The problem is, in order to achieve such emotion, you need good writers. I mean GOOD writers. It is much more simple, fast and cheap to recicle jump scares over and over. Also, young audiences nowadays have the proportional capacity to keep focused of a baby....so, in those wonderfull 7 minutes, half of the theather would left.
It helps to have a healthy functioning mindset unlike today's Gen, cursed with dillusion, fantastical arrogance, and ignorance. Not their fault. Our Gen handed them this baton. Happens every 20 yrs I would say.
@@ct6502c like saying, fighting dogs think its "cute" to fight. One cant decide 'A' is preferrable over 'B-Z' if one hasn't been APPROPRIATELY guided past 'A'. To touch on your point, EACH younger Gen views itself as 'advanced' over their predecessors, as I did. Not speaking for others, It's simply (as M. Crue once stated), "...the Same 'ol Situation, ...Same 'ol Ball and Chain!" Or to quote Michael Biehn as Latin-speaking 'Johnny Ringo': "Juventus stultorum magister!" *Youth is the Teacher of Fools* 😎
I saw an interview in which the director admitted he asked Lemmon to do many of the scenes dozens and dozens of times. Lemmon was so well known that he didn't want the actor's previous acting personae to enter this film "Too 'Lemmony!'" the director would say. Every time, Lemmons said "OK, lets' do its again and get it right". A true professional.
You say that, but at Three Mile Island, which occurred 12 days after release, there were so many alarms, that it was normal to dismiss alarms because there was everything was fine alarms. The alarm readout at TMI took over 8 hours after the accident to print all of the alarms, and the accident at TMI was relatively tame with only one reactor damaged and recoverable with no radiation release.
The tension and drama in this film is very much like WarGames. This was back when closed room dramas were the focal point of movies. No spectacular visual effects, no cutting to something taking place outside the room, just great actors and a great story that drew moviegoing audiences to see the movie in theaters.
It's extremely effective how there are no cuts to the outside. I am sure it would be tempting with a higher budget to include "cool" shots of control rods dropping, or water boiling in a reactor core, or valves opening, but it feels much tenser when we are shut in with the characters. All we hear and see are what the operators and TV crew can see and hear, with the exception of the plant workers running to safety.
Agreed, there's a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind that's similar, the interior of an Air Traffic Control Center that only takes place with what the controllers saw. It helped that most of the actors in the room were actual former controllers, so them doing everything realistically made that scene even better. The closed room tension scene is rarely done nowadays, I can't think of any modern film off the top of my head that does it anymore
Kurtis Knechtel I’m a huge fan of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that scene you’re referring to had never occurred to me as using the same technique, but you’re right. Also, new Hollywood directors like Steven Spielberg were aiming for a level of everyday realism that had never been seen before in movies. If Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been written by Spielberg but directed by someone else in the 1950s, the look and feel of the movie would have been different. An air traffic control center would have been built on a small set, and actors would have been hired to play the air traffic controllers. The radio transmissions from the pilots would have been crisp and clear and a lot of dramatic music would have been played to accentuate the suspenseful mood of the scene. A good technique for the time, but not nearly as realistic as what would really happen if air traffic controllers encountered a UFO on their radar screens.
I'm currently a student learning ATC, and they nailed that scene. Everything from the phraseology, to assigning the primary target a partial datablock was all spot on. I can't speak to nuclear reactors, but everything in THIS scene sounded right enough where I didn't feel the need to question it. Realism, even if it's not something 99% of people would be able to catch, is SO important when you're doing scenes like this. If all you're gonna have is dialogue and tension, the dialogue has to be right. Like I said, I've never noticed in modern movies, but I'm gonna be watching for scenes like this from now on
Kurtis Knechtel the first Final Destination from 1999 has its pivotal scene filmed only from inside the aircraft. A budget limitation turns the scene into something memorable. Still, 1999 is a while ago now...
The concentric rings of vibration in his cup of coffee. That's when you knew the T-rex was just about to breach the control room. Or JAWS hitting the side of the Orca
The vibrations at 3 Mile Island were a sign that the pumps that circulate the high temperature pressurized water were dealing with pockets and big bubbles of steam. A leak bled off pressure that kept the water in a liquid state. Bad sign.
