FYI, there are five books in the Earthsea cycle. It was originally a trilogy, but LeGuin kept adding bit by bit after. The fourth book was published about 20 years after the third, and the fifth 10 years after that.
She even subtitled the fourth book “The Last Book of Earthsea” and then went on and wrote a fifth one after that.
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That would be the
to which I referred.
Every time that one red-tailed hawk calls in any movie. It’s like the only bird of prey recording the movie industry has ever had. It’s the bird version of the Wilhelm Scream.
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And like the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm Scream, that hawk probably never saw any royalties either.
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I’ve always wanted to make a supercut of red-tailed hawk calls in film and TV, but…that seems like too much work.
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Sorry, I thought you were referring to her short story collection “Tales from Earthsea.” It’s part of the Earthsea universe but not really part of the Earthsea cycle.
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I just discovered a fascinating reason for that, at least in the U.S., if this article on the Audubon site is correct:
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And what just came to mind is the coconut scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail…
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No apology necessary. I actually think I still have a box set with “Earthsea Trilogy” printed on it, packed away somewhere. I bought it in the 70s. It’s probably only people of a certain age who still think of those books as the trilogy, although the 18 years between book 3 and 4 along with the different tone of books 4 and 5 make a case for thinking of the trilogy as a thing. All of which is a mile off topic so I had best mention how scientifically literate Ms Leguin was to keep the moderators happy - although Earthsea is mighty full of magic and dragons…
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Oh, yeah… the new version of “Lost in Space.” Where the forest on the alien planet looks exactly like the forest in western Washington State, with random tropical plants here and there.
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But that doesn’t explain it in every case. After all, that famous red-tailed hawk is a North American bird.
And then there was the “Spoonful of Sugar” song from Mary Poppins – where somehow she finds an American robin in London!
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Oh, definitely doesn’t explain it all. It’s just an interesting facet.
You know, I wonder if anyone has ever tried going to wildlife rehabilitation centers, sanctuaries or zoos and recording accurate animal sounds, and then tried to sell them in Hollywood (“These are accurate!”), only to be told, “Nah, we already have a foley library full of classics and in our opinion audiences either appreciate the familiar over the accurate, or enjoy adding nits to the IMDB pages, so no thanks.”
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I can accept that explanation. Of course I wasn’t expecting the movie to be scientifically correct anyhow
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This explains why birds you see in U.S. films can’t be native U.S. birds. However, bird songs can be taped and then the tape used anywhere.
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Literally every overseas location in NCIS: Los Angeles appears to be somewhere in southern California. I could swear I’ve seen the same “road through a dusty canyon” billed as Afghanistan, Yemen and Baja California. At least the last one is ecologically plausible.
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Aldo Leopold famously wrote,
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
Aside from the poor form in referring to this hypothetical ecologist as only “he,” it seems relevant to this discussion (and especially @jasonhernandez74’s comments about Hawai’i). Knowing about the natural history in general can make it terribly difficult to enjoy mass media unless you “make believe that the consequences of [natural history in media] are none of [your] business” or you go around as the doctor correcting things.
That said, the Common Loons calling in Stranger Things in suburban Indiana will always take me out of the moment a bit.
I’m also someone who tries to determine filming location if a gull flies through a shot on accident so maybe I’m just a weirdo.
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My nature knowledge has not only spoiled fiction for me, but destroyed it. I’m too busy with iNaturalist and finding critters, now.
I noticed that in a few Planet Earth episodes, they had birds calling that didn’t even occur in the locality. Of course, probably most/all of the sound effects there didn’t happen in situ… but it is still a brilliant movie.
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Remember the movie Holes? Obviously the yellow-spotted lizards are fictional so they had to paint some bearded dragons. But I can’t watch that movie without laughing at everyone cowering in fear of little bearded dragons.
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I was rewatching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and during one comedic song there’s a eagle referenced in a lyric accompanied by a red-tailed hawk sound, and it always makes me smile.
It works well since Heather is so blasé about the whole thing (and, in-universe, has taken every class the college offers, so she probably knows the difference and just doesn’t care).
In that case, I feel like my nature/foley knowledge enhances it, rather than spoils it.
Hah, I love the posters of the last one, so typical, and in some the name even reads as gorkч. :D
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