Eli5: How do they make the fake OS for computers in movies and are they functional?
In: Technology
everything you see on a screen in a movie was added in post, its just a fancy graphic cooked up by an animator with too much time on their hands.
None of it is functional or even real.
There’s so many different ways you could do it – just put an animation over the top of a blank monitor in post, play a video on the screen and have the actor act along to it, use a game engine to create the custom fake OS that has whatever screens are needed hardcoded, [even use real software](https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/89p4n4/in_jurassic_park_the_infamous_its_a_unix_system_i/).
that depends a lot on how important it is, sometimes it’s just a still picture if you need stuff happening a PowerPoint.
Or if it’s a sci fi movie were they do a lot of stuff with it they might hire a team of real ui designers to work on the UI shown in the movie, then it’s usually vfx heavy.
> the fake OS
They just play a video/greenscreen a video over the monitor. Alternatively, they use linux in terminal mode, install [tmux](https://www.perl.com/article/an-introduction-to-tmux/) and then just start up visually interesting programs with mucho scrolling numbers like [htop](https://htop.dev/screenshots.html) or [install a few packages](https://images.contentful.com/hspc7zpa5cvq/6p7v2EFSTuSw860Y0EUgeU/449080a2f1bd32910ce2e23358381bca/npm_install_express_loglevel_silly.gif).
It depends. Every movie does this differently depending on what is required by the script, the director, the graphics designer, etc. To make the graphics on the screen they turn to a graphics designer. They might take elements from real operating systems but will compose them into a graphic animation for the movie. These are not functional because they do not have to be, and it is easier to work with then having the actors actually use the system. It is possible to play this graphics on the monitor on set. A lot of movies did this, for example War Games. This makes it look the most realistic with reflections, lighting and actors reactions being as real as they can get.
But there are problems with this. It may be hard to sync the actors performance to the graphics. Some movies go to the effort of making the graphics interactive. Pushing a button advances the animation, kind of like a slide show. You could either have it connected to some sequencer controlled behind the camera or you can make the keyboard in front of the actors advance the animation. Essentially you can make the buttons on the computer work like a real computer, but with the ultimate autocorrect. I know that Mr, Robot often did this.
Another issue is that you might want to alter the graphics after filming, either because they were not done at the time of the shooting or because the director wants to change it. It is possible to digitally compose the image over the screen in post production. Preferably you want the monitors on set to display a single color, like blue, to make it easy to key out. But is is possible to have someone rotoscope it as well.
I loved Minority Report (2002). For my studies at some point I did a UI study and I got really into [the whole design of their user interfaces.](https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2010/12/05/minority-report) seeing as that movie came out in 2002, 5 years before even the first iPhone, it’s absolutely beautiful how well it still feels futuristic right now.
Just want to chime in that the “it’s a Unix system – I got this” OS from Jurassic Park is in fact a real file browser from the obscure OS Irix by Silicon Graphics!
IIRC on older movies like “The Net” they had a program made that would respond to basically any key pressed. So the actor could just mash keys and the program would display the scripted text.
This is a bit different, but on Star Trek in the 90s they had a bunch of light up display consoles. It was basically just a bunch of LEDs under transparencies, programmed to light up at different times. Typically these had a few “modes” they could switch between for things like standby, normal, or Red Alert (emergency) and the light patterns/colors would change. Someone offscreen would flip the switch at the appropriate moment.
There would also be a handful of buttons (or more depending on the console complexity) that responded to touch controls. Usually the script will just say “ensign operates the computer” or something like that, but Wil Wheaton said he came up with his own “language” for operating his console on TNG.
Some movies use green screen to add the UI in later, like Hunger Games.
Some actually have to projected to the surface in real life to help actors interact with it better, like in [Oblivion](https://youtu.be/j3r4GE1KDtk?si=VaP727I6f6k6YLfV).
What was that web cartoon about a software company that had the black dust bunny with just two eyes viable? They did a storyline where someone gave Hollywood an operating system with a big, screen friendly, font that actually worked. The characters in the strip had to steal it back before the Hollywood people accidentally destroyed the world. I think that was one of the story lines were one of the characters suddenly became Russian.
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