Coffee Cups
 

This has nothing whatsoever to do with filmmaking, per se. But it's been on my mind for quite a long time and I figured that someone here (Charles?) might be able to offer an explanation.

Why is it that 9 times out of 10 (statistical sampling not scientific) the same design of paper coffee cup is used in films? You know, the 8oz blue and white cups that look like the kind you sometimes see in Chinese restaurants. Is it because one company supplies such common props?

Let me add another question...if I may, Ken. Why is it that you always see people in movies and TV wearing the same 1940s-style robe, it's kind of an earthy rust colored big thick style with white Indian-style designs?

Start noticing robes in movies and on TV and you'll be amazed how many times it appears.

Hey, if Hollywood can recycle the same damn story 40 times over in a given year, they sure can use the same props in multiple movies!

Also, I hate to be the one to reveal it to you guys, but there is actually only one prop shop in all Hollywood, and it is operated out of the basement of Steven Spielberg's home. True story.

Speaking of coffee cups, I was watching one of those behind the scenes shows about the LOTR and I saw all the cast drinking coffee durung break in filming. They just stopped the action, and stayed on set. The cups were tan.

Here was the question I had-Do you use earth tone cups so if a few end up on film, they will blend in, of do you use bright red so that they can be seen and rounded up easily by the PAs?

I would imagine it's because they're "Starbucks" cups.

No, it's because they're all taken from Spielberg's basement. True story.

What a disappointment. Here I thought this thread was going to announce the sale of DVINFO coffee mugs on cafepress.com. I was all set to buy one. Oh well, back to the Bugs Bunny mug.

If such mugs exists one day, I will surely order one! This could be a cool way to sponsorise this board. Drinking my 8734643 coffees while editing in a DVINFO mug could be inspiring!

Oops. Sorry guys. I didn't mean to mislead.

My related pet peeve is that 9 times out of 10 you can tell that the coffee cups are actually empty and they're pantomiming drinking, or even if there is some liquid in them it clearly isn't hot coffee just based on how they handle them.

In my own field, practical liquids and glassware on stage are always a tricky issue. Years ago when they came out with those fake plastic champagne glasses we thought this was a huge boon to stage props to have something that was both inexpensive and unbreakable. But a director that I often work with absolutely refuses to have them. He says that if somebody does drop one that plastic sound will completely ruin a scene, and he would much rather deal with cleaning up a broken glass. Actually, I suppose he could be right about this...

The bigger problem with edible-consumption scenes is continuity.

Is the glass half full, or half empty?

I recently attended a talk given by Conrad Gonzales, one of the three editors for the HBO series "The Sopranos". During the q&a someone asked how the editors deal with continuity on a series in which so many scenes feature someone eating.

He grinned and shrugged. He said they do their best but basically had to put that consideration on the back row for most scenes. It was a futile effort. They count on the quality of the story and the acting to distract the viewer for many scenes.

Of course his remarks beg you to re-watch episodes looking for errors.

... which calls to mind one of my all time favorite commercials, the Alka-Seltzer "That's-a-spicy meat-a-ball-a" :-)

Watched a Dinner for Five episode a while back on IFC where Jon Favreau was talking to an editor of how some old-time actors really had it down pat as to how to get more screen time...

They would take a sip from a glass, or just hold a glass or something when their line is being spoken, and then put it down when the other person speaks. When you cut back, the lack of glass throws off the flow of continuity a bit, so the editor would often keep showing them until they put the glass down.

How tricky!

<<<-- Originally posted by Boyd Ostroff : My related pet peeve is that 9 times out of 10 you can tell that the coffee cups are actually empty and they're pantomiming drinking, or even if there is some liquid in them it clearly isn't hot coffee just based on how they handle them.->>>

I think the best pantomimer I've seen to date of this deceptively simple action was Gary Cole who played the boss (Bill Lumbergh) in "Office Space". His ubiquitious coffee cup is a theme of his character and his thoughtful (evil plotting!) sipping punctuates his scenes. I was surprised to discover after a week or two that the cup was always empty (you couldn't see it from the camera perspective) because he did such a good job of faking it.

