Hollywood Bird Blunders
11/24/2009
Bodies were piling up, and crime scene investigators were closing in on their killer. Soon another TV forensic mystery would be solved. But something was off: CSI had the wrong bird. A house wren—common dweller of woodlots and suburban backyards—was calling from the desert.
Despite paying meticulous attention to other details
that bring movies and TV shows to life, Hollywood is notorious for blundering when it comes to casting birds.
“In my experience, inaccuracy is the norm,” says bird guide author and Audubon magazine field editor Kenn Kaufman. “It’s typical and expected for films to have the wrong bird sounds in the background. Which is sort of bizarre when you consider how much birdsong lends to a sense of place. Even if you don’t know what the birds are, you still might associate the sounds with the place if you’ve been there.”
In fact, Tinsel Town has a long history of making bird mistakes, says Kaufmann. “In 1948, in his book Birds Over America, Roger Tory Peterson wrote about it. He pointed out that typical California birds could often be heard in the background in films that were supposedly set elsewhere. (He even joked about how Hollywood had extended the known range of some of those birds.)”
Here are some favorite examples from Kaufmann and fellow bird experts and movie fans, including bird guide author David Allen Sibley and National Audubon’s Director of Bird Conservation Greg Butcher.
Kaufmann: “Crimes of the Heart. It was supposed to be set in the Deep South, but the soundtrack included a cacophony of birds found elsewhere: shorebirds on the tundra, sparrows of the northern prairies, etc. It stands out in my memory as the most diverse, and inaccurate, set of birds I've heard in any film.
“At the opposite extreme, the best/most accurate bird background sounds I've ever heard were in The Piano, directed by Jane Campion. It was set in New Zealand, and everything I heard in the background was in fact an expected New Zealand bird (many of which have very distinctive voices).”
David Allen Sibley: “One of my personal favorites is in one of the Indiana Jones movies. The opening scene in a steamy tropical jungle includes the sound of a displaying male Willow Ptarmigan [a bird of the Arctic tundra]. Another, like many other examples, was a movie set in the Colorado Rockies in winter that included Alder Flycatcher and Mourning Warbler singing, both extremely rare in Colorado at any season, absent from the US in winter, and I think the scene had them singing at night!”
Greg Butcher: "In Dances with Wolves, a bunch of doves is shown on the ground near Kevin Costner. One of them is a Ringed Turtle-Dove, which is basically a domestic version of an African dove. Definitely not something that would have been found in the Wild West 140 years ago."
Have you caught one of Hollywood's bird bloopers? Drop us a comment. We want to hear about it.
Hollywood birds
Great piece Rene... I wish I could read more. Not having a good ear for bird sound, I don't have any blunders to share but wish I could watch Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film "Syndromes and a Century" with Kaufman or Butcher. His films are typically quiet and in this particular one, the birds deserved a best supporting actor nomination! A somewhat related question: Is there any truth to an item in "Nature" magazine regarding Hitchcock's "The Birds" being based on an actual news event? Something about Sooty Shearwaters being poisoned by contaminated plankton? It would be fun to hear the experts weigh in on that and the film in general.
Awesome article on this subject
Check out "Movies Don't Give a Hoot" by Audubon's Graham Chisholm in the Washington Post.
Here's a sampling from Chisholm's article:
Of course, the movie that gave birds a truly starring role, Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," used no natural bird sounds at all. It relied on screeches created by a trautonium (an electronic musical instrument) and used a mix of live and mechanical birds to scare the wits out of a generation of would-be birdwatchers.
Take the movie "Ever After." While reveling in Drew Barrymore's alfresco lunch with the queen of France, we suddenly hear the cry of a . . . North American alder flycatcher? Brad Pitt might as well have flashed his Hanes boxers beneath a Trojan tunic.
European hooded crows in the soundtrack and in the trees, and the directors of "Cold Mountain" want us to believe we're in Appalachia? If "Apocalypto" takes place during the Mayan era, then why do cattle egrets flap by majestic temples -- 400 years before their arrival in the Americas from Africa?
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" features birds from three continents, impossibly sharing the same habitat. "Pearl Harbor" gives us the first recorded sighting of a Western scrub jay outside the mainland -- on a golf course in Oahu. Set in Sierra Leone, "Blood Diamond" features at least four birds from the Western Hemisphere, including a bobwhite.
So many examples! The tv
So many examples! The tv show "Brothers and Sisters," which takes place in LA, had a short outdoor scene a couple of weeks ago replete with Black-capped Chickadee calls. The opening of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" likewise included chickadee calls--in China! Radio ads for French wine often include House Wren song. Radio ads for Californian wine include European bird song! There used to be an Air Canada ad that featured penguins. There was a recent CSI scene supposedly in salt flats in Nevada (it looked more like Californian sage brush habitat). House Wren was a very prominent feature of the sound track.
My favorite example of use of bird sounds in popular media is the sound track of Beloved. I don't think there is anything inaccurate--the story takes place in Ohio. Prominent in the track are the songs of various North American thrushes. At the climax--and only at the climax--the song of a Veery is heard, while action is reduced to slow motion. Overall, this movie shows great care in selecting bird sounds--they are accurate to the region, beautiful, and tastefully organized.
hollywood birds
In the Showtime TV series "The Tudors", 1st season, there is a scene where a falconer in 1500s England is holding what appears to be a Harris Hawk. In one scene of The Philadelphia Story, a Bullocks Oriole is sitting in a tree near (where else) Philadelphia. In one scene of The Great Escape, one British prisoner is giving a talk on birding to other Brit military types, with a Masked Shrike as the topic (unlikely, but maybe not a real blunder).
Yours is an interesting
Yours is an interesting lecturer to Hollywood filmmakers on the birds and their sounds. It is true we need not physically see a bird to assign a peculiar sound to it. Simply from the sound of a bird, we can understand the place it belongs to. I think, it is due to lack of experience and interest, such bizarre sound combinations occur in some of the famous films. Some sort of research work and keen interest is required to produce true effects of birds sounds.panic Away Review
Its an interesting piece of
Its an interesting piece of work. I hope the Hollywood filmmakers must not have been aware of the peculiarity of birds and and their songs. It is only the curious mind and with a heart for the birds, can find the difference between the mundane and the extraordinary. Thanks for the nice information.juicer reviews
A lot of these hollywood
A lot of these hollywood producers do not know anything about birds. This is why there are so many mix ups. I see this mix ups all the time. This really makes me laugh. Lace Wigs
Interesting!
I often notice things that are "out of place" in movies and television but I have never paid any attention to the sound of birds in the background. I suspect that you have changed that now.
New Way of Watching
This is a new way of looking at these movies, that's for darn sure. Being able to appreciate the small nuances of whether or not they got the correct bird calling at the correct time in the correct part of the world. Of course I wonder how much of a damper it put on the movie when you realize they got it wrong and now you can't enjoy it because you're too distracted!panic away review