The tiniest village church has an organ equivalent to the one in York Minster. Come to think of it, the bells are the same.
Every monastery has a monastic choir chanting in the background, with the abbot and/or several monks busying themselves with entirely non-liturgical matters in the foyer or even outside (and in one film I don't remember the name of, they were chanting the introit for Maundy/Holy Thursday Mass, yet the abbot was in the vestibule in habit only, apparently with no plans to go to that Mass and no vestments he would wear if he went).
And the smallest church or chapel has bells as sonorous as Big Ben or Old Tom and a peal of at least 8.
Don't forget that the only hymns that are well known are The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, All things bright and beautiful, and Jerusalem - or you could get lucky and for it to be Harvest Festival, in which case you can expect We plough the fields.
And the smallest church or chapel has bells as sonorous as Big Ben or Old Tom and a peal of at least 8.
With expert ringers to match.
Oh yes: if there is a cremation taking place, and vital evidence is concealed with the body, it is vital that the process be halted just before the coffin goes through the little doors (never a curtain) because, as everyone knows, they lead directly into the Fiery Furnace.
Yes. It would be a great cliffhanger ending to an episode with the next episode beginning with the reality of what happens on the other side if the doors - funeral director removing floral tributes, coffin being wheeled through towards the cremator.
[Sorry about that last post folks. I had typed a comment which I decided against posting, but every time I opened the thread it still appeared in my comment box. It seemed the only way to get rid of it was to post something even if only two dots.]
I was going to pick up Baptist Trainfan's comment about railways. One problem with filming historical scenes on present day 'heritage' railways is that there is little authentic rolling stock left: most have to manage with 1950s BR-era carriages which might at a pinch suit Agatha Christie but certainly not Conan Doyle. Nevertheless it is disconcerting when characters join one train at the start of their journey and descend from a totally different one a few minutes later.
WHY don't film/ television people know that Mendelssohn's Wedding March is (in 99.9% of cases) played as a couple leave a church, not when a bride walks up the aisle?
A classic case in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster (the otherwise well-presented TV series with Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie, filmed back in the 90s, I think), where the village church sports a white altar frontal, but the Vicar wears a green stole...
In any case, the service is apparently Evensong, as the hymn immediately after the sermon is The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended...
At least the Vicar was (apart from that stole) neatly vested in cassock, and surplice, of approved style.
WHY don't film/ television people know that Mendelssohn's Wedding March is (in 99.9% of cases) played as a couple leave a church, not when a bride walks up the aisle?
I thought television shows and movies always used Wagner for wedding processions? (Though I have never heard it used in a real life wedding).
WHY don't film/ television people know that Mendelssohn's Wedding March is (in 99.9% of cases) played as a couple leave a church, not when a bride walks up the aisle?
I thought television shows and movies always used Wagner for wedding processions? (Though I have never heard it used in a real life wedding).
Wagner going in, Mendelssohn coming out. When I first started doing weddings, these two pieces were still quite popular. Too cliched now, I expect. Haven't heard them for ages. Mostly recorded music; or if live or classical, the notorious Albinoni Adagio - also known as the Cellist's Nightmare. Going out, maybe Queen of Sheba, and I've heard a few renditions of Widor's Toccatta, too.
One problem with filming historical scenes on present day 'heritage' railways is that there is little authentic rolling stock left: most have to manage with 1950s BR-era carriages which might at a pinch suit Agatha Christie but certainly not Conan Doyle.
There's a fair amount around if you know where to go Bluebell Railway, Isle of Wight, Worth Valley, Kent & East Sussex are probably the best but there are a few others.
Nevertheless it is disconcerting when characters join one train at the start of their journey and descend from a totally different one a few minutes later.
Indeed.
My wife is a dance enthusiast and gets annoyed with "out of period" dance sequences.
... My wife is a dance enthusiast and gets annoyed with "out of period" dance sequences.
I could be completely wrong on this, as it's not my field, but I'd be very surprised if the dance sequence with the clapping in Sanditon last night ever existed in the C19 at all, yet alone before the death of George III.
There were some other fairly bad errors as well.
Fortunately, the railway had not been invented then, and there were no ecclesiastical events for them to foul up either.
On the one about trains changing during journeys, there's a scene in quite a well known film from about 1950 where a train manages to change engines between appearing at one end of the platform and stopping at the other. It's a change that should be visible even to a non-railway nerd. The change is from a King Arthur to what would then have been a fairly new unrebuilt Spam (Bulleid Pacific).
