This ad catched my 26-year old (young?) eyes in a newspaper recently, and I just had to make a post about it.
What is so irritating about it?
Is it the fact that this mediocre youngsters book series is turned into a hugely popular money-making movie machine?
Is it that they just had to turn a trilogy into a tetralogy (more correct term than quadrilogy, based on Greek rather than Latin in this case), that the last book just had to be made into two separate movies, like they did with other (much better, in my opinion) youngsters book series turned into a film series (including wizards if you didn't guess already)?
Is it the amount of liquify they used to make Jennifer Lawrences waist a tiny bit thinner and her legs more than a tiny bit longer?
Is it the cheapest of cheap looking graphical device of flames surrounding everything?
Is it the very much overused font choice of Bank Gothic, the "standard movie font when you have no imagination at all"?
It isn't even all those things together. But it's the archery, or the lack of it for that matter. Let me delve with you deeper into the more or less mystical aspects of bowmanship (or bowwomanship?), with my usual list of...
Mistakes:
- The biggest mistake here is that there wasn't actually a bow present in the shooting of this photograph! From the very first look at this poster the whole thing seemed more than a bit off. It was unnerving to me and when I looked closer I realised that the odd feeling came from the fact that the bow in this photo is computer generated. How do I know this? From several reasons: the arms of Ms. Lawrence look very relaxed, the muscles are not stretched and the fingers don't seem to hold anything with a firm grasp. She might have had something in her left hand though, but nothing in her right, it seems. Why would they do that? Because they are idiots who think that nothing is perfect enough if it's not made with computer (ahem... late career Peter Jackson complex). But it's just horrible, and doesn't look real at all.
- The second mistake is also the mistake of the guy who generated the computer bow for this. When we draw a rectangle around the bow (any type of bow) the ears of the bent bow should reach the middle point of the rectangle. One half for bow, the other half for string. Then the bow is properly made (or drawn, with a pen that is, or computer). This bow has too short string, or then it bends too much. In either case the bow ears bend over the middle of the box I've drawn around it. The little white arrows show the places where the bows each end should reach while it is fully drawn.
- Another mistake by the CGI guy, who apparently didn't look very closely to a real bow while attempting to create one. The bowstring is not attached to the nocks of the bow! This looks ridiculous and is bad since you wouldn't be able to shoot with it, and even if you would, it would make the shot less powerful, since now not all the power of the bow is harnessed by the string. The little green arrow shows the point of the nock on the bow, where the string should be attached.
- Beginners mistake (still Jennifer, still this one after several archery movies you've been in?) of keeping forefinger above the arrow. It should hold there with gravity and your fist below it. If not, something else is wrong with the position of your hand, but putting a finger around it won't help that, it just makes it painful to shoot since the fletching of the arrow will hit your fingers. It can also affect the flight of the missile, and damage the fletching.
- She has three fingered archery gloves designed for Mediterranean grip, which is the standard in Europe (and western world) anyway, but she is only using two fingers to draw the bowstring. Why is that? Just another CGI mistake perhaps?
- The hand (and string and arrow) is not quite high enough, it should be closer to her mouth. But the photography director has obviously commanded her to keep it lower in order for all the people to see her lips. Womans luscious red lips have to be seen always, that's the Rule I-don't-know-which-number in the books of movie makers.
- Where are her arrows? Of course she didn't have a quiver, if she didn't even have bow the day they photoshooted, but should the CGI-guy have put it on her later? Can't shoot much without arrows you know.
- This stance. It's not a stance. It's a jump. You can't shoot properly while jumping if you're not Lars-Andersen-level-archer. Which Katniss is not. Aim would be terrible.
Good:
Her arms form a nice parallel line with the arrow, which is always good. But that should also always be expected of every archer on the planet.
