Highways / Signs in Movies, TV Shows, and Videos

[Stephane Dumas]

Saturday Night Fever shows a BGS for I-278 (I think?)

For Saturday Night Fever, I think it showed a BGS about Belt Parkway/Shore Parkway near Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Also the Queensboro Bridge do a cameo in the openings credits of "Archie's Bunker Place" and "Taxi".

"Hold-up", a French movie made in 1985-86 and filmed in Montreal. Got some car chases in Montreal streets as well as parts of A-13 and A-640.

Speaking of Belmondo, he did lots of car chases in the streets of Paris in "Le Casse"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVs5rVf8hB0
"Le Professionel"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qLbQF9imZQ
"Le Marginal"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz0ZY0xvGdw

[Stephane Dumas]

Here a "then and now" shots of road locations where Smokey & the Bandit was filmed

[Stephane Dumas]

I spotted on this Toyota spoof ad, an exterpt of a movie (it begins at 0:38) showing a bridge, which bridge is it?

[mightyace]

I was looking at the US shield for US 8 and US 395 in Back to the Future's 1955 scenes.  The US 395 shield is a cutout, outline shield.  The US 8 shields I think are the same style though I thought I saw a blurry image of what might be a line near the top of one of the US 8 shields.

Would these signs that I made with the AARoads shield generator be correct for the time?  (Assume, of course, that these are cutouts.)



Back2TheFuture_US8 by mightyace, on Flickr
Back2TheFuture_US395 by mightyace, on Flickr

[agentsteel53]

do you have a screen grab from the original movie?  the shields you made are indeed the specification used in 1955.

btw, on the shield generator, if you click "save", it will save with a border that implies a cutout.

[mightyace]

do you have a screen grab from the original movie?  the shields you made are indeed the specification used in 1955.

I don't have one at the moment.

btw, on the shield generator, if you click "save", it will save with a border that implies a cutout.

That's exactly what I did.  For some reason, flickr is putting the black background on them.  If someone knows how to change it, please let me know.

[agentsteel53]

oh, Flickr is converting them to .jpg, which does not support transparency.  there may be a way to force the background to white, not black.

[mightyace]

^^^

Makes sense.  When I get a chance, I'll do something...

• Convert them to JPG manually
• Convert them to GIF (which does support transparency AFAIK)
• Keep them as PNG but add a background

[Quillz]

PNG is the best format to use, and you can always matte it to a background color. I use PNG wherever possible, and then GIF when I have to.

[J N Winkler]

PNG and GIF both support transparency, but AIUI the GIF standard requires that only one color be transparent, so it is not possible to do alpha-channel "fade" effects like in my avatar.

[agentsteel53]

indeed, the shield gallery PNGs also take advantage of the fade effect.  I'm surprised Flickr doesn't support PNG natively - well, they are more photo oriented than graphics oriented...

[mightyace]

I my shield images are stored as PNG files, but they aren't displayed that way when I link to them.

EDIT: Now here's the original PNGs:


Back2TheFuture_US395 by mightyace, on Flickr  Back2TheFuture_US8 by mightyace, on Flickr

[Quillz]

Can't you open those in an image editor, add a white or black background and then save it as a PNG w/o transparency? That's what I do when I don't need transparency and it's always worked fine for me.

But yeah, it could just be a browser issue. Some still don't support PNG after all these years.

[mightyace]

I found that you have to link to the original PNG image on flickr which, in this case, is good enough.

If you let them resize it, they turn it into a JPEG.

[Scott5114]

Perhaps you saw a US 6? That'd make slightly more sense than a US 8...

[agentsteel53]

Perhaps you saw a US 6? That'd make slightly more sense than a US 8...

it is well-known that in Hill Valley, it's US-8.  I've freeze-framed the movie before ... yep, it's 8.  Go figure.

[Scott5114]

Bizarre that they would get the 1950s sign specs right, but not the highway numbers...

[mightyace]

My point is I don't think they're right.

The images that I posted are what they should look like not what they are.

The ones in the movie are either have the number solo or the number and U.S. - not quite vintage for 1955.

[algorerhythms]

Bizarre that they would get the 1950s sign specs right, but not the highway numbers...

Go easy on the first movie... the second movie thinks that Skyway C-25 is going to be completed and jammed with traffic five years from now.

[agentsteel53]

completed?  doubtful.

extant?  unlikely.

jammed with traffic?  certain.

[english si]

The new Harry Potter film has the Dartford Tunnel featuring in it for a bit. Not geographically correct, and a bit of a break of the International Statute of Secrecy (though not as dire as flying down the Thames in the 5th film), but at least, AFAICS, less disruptive and more satisfying (there's some good shots there of the crossing) than the closing of Westminster tube station for a day for 6 seconds of film that could have been done at night, when the tube's closed.

[D-Dey65]

On the Internet Movie Cars Database, there's a discussion over an old stop sign during one scene from the movie Good Guys Wear Black.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079227/combined
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=350998


A lot of people aren't sure if the car is a Ford Granada or Mercury Monarch, but the button-copy stop sign caught the eyes of a few users there.

[agentsteel53]

that looks like a 1945-1956 style of stop sign.  kinda old in 1978, but I'd be surprised if they weren't still everywhere

[Quillz]

There's a schoolyard about two minutes from my house that has that style of STOP sign. I actually like how it looks.

[agentsteel53]

There's a schoolyard about two minutes from my house that has that style of STOP sign. I actually like how it looks.

does it have the Auto Club logo?