On the one about trains changing during journeys, there's a scene in quite a well known film from about 1950 where a train manages to change engines between appearing at one end of the platform and stopping at the other. It's a change that should be visible even to a non-railway nerd. The change is from a King Arthur to what would then have been a fairly new unrebuilt Spam (Bulleid Pacific).
The same still happens with Michael Portillo's journeys - he gets into a Sprinter and alights from a Pacer etc. Inevitable I suppose if they want to get their camera shots within a realistic timeframe,
Have you noticed how many present day trains in films are Mk.2 carriages or 1960s DMUs? Much easier to film on a preserved line than on Network Rail,
Have you noticed how many present day trains in films are Mk.2 carriages or 1960s DMUs? Much easier to film on a preserved line than on Network Rail,
Yes, especially on TV adverts. Also, when filming any advert with buses, they invariably have an old bus with a conductor in a smart uniform with a peaked cap.
To get back on subject, any vicars in aforementioned adverts are always old bald headed men with glasses.
WHY don't film/ television people know that Mendelssohn's Wedding March is (in 99.9% of cases) played as a couple leave a church, not when a bride walks up the aisle?
Because, as already explained, it's a trope. Complete accuracy is impossible, if only because any media portrayal of events is going to be massively condensed in time. Weddings take, basically, a whole day. Producers need a quick, simple, conventionally accepted way of giving the viewers visual and audio clues that a wedding is happening within the space of a few seconds. The Wedding March is the accepted auditory way of letting people know that's happening. It's not as if producers never attend any weddings or are all tone deaf.
One of the things that drives me mad in series depicting French prisons is that every time a gate from one section of the prison to another opens, you get the electronic buzzer noise and metallic clank that's the staple of every US prison movie you've ever seen. I've yet to be in a jail anywhere in the world where I've heard that noise and I'm certain it's not to be heard in any French prison, but I'm certain that if the noise wasn't there people who don't spend their time in prisons would be complaining it "didn't sound like a prison". Sacrificing accuracy at some point is a necessary evil of narrative structure.
<snip>It's not as if producers never attend any weddings or are all tone deaf.<snip>
But they definitely can be gobsmackingly ignorant.
I have all too vivid memories of a request (in August) of a self-proclaimed "Executive Producer and Personal Assistant to X (very famous US star actor/director)" to come into the place where I was then working to record "The piece of music they play at the end of a catholic mass" - oh, and the call came in just before 4pm and the recording needed to be on a flight back to California leaving before 10am the next day.
Historical documentaries that use modern (overdramatic/intrusive) background music when something from the period would be much more educational/atmospheric.
Gets right on my udders!
<snip>It's not as if producers never attend any weddings or are all tone deaf.<snip>
But they definitely can be gobsmackingly ignorant.
I have all too vivid memories of a request (in August) of a self-proclaimed "Executive Producer and Personal Assistant to X (very famous US star actor/director)" to come into the place where I was then working to record "The piece of music they play at the end of a catholic mass" - oh, and the call came in just before 4pm and the recording needed to be on a flight back to California leaving before 10am the next day.
And what 'piece' did you duly supply them with?
There's ample scope for a Badly Behaved Organist there, I'm sure (not that I'm saying you would have done anything Naughty, but... ).
Me and a mate from Another Place spent an evening playing various things according to the description said EP&PA gave of "the piece". We tried Choral Song Wesley, Marche Pontificale Widor, Final from Symphonies 1, 4,and 6 Vierne, Choral Prelude "Nun danket" Karg Elert, plus numerous other bits and pieces by a variety of people from Bach to Walton. We never heard any more about the project, and have no idea what, if any, music was used if the film was made.
BUT we did get a stonking fee out of it for waiving our copyright
Scottish dramas and documentaries which use Irish music.
My wife is good for at least 20 minutes verbal abuse on that topic having been a bagpiper for many years. She has quite an extensive knowledge of Scottish traditional music and was one of the first women to play in competition bands in the USA in the 1970s. One of gentler rebukes is "well, there are some common tunes between the two traditions but that isn't one of them." On other occasions her vocabulary is more reminiscent of a Glaswegian docker.
The ITV Austen adaptation the other day that used Aaron Copland's Hoe-down!
Is that what it was? I'm fairly sure that would have been what I was referring to with the clapping.
Whatever it was, for the setting, it was rubbish. And it jarred badly.
On bagpipes, Scotland and Ireland, I suspect a lot of film producers don't realise that there are more that one sort of bagpipe. Because they are more atmospheric, I quite often hears what are obviously uilleann pipes playing in the background in an attempt to create atmosphere in scenes set in the Scottish Highlands. The British Isles contain at least six varieties, several of which sound strikingly different from each other.
