Fake penguins, and other shady telly shenanigans

I've just been watching Penguins - Spy in the Huddle which includes this shot with a digitally duplicated penguin (the two on the left):



This was a good few years after the polar bear scandal that gripped the nation back in 2011. Such innocent times...

Anyway, it got me thinking about other times TV has deceived us. There were the fixed 50s gameshows on American TV, but one bit of gameshow fakery I remember was less scandalous but a bit bizarre.

It was a Lily Savage episode of Blankety Blank . The first half proceeded as usual, but when the set span round for the second game, the same man appeared to be in one of the seats with a different name and a different jumper. There were laughs and played-up confusion from Lily. They never actually said they were twins, but that was obviously what you were supposed to think.

It gets even weirder because at the end of the episode, when all the contestant come back to mill around, they had what appeared to be a stand-in for the "twin" keeping his back to the camera.

Then there was The Crystal Maze , where they would occasionally intervene when a game went really terribly.

I also still have my suspicions that The Great Reality TV Swindle was a hoax about a hoax. At least of the contestants was a jobbing actor (not that that proves anything).

More conventionally, it was always fun to watch Bergerac if you live in Jersey just to spot him driving round a corner and teleport 9 miles, or running from one side of the island to another in 10 seconds.

When else has TV lied to us, either maliciously or randomly?

All TV is a lie, nothing is or can be real

The late Dale Winton’s wedding to Nell McAndrew was a sham for TV.

Chromakey, and AR?

Indeed, the first time I saw a programme that was shot near me, it was fun seeing characters approach the end of the street, and then suddenly be in an industrial estate 13 miles away. Or to see how something like a water splashing effect has to be simulated.

Films have used the trick of cutting from one site to another miles away for years, nothing new for TV there.
It is down to having the right area for the production to work in, and the right look on screen.
There are reasons why when the corner is turned it is somewhere else.
It can go too far, as many US made films in London often during any car journey would have all the famous sites Big Ben, Tower Bridge, St Pauls etc together as the shots cut, and this has been parodied many times.

There's a difference between intervening for the sake of it and intervening because some prat has charged into it like a bull in a china shop and made the game more difficult and/or impossible than it needed to be. Anyway Crystal, it is documented, was only ever made with two cameras - one filming the game, the other outside. Vast majority of the reactions and pickups were done the following day.

Anyway the thing with Twenty One is it was a deliberate attempt to manipulate the outcome, in fact in the case of Twenty One the entire charade was effectively scripted. That's what caused the scandal. The only reason they decided to rig the show was because it was otherwise looking it was going to be a dismal failure, and the sponsor wasn't happy either that it was looking bad for the format.



"No signal". On many occasions.

Oh yeah, it's fun to see as someone who knows the area, but at the same time you see that it's also seamless.

In the second Kingsman film, the car chase is filmed in streets around Birmingham until they get to the lake in Hyde Park.

Lots of Hustle from series 6 was filmed in Birmingham too despite being set in London, some of the outdoor scenes would be very familiar to Brummies. The opening scene of series 6 episode 1 for example is filmed under the Queensway right by the Mailbox.

I saw a movie recently, can't remember its name, and I gave up after 20 mins, that had a car explode in Primrose St in the City of London. I noticed only because I spent many months working there. However they had CGI'd The Gherkin building at the end of the street. It's close to The Gherkin, but the building is 'round the corner' from the end of that street. They may as well have shot the scene somewhere far cheaper, and CGI'd the building into that !

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5207112,-0.0806,3a,75y,106.19h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s7o4NNityk9h-ecLuPrUIUA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D7o4NNityk9h-ecLuPrUIUA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D115.01216%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

Are movies not real?

Wait, what? Was this ever reported? They CGI-duplicated a penguin, and that manipulated footage is still going out on the BBC??