Established Member
I keep seeing the ads on tv for the upcoming movie "White Noise."
The basis of the movie (as far as I can tell) is that you can hear dead people through the white noise on electronics.
One of the things that they mention is something like "based on the real phenomenon."
It may just be from spending too much time here with you folks that I am saying this, but that does not sound like a real thing. Is this just another woo-woo thing, or is there something to it?
Order of Kilopi
Nothing but audible pareidolia.
Senior Member
Totally woowoo. The promoters are "banking" on the general public seeing "based on real phenomena" and running out to the theaters.Originally Posted by NASA Fan
To use that method of promotion makes me think that it isn't a very good movie.
Established Member
I saw a long infomercial type ad for this movie at the theater a couple of months ago. There were a couple of "experts" on the phenomenon of electric voice projection or some nonsense. The tactic they used that made me kind of mad was placing the word or phrase you are supposed to hear up on the screen in giant green letters to assist you in hearing it as they played some noise in the background. When I got home from the theater I looked at the website they were advertising and it was full of all kind of interesting theories (stated as fact, of course) about the afterlife and why the dead hang out and try to contact you trough your mp3 player. The whole thing seems rather implausible to say the least.
Established Member
It must be a stinker since it is going to be a January release which is movie terms is when they unleash the hounds!
After I saw the trialer it reminded me of Crow T. Robot's method of dealing with bad films: "I want to find the people who made this film and hurt them, but I know I can never hurt them as much as they hurt me."
8)
Order of Kilopi
Google for EVP -- Electronic Voice Phenomenon (or Phenomena)
Check out the Skeptic's Dictionary.
In the olden days, ghosts had to communicate with the living by rattling chains. In this modern era, they use the radio!
Established Member
Here's a site put up by some people who take their stuff onto the George Noory show from time to time.
LINK
Woo-wooism aside, is this really something you can base an entire movie around? Once you get past the gimmick, what else can this be besides your dime-a-dozen Hollywood ghost story?
Established Member
You'd think ghosts had better things to do than talk to woo-woos...
Established Member
Will the sequel involves ghosts typing things into your word processor if you leave it on for a long time and leave the room or go to sleep? And then, in the shocking prequel, people leave tape recorders in graveyards overnight.
I was really disappointed in the word processor phenomenon, by the way. I tried it, and all the spirits typed was 'shut down your computer, idiot.'
Cheers, Jon
Banned
I just saw the (longer than normal) commercial. I turned my head away to see if I could hear what was being said without the written text displayed on the screen. I found the 'EVP' mostly inaudible.
One of the 'EVP' does sound like someone saying 'get out of the house'. The sentence was not fluent, though. It sounded like someone cut the tape to make it appear to say 'get out of the house'. :roll:
Established Member
Yeah, that one was fairy clear, but I would like to see some evidence that it wasn't just some normal living person saying it with a lot of background noise. I doubt any such evidence will be forthcoming.I just saw the (longer than normal) commercial. I turned my head away to see if I could hear what was being said without the written text displayed on the screen. I found the 'EVP' mostly inaudible.
One of the 'EVP' does sound like someone saying 'get out of the house'. The sentence was not fluent, though. It sounded like someone cut the tape to make it appear to say 'get out of the house'. :roll:
The whole thing takes me back to my childhood when my Baptist Church became concerned about all those messages hidden in Led Zepplin albums. I never heard what they heard, but I did manage to get beat down by my older brother for ruining one of his LPs by trying to listen to it backwards.
Banned
I’ve only seen the commercial twice, but for the most part, the audible messages are not audible without the much needed help of the text messages.
DON'T look at the TV when viewing the commercial! The commercial starts out like an infomercial for the weird - that's your first clue! Look away.
It reminds me of my cat when he got locked in the cabinet. I could hear him saying… LET ME OUT! But, in reality, he was saying MEEEEEOWWWWW!
Administrator
A quick Google found a Random Word Generator LINK. What a great way to talk with the dead. Here are the results of my first converstation (I limited the ghost to 7 words):
newfangled thumbprint middlebrow mythologer technician jackhammer dazzlement
Man, that was amazing! 8-[
Established Member
For a minute there I thought you meant the book. Had to read it in class. "Ohhh, some day I'm going to die... but how... but when... must not let class know I can't speak German, how will I die? When will I die? Oh no, I breathed toxic vapors, I now know I finally encountered something that can kill me, maybe, if I actually breathed it. Did I? But when will I die. My wife is hiding a pill problem. When will I die. I'm so focused on death, and the fact I can't speack German but teach Hitler Studies. When will I die? Ack! A toster!"
Pages and pages and pages focusing on death, and how he can't speak German and how modern technology scares him.
Somewhere around page 34 the book met a grizzly end at the teeth of my lawn mower. (OK, I lied, I only fantasized about feeding it to the lawn mower.) I didn't do to good on that test.
I've yet to figure out what these peoples are taking when they sit down to decide what's a classic and what's not.
Member
Actually, they're not really basing it on EVP. EVP is what you hear on a casette tape when they are in an old house or something like that. EVP communication is only one-way. I believe this movie is based on a device called "Spiricom" (you can google it to get more info.)
Basically, the spiricom would create 13 or so different sounds at different frequencies. The theory was that the dead could use these sounds as a medium. By changing the frequencies, the spirit could effectively create different sounds and actually formulate words and sentences. Think of the spiricom as a "voicebox" for the dead. In theory, this would alloy 2-way real-time communication with the dead.
Hey, I didn't say that they weren't woo-woos. I just said that it wasn't based on EVP.And here I thought you couldn't get any stranger than the EVP people.