The ITV Austen adaptation the other day that used Aaron Copland's Hoe-down!
Giving myself a severe talking to - Copland nicked an old folk tune called Bonypart's Retreat for his ballet.
That will teach me to do the research first and the post!
This tune. https://youtube.com/watch?v=5K9b-YnSJQI
Despite its name it seems to be an American fiddle tune with no record of it in the UK - but surely tunes will have travelled back and forth.
Weddings that are meant to be in English churches which get it all wrong. Worst example is The Wedding Date which has the bride preceded by "flower girls" walking in on her father's left arm - it should be bride on her father's right arm and in the UK they are called bridesmaids, as any fule no.
They always get the words wrong mixing up "I will" and "I do"
And the smallest church or chapel has bells as sonorous as Big Ben or Old Tom and a peal of at least 8.
Don't forget that the only hymns that are well known are The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, All things bright and beautiful, and Jerusalem - or you could get lucky and for it to be Harvest Festival, in which case you can expect We plough the fields.
Nope for a funeral it has to be "Rock of Ages" played on a wheezing harmonium
I always particularly like the upside down crosses in horror movies. That’s hardly the most blasphemous thing in Christian Iconography. I mean, I think my cathedral has a representation of an upside down cross in one of the stained glass windows.
Right, St. Peter's Cross. Near me a Lutheran St. Peter's Church has upside down crosses along its windows.
Right, I was given a green stole with an upside-down cross entwined with a fish (which I do use from time to time), clearly for St Peter!
The pulpit fall with the Star of David on it gets some funny looks in our place. Good job it is a green one; if it were violet I would be too tempted to have a little fun with those who question its appropriateness.
These days I find that 16th and 17th century settings produce the worst cock-ups in terms of civil dress, especially as they do not seem to be able to absorb the idea that Anglican Episcopal choir habit was originally every day formal dress, and has changed very little since 1500. The way Cranmer etc., were depicted in the Tudors was particularly farcical, but that that was not an isolated example.
Granchester with a black Vicar? Would've ben run right out of the village even in the 1970's or 80's
Not so. Berkhamstead had a black assistant curate in the late 1970s, and he moved from there in, I think, 1981 to be vicar of a rural parish near Essex.
Granchester with a black Vicar? Would've ben run right out of the village even in the 1970's or 80's
Not so. Berkhamstead had a black assistant curate in the late 1970s, and he moved from there in, I think, 1981 to be vicar of a rural parish near Essex.
That's Berkhamstead. All I'm saying is that Granchester (and Cambridge as well tbh) were another kettle of fish entirely.
My late mother moved to a village in north Norfolk in 1986. She had worked in a London children's home before retirement, and some of her former "children" came to visit her. Some of them were black; and (shall we say?) curtains twitched if they were seen. Even today, rural Norfolk is very, very white.
This is prolonging the tangent, I guess, but IIRC, the Town Of My Yoof (around 1965) had just ONE Afro-Caribbean family - at least, to my own knowledge.
Jimmy (the Dad) was much in demand at Christmas to play the black Wise Man...
This in a town of (then) some 25000 peeps, just under 30 miles from London.
Whenever anyone visits a church outside of service times (i.e. on a weekday), the vicar will either be practising the organ or tidying the hymn books.
More likely, if my experience is anything to go on to be out visiting shut-ins, or in the Vicarage struggling with diocesan paperwork or next week's sermons, trying to round up someone to fix the ancient heating plant (again), or at another mindless committee meeting. Actually being in church is a rare event except for services, though in this parish I do have an office down there where I spend two or three mornings a week (mainly to get away from the Rectory phone!)
++Nerd alert: Tonight "Countryfile" had an excellent item on WW2 evacuees. Included was a short clip of a railway locomotive, 35028 "Clan Line". But:
- it wasn't even built (or designed!) in 1939.
- even if it had been built, what we saw was the 1950s rebuild.
- it was in British Railways (i.e. post-1948) livery.
Shame. I like Bulleid Pacifics, and IMNSHO the rebuilds were more impressive-looking than the originals, but yes.
The class was first introduced during the War (as Uncle Albert would say), but not 1939. Surely, a nice Maunsell Mogul would have been more appropriate? Some of them have been preserved, IIRC.
IOW, the correct materials are often to hand for film/TV work, but I suppose that, sometimes, it's too much of an effort/too expensive to do the thing properly.
Whenever anyone visits a church outside of service times (i.e. on a weekday), the vicar will either be practising the organ or tidying the hymn books.
