[HN Gopher] The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch
        
       Author : prawn
       Score  : 111 points
       Date   : 2025-05-21 11:52 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (slate.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
        
       | yen223 wrote:
       | You thought this was a story about birds. It's really a story
       | about the film-making process
       | 
       | I really enjoyed reading this.
        
         | thombat wrote:
         | And it starts with the all-too-familiar "Chesterton's Fence"
         | arrogance of the domain expert who sees something done wrong
         | and presumes that this is due to the ignorance or laziness of
         | the doers, only to learn that there are sensible decisions made
         | by sensible people behind it.
        
           | IAmBroom wrote:
           | Thank you for giving me the phrase "Chesterton's Fence".
           | 
           | Long needed.
        
             | btilly wrote:
             | If you like the phrase, you should read
             | https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ to get the full context
             | on what it means.
        
       | cobbzilla wrote:
       | Long and meandering read, but the excellent bird puns throughout
       | make it worthwhile.
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | Yes they really do fit the bill!
        
           | kayge wrote:
           | Some of them were a bit hard to swallow
        
             | onionisafruit wrote:
             | We're still raven about how good they were
        
       | jerf wrote:
       | The first few paragraphs pattern match on "I'm going to use some
       | excuse to meander on endlessly about myself, tying back into the
       | nominal title just at the end so it doesn't look like I'm all
       | about me", but it does turn out to just be a framing device and
       | worth continuing past for an interesting story.
        
       | Aurornis wrote:
       | This was a fun read. I appreciate a journalist willing to dive
       | into something obscure and reveal a lot of interesting process
       | details and anecdotes as they go.
       | 
       | Before I knew anything about the film and TV industry I would
       | have assumed the process was rather straightforward from concept
       | to script to filming and then editing, almost waterfall style.
       | 
       | But no, it typically evolves and lives and changes through the
       | process. Dialog and storylines are tweaked at every stage as the
       | end product is incrementally manifested. Not unlike software
       | development.
        
         | yen223 wrote:
         | When they talked about how the first draft had the correct bird
         | from the correct place making the correct sound, but what made
         | it into production was the wrong bird from the wrong place
         | making the wrong sound, I felt that in my software engineering
         | soul.
         | 
         | The reasons were relatable too - real-world constraints got in
         | the way, and ultimately this bug was way too minor to be fixed,
         | in the face of all the big problems the movie faced.
        
           | smackay wrote:
           | > you are always birding
           | 
           | Amen, Brother.
           | 
           | I think a large part of the blame for this state of affairs
           | belongs to people like the BBC's Natural History Unit who
           | licence their material to film and TV companies far and wide.
           | So, for example, in many a scene you can thrill to the song
           | of Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilis) or Eurasian
           | Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), which would be knee-deep in
           | twitchers if the birds were actually there.
        
       | aqme28 wrote:
       | Wasn't this posted here a week or two ago?
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Curious%20Case%20of%20th...
         | 
         | 9 days ago. So spot on. But it didn't gain any traction then.
        
       | dougdonohoe wrote:
       | Merlin is a great app for identifying birds (via sound and
       | photo). We've used it in Europe, America, Australia and New
       | Zealand. The library of sounds is most thorough in North America.
       | 
       | Fun story!
        
       | TheGRS wrote:
       | I read enough to trust that the writer dug very very deep on
       | this. I was thinking early on "oh yea, probably just an error of
       | the script getting to production and then a producer making a
       | call as they switched locations", indeed it was something like
       | that, but the writer here got down to the exact timeline of
       | events, rewrites and script reads involved, etc. Even for someone
       | like myself who is obsessed with BOTH birds and filmmaking, this
       | is getting a little too deep, but I appreciate the effort!
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-05-23 23:01 UTC)