonesia, but it is obviously the Philippines (from the vegetation and the people). Lord of the Rings has the characters riding through radiata pine plantations. I find this very distracting.

[asy]

Well, I guess I'm the saddest of the lot.

I sit watching telly with a laptop on my knee reading the forum.

So the planer marks and pine plantations dont worry me coz I usually miss them. :D

asy :D

[Ernie]

I gotta get me one of them laptops :D :D :D :D

Ernie

[Kevin_H.]

I seem to crack up anytime I see a ambulance scene in a movie, Imagine a grown man yelling into the tv " Your putting him in backwards"

Ok a gun shot to the chest will get ya two large bore IV's  :D

And I have never Defibrillated some one while standing on my hands so that my feet wont be in water. ( third watch)

I have been doing this since 1986 and I have yet to have a cardiac monitor make that long beep sound when some one is in asystole ( Flat line)

[asy]

asystole ( Flat line)

I didn't!!!   

PROMISE!!!   :-\

I didn't steal ANY lines, much less a flat one...    :-[

How could you ACCUSE ME!   :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

asy :D

[Gipper]

Was off the road twice today looking at a large section of mountain that had been clear-cut, for what appeared to be some kind of mining operation.  Don't know if the timber was wasted or logged.  There was no sign of logs lying around anywhere.  A lot of good timber is wasted in this area under those type operations.  :(   The wife seemed to think I should be paying more attention to the driving.  Said she would do the timber watching. ;D

On watching the tube, particualrly the old westerns, I'm always looking at the big trees as well as the type of buildings and furniture.  In a couple different westerns I saw recently, a house had a board and batten roof.  I guess they must have been in an area of not much rainfall, but there sure were some nice big pine trees in the area!  :D

[ScottAR]

Being a machinery nut can be distracting as well.   The funniest one I remember was on (of all places) the history channel.   A dramatic recreation/documentary about the building of hoover dam.  A "new deal" era project does not have a late 60's model Cat D8 with hydraulic blade cruising the site.   : :D