More likely, if my experience is anything to go on to be out visiting shut-ins, or in the Vicarage struggling with diocesan paperwork or next week's sermons, trying to round up someone to fix the ancient heating plant (again), or at another mindless committee meeting. Actually being in church is a rare event except for services, though in this parish I do have an office down there where I spend two or three mornings a week (mainly to get away from the Rectory phone!)
Yes, that’s what really happens, but that’s not what this thread is about
I don't think it's happened yet ... but we'll probably at some stage encounter a Vicar in a Jane Austen-era drama intoning familiar words from Common Worship ....
Sanditon again. No. There was a brief scene at church. We had a bizarrely hilarious sermon - which I have to admit, that though unlikely, was brilliant - but no liturgical bits. Church attendance was much more at the level of mid➔late century. The fast set in Sanditon would have been unlikely to be present on an ordinary Sunday morning in 1815. The worst error, though, was that the vicar crossed himself while talking to some parishioners. Nobody in the CofE did that until the late C19. It was quite rare away from Anglo-Catholics even 50 years ago.
@Baptist Trainfan I didn't see that, but I agree. Producers ought to check their facts, and to have known that.
All the Merchant Navies were rebuilt. Even if there were a surviving unrebuilt one, the profile of the air-smoothing was initially slightly different.
Not all the light Pacifics were rebuilt and there are mote than one preserved unrebuilt ones, but they weren't introduced until 1945, and the air-smoothing would be wrong now anyway.
Comments
Every monastery has a monastic choir chanting in the background, with the abbot and/or several monks busying themselves with entirely non-liturgical matters in the foyer or even outside (and in one film I don't remember the name of, they were chanting the introit for Maundy/Holy Thursday Mass, yet the abbot was in the vestibule in habit only, apparently with no plans to go to that Mass and no vestments he would wear if he went).
Don't forget that the only hymns that are well known are The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, All things bright and beautiful, and Jerusalem - or you could get lucky and for it to be Harvest Festival, in which case you can expect We plough the fields.
Oh yes: if there is a cremation taking place, and vital evidence is concealed with the body, it is vital that the process be halted just before the coffin goes through the little doors (never a curtain) because, as everyone knows, they lead directly into the Fiery Furnace.
I was going to pick up Baptist Trainfan's comment about railways. One problem with filming historical scenes on present day 'heritage' railways is that there is little authentic rolling stock left: most have to manage with 1950s BR-era carriages which might at a pinch suit Agatha Christie but certainly not Conan Doyle. Nevertheless it is disconcerting when characters join one train at the start of their journey and descend from a totally different one a few minutes later.
In any case, the service is apparently Evensong, as the hymn immediately after the sermon is The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended...
At least the Vicar was (apart from that stole) neatly vested in cassock, and surplice, of approved style.
I thought television shows and movies always used Wagner for wedding processions? (Though I have never heard it used in a real life wedding).
Wagner going in, Mendelssohn coming out. When I first started doing weddings, these two pieces were still quite popular. Too cliched now, I expect. Haven't heard them for ages. Mostly recorded music; or if live or classical, the notorious Albinoni Adagio - also known as the Cellist's Nightmare. Going out, maybe Queen of Sheba, and I've heard a few renditions of Widor's Toccatta, too.
Indeed.
My wife is a dance enthusiast and gets annoyed with "out of period" dance sequences.
There were some other fairly bad errors as well.
Fortunately, the railway had not been invented then, and there were no ecclesiastical events for them to foul up either.
On the one about trains changing during journeys, there's a scene in quite a well known film from about 1950 where a train manages to change engines between appearing at one end of the platform and stopping at the other. It's a change that should be visible even to a non-railway nerd. The change is from a King Arthur to what would then have been a fairly new unrebuilt Spam (Bulleid Pacific).
Have you noticed how many present day trains in films are Mk.2 carriages or 1960s DMUs? Much easier to film on a preserved line than on Network Rail,
Yes, especially on TV adverts. Also, when filming any advert with buses, they invariably have an old bus with a conductor in a smart uniform with a peaked cap.
To get back on subject, any vicars in aforementioned adverts are always old bald headed men with glasses.
Because, as already explained, it's a trope. Complete accuracy is impossible, if only because any media portrayal of events is going to be massively condensed in time. Weddings take, basically, a whole day. Producers need a quick, simple, conventionally accepted way of giving the viewers visual and audio clues that a wedding is happening within the space of a few seconds. The Wedding March is the accepted auditory way of letting people know that's happening. It's not as if producers never attend any weddings or are all tone deaf.