@@johnstuartsmith In the MOVIE, the vibrations are evidence of increasing imbalance in one of the high-speed turbines. It tore itself apart. This can easily happen: look at this: same thing but pushed by hydropower where 920-ton turbines FLEW. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident
My dad had a dot-matrix printer on a small metal storage case in his room where he worked (not a nuclear plant lol) that printed out logbooks each day from all the interaction people made moving around in the buildings with their security cards. When printing the logbook (on the continuous feed printer paper :P ) the head of the printer would reach a resonance speed causing the case in which it stood to rock from side to side like 6-7 centimeters each. Over the years the case had totally bent connection points for the plank it was standing on, but boy was it fun to watch the thing rock from side to side like that.
We had music ruled printer paper, each bar was actually 5 lines. They lived in an annexe at the rear of our control room because they were that loud...good times indeed
@C.O. Jones I remember seeing in computer magazines in the very early 90's, adverts for solid metal stands, with a brownish translucent plastic lid, that two black handles, and supported on two small gas struts, with the insides having 'egg box" foam on the two inner sides, made specifically for dot-matrix/golf ball printers, with the inlet/outlet slots, having brush like strips, as used for windproofing letterboxes in front doors; I think it was connected up with two gasket ports, one for power, the other for the parallel cable. No wonder it was soundproofed, because the sheer noise working next to them was loud enough to be deafening. For extra, you could add two shelves, one for the box the z-form paper came in from, plus another for a box to collect the printouts in, with the whole thing made up of thin-walled, steel tubing. I can't remember how much they costed then, but something tells me the whole soundproof stand, plus the two extra shelves, cost almost as much as the printer itself ...
My favorite role for him though, was as the Federal official in 'Absence of Malice': "Two things are going to happen here. We're going to find out the truth of all this, and I'm going to leave this room with somebody's head in my briefcase."
It's interesting to watch this now, after a full career as a nuclear power plant engineer, manager, and Code committee chairman. I also worked in the control room simulator at the plant where this was supposedly taking place, Diablo Canyon. We went through accident scenarios similar to this one. I can tell you that this could not have happened for a number of reasons. First of all, a single stuck instrument would not have caused the operator to take action - the important instruments such as level, pressure, and temperature generally have three of them and the values are auctioneered, meaning the anomalous one is thrown out. Then, the high pressure safety injection system has mutiple paths to the reactor coolant loop. Also, before the HPSI is initiated, the charging system is used to depressurize the reactor coolant loop. There are also two different HPSI systems. There are also four accumulators that can dump their contents into the loop to drop pressure. There is also the RHR system, but that is for long term cooling when the pressure has already been lowered. A turbine trip is no big deal, but you do have to dump steam, which means opening either the interior steam dump valves or the ones that vent to atmosphere, which is not a problem, other than making a lot of noise. The control room set in this movie is fairly accurate, although the real one is a lot bigger with more people walking around. Also, a lot of this stuff is computerized now, such as feedwater flow to maintain steam generator level, because when you change a valve position to correct level, there is a delayed reaction of up to a minute until you see the effect of your change, and the computer does a better job.
it curious how three mile island incident happened about the same time this move came out, can you explain three mile island then. nothing is infallible, nuclear plant incidents can and do happen.
@@alphonsocarioti512 It is definitely dramatized, it's a hollywood film after all. But, I think the message is more cautionary than an anti nuclear power message. The benefits of Nuclear Power are immense for humanity, but we need to approach it with utmost caution and care, at all times.
As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Do you get the picture? Are you laughing now?
imagine him being in the control room for Chernobyl reactor unit number 4 when they were playing around with it and made it explode what would he do in that situation besides shit himself?
You're right Gavin. His fear & concern was real on screen -- all chiseled on his face -- great actors have that ability to "act" with their expressions & mannerisms. Jack gave many acting lessons in this film. It's something very hard to teach. But like a monster scaring you -- Jack did it with that intense look & he didn't over-dramatize it. It was like contained anxiety. Yes, one of his greatest roles.
