Talk:The Dam Busters (film)

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[edit] Flying Fortress

IMDb says the flying fortress was added by Warner Bros for the US market. Is this true or not? - Nommo

It says this in my book of cult films too. Mintguy

[edit] Morse code

In my "Rough guide to cult films" (and on IMDB) it says that the word "nigger" was over-dubbed for the US with the word "trigger", but that the morse code received in the ops room still said "nigger". However I found this page "MORSE GOES TO THE MOVIES" which says that the morse code said "goner". Now does this mean that this was the original morse code or that this may have been over-dubbed again. Anyone have the right answer to this? Mintguy

There were a number of different morse signals, 'goner' was bomb successfully away and 'nigger' was for the dam being breached. ²¹²

[edit] Page move

OK, I'll bite. Why was the page moved? Is the one-word title the correct title? If so, why does the text use two words? Tannin 12:42 16 May 2003 (UTC)

I moved it because I belive it is the correct title, I've fixed it in the text too. There is the chance I'm wrong, it seems to be quite arbitary whether it is one or two words - although the BBC agrees [1]. ²¹²
Amazon.co.uk calls it The Dambusters, but with an image of a DVD box saying The Dam Busters [2]. IMDb (not necessarily a reliable source) calls it The Dam Busters [3]. --rbrwr
The 1951 book by Paul Brickhill is The Dam Busters

According to IMDB [4] the correct original title is The Dam Busters and in the US it was titled The Dambusters

Halliwell's calls it The Dam Busters, too. --rbrwr
Moved it back. Halliwells is pretty definitive, The film is inexplicably not listed in the Virgin Film Guide (a Christmas pressie), I already have 2001 Halliwells. Mintguy 12:50 17 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Similar & Based On

The Americans are at it again. Here we find some nutcase sees a similarity between this movie and the Yavin Battle in Star Wars IV. Then at the page for Yavin one sees George Lucas in essence based his battle scenario on this movie. Which is not only conjecture but downright ridiculous.

It's time to ban Americans from Wiki.

In terms of references to DB in later movies, what about the end of The Two Towers? The two dam-breaking scenes look strikingly similar. Given that Jackson is by his own account a huge fan of this film (and plans to remake it), is this coincidence?
The connection between Star Wars and The Dam Busters is well-established: [5]. I've seen a documentary that compares them as well. I know nothing offhand about the connection between The Two Towers and The Dam Busters, however.--Father Goose 05:58, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialogue

----
Dialogue from "The Dam Busters":
Gibson: "How many guns do you think there are, Trevor?"
Trevor-Roper: "I'd say there are about ten guns - some in the field, and some in the tower."
Dialogue from "Star Wars: A New Hope":
Gold Leader: "How many guns do you think Gold Five?"
Gold Five: "I'd say 20 guns. Some on the surface, some on the tower."
Yeah, it's "downright ridiculous" to suggest that there are any similarities between "The Dam Busters" and "Star Wars: ANH". It's just a coincidence that George Lucas used almost the EXACT SAME DIALOGUE in his film as in this one...
Would you like some other "coincidences"?
The Dam Busters (DB): Planes attack in threes (not the usual twos or fours).
Star Wars (SW): X-Wing and Y-Wing fighters attack in threes.
DB: Aircraft fly at low level through a valley to the target.
SW: X/Y-Wings fly at low level through a trench to the target.
DB: Aircraft use a special weapon which must be dropped with great precision.
SW: X/Y-Wings use a special weapon which must be fired with great precision.
Add to that, the fact that George Lucas used clips from "The Dam Busters" while doing the rough edit for "Star Wars" (ie: before the special effects were complete), and the argument really starts to fall apart...
And, for the record, I am not American.
--Insley 02:12, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wrong scenerie

i've seen this film different times, and always when they attack the Ederdam the waldeck castle is on the wrong side, why ? WB should have used original foto's of the landscape. UP A 3/11 ACR

[edit] citations

I think the information regarding the TV broadcasts in the UK needs citing. "last showing..." when was that? I would hazard a guess it's been shown since this was put in the article, and perhaps by the BBC. Jooler 01:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Shown on CHannel 4 in 2003 and 2005 at least. A quick check of rabid discussion on Usenet shows ITV screenings in 1999 and 2001, both noted as being cut, which the C4 broadcasts weren't. Nick Cooper 22:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

This article once had a trivia section, which I thought was useful for a film article. I think trivia sections are valid content for an encyclopoedia if labelled so and we should re-install the one for this page. Comments? DocEss 17:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It's called Production Notes but is just trivia

[edit] Music Man Link?