One of the things that drives me mad in series depicting French prisons is that every time a gate from one section of the prison to another opens, you get the electronic buzzer noise and metallic clank that's the staple of every US prison movie you've ever seen. I've yet to be in a jail anywhere in the world where I've heard that noise and I'm certain it's not to be heard in any French prison, but I'm certain that if the noise wasn't there people who don't spend their time in prisons would be complaining it "didn't sound like a prison". Sacrificing accuracy at some point is a necessary evil of narrative structure.
But they definitely can be gobsmackingly ignorant.
I have all too vivid memories of a request (in August) of a self-proclaimed "Executive Producer and Personal Assistant to X (very famous US star actor/director)" to come into the place where I was then working to record "The piece of music they play at the end of a catholic mass" - oh, and the call came in just before 4pm and the recording needed to be on a flight back to California leaving before 10am the next day.
Gets right on my udders!
And what 'piece' did you duly supply them with?
There's ample scope for a Badly Behaved Organist there, I'm sure (not that I'm saying you would have done anything Naughty, but...
BUT we did get a stonking fee out of it for waiving our copyright
My wife is good for at least 20 minutes verbal abuse on that topic having been a bagpiper for many years. She has quite an extensive knowledge of Scottish traditional music and was one of the first women to play in competition bands in the USA in the 1970s. One of gentler rebukes is "well, there are some common tunes between the two traditions but that isn't one of them." On other occasions her vocabulary is more reminiscent of a Glaswegian docker.
Whatever it was, for the setting, it was rubbish. And it jarred badly.
On bagpipes, Scotland and Ireland, I suspect a lot of film producers don't realise that there are more that one sort of bagpipe. Because they are more atmospheric, I quite often hears what are obviously uilleann pipes playing in the background in an attempt to create atmosphere in scenes set in the Scottish Highlands. The British Isles contain at least six varieties, several of which sound strikingly different from each other.
Giving myself a severe talking to - Copland nicked an old folk tune called Bonypart's Retreat for his ballet.
That will teach me to do the research first and the post!
If so, a neat bit of research on someone's part, perhaps.
Is this it?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nnKft5vT5_0
This tune.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5K9b-YnSJQI
Despite its name it seems to be an American fiddle tune with no record of it in the UK - but surely tunes will have travelled back and forth.
They always get the words wrong mixing up "I will" and "I do"
Nope for a funeral it has to be "Rock of Ages" played on a wheezing harmonium
Right, I was given a green stole with an upside-down cross entwined with a fish (which I do use from time to time), clearly for St Peter!
These days I find that 16th and 17th century settings produce the worst cock-ups in terms of civil dress, especially as they do not seem to be able to absorb the idea that Anglican Episcopal choir habit was originally every day formal dress, and has changed very little since 1500. The way Cranmer etc., were depicted in the Tudors was particularly farcical, but that that was not an isolated example.
Not so. Berkhamstead had a black assistant curate in the late 1970s, and he moved from there in, I think, 1981 to be vicar of a rural parish near Essex.
Jimmy (the Dad) was much in demand at Christmas to play the black Wise Man...
This in a town of (then) some 25000 peeps, just under 30 miles from London.
More likely, if my experience is anything to go on to be out visiting shut-ins, or in the Vicarage struggling with diocesan paperwork or next week's sermons, trying to round up someone to fix the ancient heating plant (again), or at another mindless committee meeting. Actually being in church is a rare event except for services, though in this parish I do have an office down there where I spend two or three mornings a week (mainly to get away from the Rectory phone!)
- it wasn't even built (or designed!) in 1939.
- even if it had been built, what we saw was the 1950s rebuild.
- it was in British Railways (i.e. post-1948) livery.
Grrr ...
The class was first introduced during the War (as Uncle Albert would say), but not 1939. Surely, a nice Maunsell Mogul would have been more appropriate? Some of them have been preserved, IIRC.
IOW, the correct materials are often to hand for film/TV work, but I suppose that, sometimes, it's too much of an effort/too expensive to do the thing properly.
Bulleid also built a very interesting turf burner for CIE in the 1950s as well as being the presiding genius of Irish Dieselisation.
The Wikipedia article includes pix of original, and rebuilt, engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Merchant_Navy_class
Yes, that’s what really happens, but that’s not what this thread is about
@Baptist Trainfan I didn't see that, but I agree. Producers ought to check their facts, and to have known that.
All the Merchant Navies were rebuilt. Even if there were a surviving unrebuilt one, the profile of the air-smoothing was initially slightly different.
Not all the light Pacifics were rebuilt and there are mote than one preserved unrebuilt ones, but they weren't introduced until 1945, and the air-smoothing would be wrong now anyway.
A Maunsell Mogul would have been much better.