Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 4

= April 4 =

How do they make films like that?
I just watched The Full Metal Jacket, a Stanley Kubrick's film, a movie made 12 years after the Vietnam War ended. In the movie there are rows and rows of bombed out buildings, skeletal remains actually, with fires inside and outside. The impression is that they are miles in every direction. The ground is littered with just every piece of junk imaginable. How did they make it so realistic? I don't even mention dozens of tanks. The same thing with The Killing Fields, although the background there is tropical countryside. In one scene, thousands of Cambodian peasants are digging a circular hole in the ground, perhaps half a mile in diameter, presumably their own grave. The soil is wet clay.

So, how do they make films like this?

Thanks, - AboutFace 22 (talk) 03:22, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * See Special effects. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:22, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Full Metal Jacket—You can do a lot of things if you have the budget. Stanley Kubrick was notorious for being meticulous and obsessed with detail. --47.146.60.177 (talk) 05:57, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There's also the idea of how to carefully block a scene in film so as to add illusion of greater depth of scene. By composing a frame a certain way, you can turn a small bit of scenery in a back lot into a much more impressive looking scene.  -- Jayron 32 10:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding The Killing Fields, there's a rather well-known documentary (more of a monologue) about the making of it by Spalding Gray titled Swimming to Cambodia which goes into some detail on its production. -- Jayron 32 10:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

As for the tanks, Kubric actually purchased vintage tanks from a collector. The model cited was M41 Walker Bulldog.

If the budget is large enough, film production can afford purchasing or renting retro vehicles, weapons, and other equipment. For The Birth of a Nation (1915), D. W. Griffith managed to purchase or rent actual artillery from the United States Military Academy. Dimadick (talk) 09:20, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * So he literally got bang for his buck? Clarityfiend (talk) 09:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)


 * They filmed it in England, in the 1980s. That's what England looked like in the Thatcher years.
 * More specifically it's Beckton Gas Works. Kubrick did have to restore a few bits to make it look more like Huế. East London isn't noted for its use of traditional Vietnamese moon gates, although one of them (the courtyard where they rest) was removed from the set afterwards and ended up in a restaurant. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:48, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This article suggests that it was the adjacent Royal Docks site, but perhaps it was both. The London docks were unsuitable for modern shipping and were being redeveloped by the London Docklands Development Corporation. Film 87 - How Docklands became Vietnam shows how the transformation was achieved. London was chosen because Kubrick had a phobia of flying and refused to go overseas; see Kubrick’s Fear of Flying Affected His Career. Alansplodge (talk) 15:52, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Speaking more generally, the US military is often happy to lend/loan equipment out. It doesn't hurt their PR and can definitely help them a great deal. Even silly stuff like I Dream of Jeannie made use of military resources on occasion. We should probably have an article on it as it's a very common occurrence. Some stuff here. Matt Deres (talk) 13:05, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. For a non-specialist like me it is incomprehensible. AboutFace 22 (talk) 17:25, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Filmmaking has come a long way since The Great Train Robbery (1903 film), where sharp-eyed viewers saw concrete curbs of a modern street, in the foreground of one shot. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thus heralding a long tradition of bloopers in film. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:34, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not clear to me when the 1903 film was set. Surely they had kerbstones in the 19th century? Alansplodge (talk) 23:54, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In Britain, roads only became fully made up in the last century.  "Tarmac gangs" went round the country in the 1940s. 92.19.170.76 (talk) 12:42, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but if they had kerbstones in 1903, they probably would have had them in the 1890s when the film seems to have been set. Or maybe I'm missing something. Alansplodge (talk) 16:12, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Kerbs are nothing new.  The Oxford English Dictionary has a quote from 1805:

"A young man .. fell down off the kirb, in Thames-street."


 * "Kerbs are nothing new." The main article is curb. Apparently they became widely used in the 18th century, though there are earlier examples.