I fail to see why there should be a link to the music man on this page, can someone please delete that? 82.5.75.13 19:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Try looking at the The Music Man (song) page. Granted, it is a bit tenuous, but there is a link. Nick Cooper 20:29, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, but theres no mention of the song on this page... 82.5.75.13 19:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Avro Lincolns in the film

I've just checked Jonathan Falconer's exhaustive Filming The Dam Busters (Sutton Publishing, 2005), and although there are numberous references to the Avro Lincoln in its meticulous index, these are all in the context of Lincolns being based at RAF Hemsworth, at which the four Lancasters used in the film were based, and that the latter were flown by contemporary Lincoln crews. The crews were alternating between film work on the Lancasters and "regular" Lincoln sorties, so that they kept up to speed on "the day job." There's no suggestion that any of the Lincolns based at Hemswell were used deliberately, although Falconer notes that, "in the film a Lincoln or two can be seen on at least one occasion," at Scampton. He suggests this was accidental, as while no Lincolns were based there, it was at the time of film an Emergency Diversion Airfield, so may have had an unexpected "visitor." Checking the film, I'm presuming it's where the crews are driven out to their aircraft on the night of the mission. There is a continuous shot from a moving vehicle, looking backwards, in which - progressively - five four-engined bombers can be seen. Since the film-makers only had use of four Lancasters, one must be the Lincoln Falconer refers to. To me is seems to be the aircraft fully visible on the left of the start of the this shot, from the length and shape of the nose. (0:17:41 on the R2 DVD) Nick Cooper 23:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Right you are Nick. Count the number of aircraft in the picture and you get five. FWIW Bzuk 01:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC).
Yep, that's the one. To me it looks like number 2 is a Lincoln, as the rest are clearly Lancasters. From what Falconer says, I suspect this is really just a case of there happening to be a Lincoln at Scampton on the day this scene was shot, and the director taking advantage of it in the extreme background. Only a certain number of aircraft were officially at the disposal of the film-makers, although they could make use of whatever else was there in the background, e.g. the Mosquito Wallis and Summers walk past earlier in the film. Nick Cooper 06:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gibson's dog

The film is being shown on Channel 4, right at this moment and they have edited out the word "nigger" in all of the scenes in which it occurs. Perhaps the page should be updated to indicate that the film is now regularly (and probably only) shown with this word edited out. Jooler 17:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The DVD of the film as currently distributed by Netflix has Nigger as the name of the dog, but also shows a plane crashing into a hill at one of the dams, which the article says was added for the American release. The article is very muddled with respect to the dogs name, with discussion of it at numerous parts of the article. It should be consolidated. Edison (talk) 21:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Screenplay

In the article it says that the film is based on the books by Paul Brickhill and Guy Gibson. Yet in the article on R. C. Sherriff it says that the film is based on the play The Long Sunset. I would imagine that on of these is wrong, altough I could not say which one Franny-K 19:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

The R. C. Sherriff page deosn't say anything of the sort. Nick Cooper 13:05, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

It does in the bibilography section it says that the play The Long Sunset was written in 1955 and was adapted as the The Dambusters Franny-K 17:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

That just says that in 1955 he wrote the play The Long Sunset (which is about Rome) and the screenplay The Dam Busters. They have no relation whatsoever, they're just in adjacent columns.--Father Goose 18:10, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image sizes