See, those acting schools like the Actors Studio, are so busy getting their students to connect with their characters' inner souls, they forget to cover the basics. They ought to train actors on things like

Beverage Sipping 101
Deals with the trials of proper beverage sipping. The half cup. The full cup. The empty cup. Empathizing with the character's thirst.

Phone Management 101
Covers basics such as how people do not pick up 2 milliseconds after you're done dialing.

Music Listening 101
Covers how the perfect song for your character's emotion is not always playing on the radio at the appropriate time. Often times the song is not even one you know all the words to.

Computer Skills 101
Discussions of how normal people have to use the ENTIRE keyboard when typing. Includes workshops on mastering the mouse, which for some reason never appears to be used though it is required for computer usage. Also covers the strange phenomenon of computer programmers, hackers and general business users in film somehow working on Macs (e.g., banking software programming on a Mac in Office Space, or hacking an alien spaceship with a Powerbook in ID4).

And much, much more!

<<<-- Originally posted by Imran Zaidi : Computer Skills 101
Discussions of how normal people have to use the ENTIRE keyboard when typing. -->>>

I saw an interview with Sandra Bullock discussing "The Net". She said they wrote a simple computer program that would feed out a text file one character at a time when any key was pressed on the keyboard. What a surprise, that she wasn't really typing all that stuff! ;-)

In films people go out on a 6-week trek through the wilderness and sling on their 6 foot backpack as if it's their wives handbag!

Yeah, I've seen those "type any character" programs in use. Actors dig not having to be accurate with their props.

Regarding Apple product placement: the company is VERY active in getting Macs on screen. And when the show ends, the gear gets sold off for half price--I've gotten a few nice toys that way.

But yes, they are usually in the wrong places like business environments. And we often end up covering the glowing Apple logos on late model Powerbooks because they are too distracting.

By the way, for "Office Space" fans, I've just learned that Mike Judge is finally doing another live action feature, "3001". Nope, I won't be working on this one though.

As Kirk once said: "sounds like fun!"

In defense of actors: I once did an Amazing Stories in which the director thought it would be fun if my character was always eating. In all of my scenes, I was munching on a candy bar, a cookie, a hamburger, etc. This is all fine and good, until you remember that, at minimum, each scene required at least three takes -- a master, pickups for me and pickups for the actor I was talking with. In practice, we did as many as 30 takes for each scene (the shoot ran three days over schedule, which is a lot for a 1-hour episodic). I had spit bags available but, for many scenes, it simply wasn't possible to use them -- the scenes were too long and I had to swallow some time. At the end of each day, I was literally sick from eating dozens of candy bars, cookies, etc. For one sequence (which involved a monkey stealing french fries from my plate -- don't get me started!) I actually _ate_ 7 hamburgers (and spat out many more). Needless to say, I didn't get to take advantage of the production catering and spent more than my share of time at the honeywagon.

If you see actors "faking" drinking coffee, it's because the produce didn't want to provide catheters.

Okay, I have an answer to the original question. I can't promise it's the correct answer, in fact it's probably not, but it's the one that's commonly repeated here in New York. Those blue cups are an institution in New York City to the point that when someone goes to get coffee, people will say "no blue cups," meaning "get real coffee." All the street vendors and people like that have the blue cups because supposedly they were overproduced on a massive scale years ago and the distributor has been trying to get rid of them ever since, to the point of practically giving them away. You always see those cups in cop shows in New York City, probably because it's considered local color. Every New Yorker would be distracted if the cup looked like anything else. You also have to assume it's the most readily available prop anyway because those damn cups are everywhere. I couldn't imagine why they would be used in a film set anywhere else, and in fact, I can only ever remember seeing them in shows that take place in New York City. They were drinking them tonight on Law and Order, as a matter of fact.

That's an interesting side note, Marco. I've never noticed them. Anyone have a pic?

Ah, Marco, thank you! I suspected that such might be the explanation!

Oh yeah, those! They've got that sort of "Ancient Greece" theme pattern on them in blue and white. I think of them as diner cups, the ones you get when you get a coffee to go in NYC.

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles Papert : Regarding Apple product placement: the company is VERY active in getting Macs on screen. -->>>

The February issue of MacWorld has a feature on the 20th anniversary of the Mac with some interesting celebrity columns. Rpber Ebert writes