 * "Although curbs have been used throughout modern history, and indeed were present in ancient Pompeii, their widespread construction and use only began in the 18th century, as a part of the various movements towards city beautification that were attempted in the period."
 * "A series of Paving Acts in the 18th century, especially the 1766 Paving and Lighting Act, authorized the City of London Corporation to create footways along the streets of London, pave them with Purbeck stone (the thoroughfare in the middle was generally cobblestone) and raise them above street level with curbs forming the separation. Previously, small wooden bollards had been put up to demarcate the area of the street reserved for pedestrian use. The Corporation was also made responsible for the regular upkeep of the roads, including their cleaning and repair, for which they charged a tax from 1766. "
 * "By the late 18th century, this method of separating pedestrians from carriageways had largely been supplanted by the use of curbs. With the introduction of macadam roads in the early 19th-century, curbs became ubiquitous in the streets of London. " Dimadick (talk) 07:28, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Adoption in the US
If the immigrant parents pass away, then are the children placed into US foster care or sent back to the country of origin to live with extended relatives? Does the citizenship of the child matter - whether the child is foreign-born or US-born? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 17:34, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming that for the purpose of your question, they don't have any family in the US (because either the kid would stay with them or be deported with them).
 * If the kid was born in the US, it would be harder to send them to their parents' country of origin unless that country's quality of life was comparable to the US, the kid's extended family was begging to adopt the kid, the kid spent more time there than in the US, and the kid says they want to go. Still, there are a few activist judges who would try to send them "to be with their families" anyway because some on the US extreme-far-right seem to have forgotten that (except for Native Americans) what Jus sanguinis laws we do have only work because of Jus soli laws.
 * If the kid is not a citizen, it would depend on the country of origin (lower quality of life = more likely to stay), how much of the kid's life was lived in the US (more time in the US = more likely to stay), and the political leanings of the judge (liberal = more likely to stay). Ian.thomson (talk) 18:04, 4 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Does the US attempt to find extended relatives even if they are overseas? How can the US confirm that some US-based relatives are present? What happens if there are two or more children involved where the older child is a foreign national and the younger child is US-born American? What happens if the country of origin is politically unstable, and the immigrant parents are really refugees? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 19:06, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It probably depends on what part of the US the kid is in (poorer areas have fewer resources to contact foreign relatives), the country of origin in question, and whether the other family members are/were legal or undocumented immigrants.
 * The court's job is to go with the kid's best interest as far as is possible within the law. Left-wing judges are somewhat more inclined to disregard the law in favor of the child, far-right-wing judges are somewhat more inclined to favor the law over the child.  Ian.thomson (talk) 20:54, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Bear in mind also that it doesn't have to be the US attempting to find. Very often in this day and age, immigrant families are not completely out of touch with their relatives including those back wherever they came from. It's likely therefore that the death of the parents will make it back to the extended family and anyone interested in take over the care of the children will get involved themselves. Also about Ian.thomson's first response, while I think we can understand the point they were making, the presence of relatives in the US is not always going to mean they are the ones to take over care. Often parents will find someone who they'd ask to take over care and in such cases it's likely these people will follow through if they are in the US. (If the parents did choose someone outside the US for whatever reason, while even with legal documentation the court doesn't have to follow this, there's probably a reasonable chance they will if there's nothing to suggest the parents will be bad parents and everyone supports it.) Even without that, it's common relatives especially if they live in the US themselves will step up. But not everyone may feel they are able or otherwise be willing to take over care. It would seem likely on rare occasions the reason may even be because they have children but are in the US without proper documentation and fear they will be deported if they get involved in any legal process that may be necessary. Nil Einne (talk) 07:03, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

"If the kid is not a citizen, it would depend on the country of origin (lower quality of life = more likely to stay)"

Depending on the case, the kid in question may be stateless: "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". By 2015, there were about 4 million people worldwide who were stateless, not recognized as citizens by any state in the world. Europe alone had about 600,000 stateless persons, and the situation is actually worse in a number of other continents. Dimadick (talk) 16:46, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * While not denying statelessness is a real problem, it's a lot less common in the US than in a lot of other parts of the world though because of the strong jus soli in the US, and much of the Americas. If the kid was born in the US, they will almost definitely be a US citizen. Similar with Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala etc. This is not to say it never happens, especially as the US is not a signatory of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Nil Einne (talk) 06:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)