As per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images image size should not be specified on the page, except under special circumstances, that don't seem to hold here. If you like large images, set your own image preferences. What about those viewing the page on a slow connection? They would probably prefer that the page obeyed their image preferences. Rich257 (talk) 12:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Considering the default image size is 180px, there's no reason why Redgrave should be hard-coded as 200px. Todd's picture doesn't need to be so big either. However, it is hard to make out the detail in the "bombardier" picture at 180px, so I'd vote "special circumstances" on that one and default-size the other two.--Father Goose (talk) 00:45, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, the bombadier picture really needs some size to show up well, down at thumb size it's just a dark blur. I agree that the Redgrave survives nicely at 180 as a picture, although in terms of layout it fills the whitespace nicely at 225. I've dropped it down in any case. The Todd picture is more problemantic. It looks like it should be OK at thumb size, but in reality it just doesn't show up well at 180 or 200. Eve 215 was somewhat lacking. I've got it at 225. I think these are really the minimum sizes to allow these images to display well. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 22:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
There are potential issues of local display sizes here; if you're running at a high resolution without any kind of image-scaling, "thumbs" will look tiny indeed. I'm running at 1600x1200 but with images doubled, so everything looks okay.--Father Goose (talk) 02:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Could you go into that a little further?

Everything I'm running is pretty vanilla, which, I think, simulates what the largest number of people who are likely to access Wikipedia on a casual basis would be running. Those people are my primary concern. If Wikipedia is to become what I believe it is on the verge of being, the first choice of most people to grab some quick information when they need it, it needs to be presented in such a way that people who pop in will see good information, well presented. (See my argument here) Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 02:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, for instance, my resolution is 1600x1200, I have text scaling set at 200%, and my default browser is Firefox. Image sizes on most of Wikipedia are just right with these settings. However, I was surprised to find that, using Internet Explorer, it didn't scale the images by 200%, making all of the images way too small. If I were running IE instead of Firefox regularly, by now I'd have increased the default size of thumbnails in my preferences to 350px or higher -- and the 225px settings you're advocating here would be too small.
Tweaking image sizes based on how it looks on your screen will not always produce a good result.--Father Goose (talk) 06:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I certainly understand that -- although I run IE, I check many of my image layouts with Firefox to make sure they work with it as well.

I'm not sure how to harmonize the concerns you're talking about with the need to have Wikipedia look good to the casual user, the kind of person who opens the box, plugs in the computer and starts using it, when they come to Wikipedia looking for information. The Early Adapters and Techno-geeks have either already accepted or rejected Wikipedia at this point, so the future success of the project will depend on hooking the casual user and having them spread word-of-mouth so that Wikipedia is the automatic first choice much as Google is for searching. If I'm correct in that, then it's vital for the project that when they come to Wikipedia, they see good information well presented, and that's certainly not going to be the case if what they get is a bunch of tiny thumbnails scattered around the articles, neither enhancing the text nor helping the article flow for the eye.

These issues obviously can't be solved here, they really need to be addressed at a deeper level, but that's only going to happen when folks take the visual aspects of articles more seriously, and don't deal with it as an afterthought. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 06:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I take it seriously. But as you say, it can't be solved here. If the site should be optimized for the casual user -- and I agree that it should be -- then 180px is a) too small or b) appropriately small to make the site readily accessible to all readers (i.e., those on dial-up). Given that users can click on images when they want to see more detail (I do so routinely), and that it's not hard to realize that you can do that (my dad did, and he's a computer dunce), settling on a small-image standard -- and sticking to the standard -- may be of greater service to the casual user than hard-coding sizes.
I'm not sure where the standard size of 180px was decided upon. Surely there must be somewhere to complain about it.--Father Goose (talk) 10:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the dial-up problem concerns me as well, which is one reason why I try to keep images as small as possible whenever I can, although I think we've turned a corner and more than half on the online population now has some sort of broadband.

I agree that clicking through is an option, and I often opt for that solution when photos can't possibly be displayed large enough in the article to make them totally legible or clear, but while that's fine for a map, or a complex diagram, and a document, people shouldn't have to click through to see who a single person is or what the setting is on a screenshot -- they should be able to pick it up from the article.

About 180 - this is Wikipedia, so I assume there's someone to complain to, whether or not it will do any good! :-> Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 11:18, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

Where lists are appropriate, they should stay, but there is no need to have lists for the production notes. If there is no great big hue and cry, I will change the lists to the more standard paragraph form. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 12:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC).

  • I dunno, sometimes lists of stuff like that are easier to read, but if you want to have a go at prosifying it, I have no objection. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 17:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The real reason for not using lists is in heading off a very dedicated band of editors who had previously categorized lists as "trivia" and made a point of routinely removing them. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 11:57, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there is that. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 11:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)