Established Member
I'm pretty certain that my long-deceased cousin is trying to contact me through my lawnmower. It's big, ugly, noisy, belches obnoxious fumes, churns through the ethanol and quits working as soon as the going gets tough.
If it starts trying to crack onto my wife, I'm calling an exorcist....
Established Member
This sounds to me, like that old trick of staring into the fire so long you see the face of a dead realtive. In other words, a medium that lends itself to illusion and the imagination!
However I AM doing a ghost hunt this Christmas Break so I've been researching methodoloy and control settings for ghost hunts as much as possible.
Established Member
William Gibson's novel (excellent, imho) Pattern Recognition talks about this to some degree. The main character's mother is really into it, and is trying to use it as a last ditch effort to find her missing husband, last seen hailing a cab to the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001.
Order of Kilopi
I sure run into the phrase EVP a lot when I search for SpiriCom.
The White Noise trailer itself takes the trouble of defining what "Electronic Voice Phenomenon" -- EVP -- is.
Why wouldn't SpiriCom be a member of the class of EVP? It's electronics. It's voices. It's phenomena -- sort of.
Are these like trademarks that shouldn't be used to refer to the competing products?
Established Member
The movie's official site also says that it's based on EVP.
Honored Member
This is just the audio version of another woowoo phenomenon, which, instead, is "video".
Established Member
As a working sound man it amuses me that unlike every other form of recording or transmission I know of, this "spirit communication" stuff works better the LOWER the signal-to-noise ratio is.
It would seem logical that none of the components are working in anything like the designed manner when the "spirit voices" are coming through, begging the question of why a TV or a MP3 player is better for the task then, say, a blender, a vacuum cleaner, the HVAC of a small office building or the electronic ignition on a Ford Taurus.
Member
Well sure, technically it is EVP. But when people think of EVP or when they speak about EVP, they generally mean listening to a recording and hearing the vioces of ghosts in the background. If you asked one of these whackos what they think about EVP, they are most likely going to refer to these type of recordings.I sure run into the phrase EVP a lot when I search for SpiriCom.
The White Noise trailer itself takes the trouble of defining what "Electronic Voice Phenomenon" -- EVP -- is.
Why wouldn't SpiriCom be a member of the class of EVP? It's electronics. It's voices. It's phenomena -- sort of.
Are these like trademarks that shouldn't be used to refer to the competing products?
The difference between teh average EVP and the Spiricom concept is the time that it occurs. In standard EVP, you are listening to something recorded earlier... something that was not heard when it actually happened. When using Spiricom, the "voices" are heard in real-time, thus making two way communication possible (in theory, of course)
Yeah, I suppose you could get technical and say that they are trademarks and shouldn't be used to refer to competeror products. But thats no different than pople saying "vice grips" or "rollerblades". Also, Spiricom isn't something that is sold or even patented. They actually say that they want people to be able to produce them or alter them without worrying about copyright laws.
So I suppose that the movie was technically based on EVP, but not in the standard sense. I was under the impression that the people in the movies could hear this as it occured and not just in prior recordings. That is something that doesn't happen with the standard ghost-hunting and EVP.
Member
As a side note, those that coined the term and use the term "EVP" use it when speaking about capturing the vioce of ghosts on an audio recording. The definition itself says that it is a recording. I know that the movie's site says that the movie is based on EVP, etc... but it doesn't quite fit the actual woo woo definition. Every website I see on the topic specifically says that its a recording, and not a live two-way conversation. Personally, I think they are all crazy, but there are actually different levels to their madness.
Besides, Hollywood isn't exactly known for their accuracy or knowledge. They are just there to entertain and make stuff up when they feel the need to. (Such as Blair Witch being a documentary, or the movie Fargo being "based on a true story").
Administrator
Oh man, are you telling me I have to decide who has a better handle on THE TRUTH, Hollywood script writers or Internet woo-woos. It's too hard a decision, I can't handle it.
8-[
Member
I know... I don't like the options either but sometimes, it's all you have
Order of Kilopi
:roll: Like we need a remake of Poltergeist...
Established Member
Can anyone explain how they could even do it.
Dont worry when i saw the advert for it i said what a load of bovine feces, there was a claim in the 70's or something about rock music having subliminal messages. The guy defending it used any old record played it backwards and surgested the most hilarious thing i'd heard and they all heard it.
It was also on tv today on one of the chatshows about it and they did the writing thing the first one i heard, the second one i closed my eyes and heard a load of static.
But if it was real what would the "ghost" do. I mean would he be like shouting into the microphone, sticking his finger into the arial socket for the tv set... it doesn't even make sense even if the "phenomena" was real.
Anyway of the point of ghosts and nonsense, i saw it got a 1 star for a review. They said even the EVP believers found the film boring to watch, now that would be a good advert. "The believers in this theory fell asleep in this film, good luck!"
Banned
Freaky. As I'm reading your post, I see the commercial for White Noise.
Order of Kilopi
The reviews are coming in. I heard one on the radio that cracked me up, describing all the time the moron hero spends looking at static on his TV.
Rotten Tomatoes is fun. Samples:
Enjoy them all!"I didn't hate this, but... if I wanted to watch white fuzzy pictures on a TV screen, I could stay home to do that."
"Wholly guano what a waste of an evening this colossal mess was - it's not even a murmur of a film..."
"all the chills of a refrigerator's hum"
"A little skepticism would have gone a long way in this movie, because if the characters don't pause to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, we are forced to do the guffawing for them."
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