Earthquakes
Movie vs Reality
A Little Bit of Information About This Article
In this article we will be talking about wether earthquakes in movies are the same as earthquakes in real life. We are going to see how realistic earthquakes in movies compared to reality. We will be looking at what the film creators used during the movie and also how real life earthquakes are caused and see if the movie is the same as reality.
The Film We Are Going to Be Using
The film that we are going to be using is the film called 'Earthquake' (1974) and the director's name is Mark Robson. With the main actor as Charlton Heston. The genre of the film is disaster film, action film, doomsday film and action/adventure.
What SFX/Effects Did They Use During The Movie?
The movie itself has a lot of special effects as seen during the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_BwX2fEUTo), in this trailer there are many things that you can tell are just special effects for example the fire, the explosions, the objects falling, the people falling off buildings, and others.
How often do Earthquakes occur in Los Angles?
Earthquakes occur very often (as mentioned on the 4th bullet point above on the facts about earthquakes), but it is really rare for an earthquake too be so strong like in this movie, causing buildings to collapse. Some earthquakes only last around 20 to 30 seconds, they would usually start off slow, then have a massive rumble, then everything would be over.
Facts About Earthquakes
- Natural events such as volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts can cause earthquakes, but the majority of naturally-occurring earthquakes are triggered by movement of the earth's plates.
- The earth's surface consists of 20 constantly moving plates. The pressure increase from shifting plates can cause the crust to break. This break allows stress to be released as energy, which moves through the earth in the form of waves (aka earthquakes).
- The earth's surface consists of 20 constantly moving plates. The pressure increase from shifting plates can cause the crust to break. This break allows stress to be released as energy, which moves through the earth in the form of waves (aka earthquakes).
- Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes -- the majority of which go unnoticed. However, if there is a large earthquake the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for months.
- The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska on March 28, 1964.
How Does the Earthquake Occur?
This is how earthquakes usually occur when 2 tectonic plates rub against each other together really hard. 1 tectonic plate going a certain direction and the other tectonic plate going the other way. During the tectonic plates rubbing against each other, on the surface it causes an earthquakes because the ground for us starts rumbling.
Some Evidence of the Movie
As you can see in this photo, everything is destroyed due to the earthquake, but if you look closely, there is 2 buildings in the middle of the screen perfectly fine some how. Around the image has buildings all destroyed and on fire but if that was to be so then why doesn't the 2 buildings get destroyed? Why do they look like they are new?
Conclussion
In conclusion, the movie is not that realistic, although some bits are but most of it isn't. For example, the actions that the people do during the movie is not smart at all for example they hide under cars as if they won't get crushed by something heavy falling from buildings. The effects of the earthquake was a bit too un-real. I think they might have done better to the movie if they had the people do smarter things and also if the earthquake was a bit more realistic because in the movie the earthquake was very exaggerated.