This part was memorable, when Jack Lemon as Godell tapped the gauge, the reaction he & Willford Brimley made looked so authentic. A believable reaction of "Shit just hit the fan!" in a very bad way. This is a good movie.
The way you can just see the characters in the control room visibly age by 10+ years without physically changing hardly at all...amazing. And the music really helps sell it, too.
I broke out laughing at the that scene where he looks at an analog strip chart recorder, taps it, and the level falls. An analog recorder, back then, could get stuck, but all alarms were and are handled by a computer. And, at that, two out of three alarms used to have to agree before the annunciators go off. How do I know? Fifty years in the process control business.
Did the alarm not go off becuaes of high water levels, and then after he opened the relief valves the needle then stuck as to not show the rapid drop in water level after the feed water was shut off.
@@jonnytightlips513 High Steam generator water level and Low Steam generator water level are two separate alarms, so he would get another alarm for how dangerously low it went.
@@tartus4916 yes I was just describing what happened in the scene. Also it was not the level in the steam generator it was coolant in the reactor core.
At 4:55 it's pretty scary when "Jack", fearing the increasing pressure is forcing coolant out of the core, begins to dump pressure, and in doing so the entire control room begins to "quake". The printer that is used to make a hardcopy of all events in the control room is an interesting point in relation to real life events at 3 mile Island. It is said that there was so many commands and so much data being produced during the real "event" at TMI and the data transmission was so slow, that the actual printer in the control room at TMI was still printing out hardcopy for 2-1/2 hours after the fact.
@@marianmarkovic5881 Perhaps there was a special "buffer" for this system? That's a LOT of printer buffer for a 1970's era "dot matrix" printer. My brother is blind, he has a special printer that "prints" out braille in very thick almost "cardboard" like paper. When that things fires up you certainly know it, but that dot matrix printed in "The China Syndrome" makes my brothers braille printer sound quiet.
Hi, back in @ 1997 i worked for a bakery / food factory, production was about 12 hours 3pm to 3am/6am is late All of the orders were printed on that 132 wide column fan folded printers - a dos screen of 80x25 = 2k - the program would print out in larger and wider font so that people could read it better We had 2 printer buffers, it took me a while to understand them as the instruction for the afternoon guy ( 12 to 7 ) were a bit "strange" Basically set the switches everything to buffer #1, set printer no #1 - print report #1 - wait for the 4 or 5 lights to start "dancing", once i think whatever it was light #1 or #2 - whichever it was went solid it meant the buffer was full - or all recieved. Now set the PC > Printer cable to buffer #2 - do the same thing, it would print to its printer no #1 There were 4 or 5 reports, so when buffer #2 was full you go back and set the PC to Printer switch back to #1, then select printer #2 send the report form the PC and the next set of 5 lights would start flashing / dancing Anyway, the most important was report #1 , it told them what to take out of the fridge eg 200kg butter , 300 litres milt , 200 kg flour etc The next report was a break down by product, eg Qty 1,000 #6 bread rolls white, 500 pink donuts, 600 plain orange glaze etc the last 4 reports were the details for each customer order - packing list Anyway, douggy used to finish between 6 and 7 all of the printing, the send command from the PC was in the first 20-30 mins when he started, so yeah printing on 4 machines took about 4 to 5 hours While it was dead simple job, it was hard, and you had to do the process correctly, plus not much fun when the ribbon fades or rips or you get a paper jam, plus each detail printer box had to be 100% full , some time he would carefully sticky tape left over sheets to make a continuous roll again One Sunday afternoon the casual who used to come in for sunday night production forgot about the buffers and checking lights and it was still running 8am when i came in, ( 1pm to 8am - 17 hours , luckily the first 2 reports had the total qty or ingredients and the qty of units , they had used the downstairs bakery office pc to look up customer orders 1 by one and yell them out for people to scribble them on plain paper So the way it worked SALES PC has 1 printer port that goes to a switch box called Printer #1 and Printer #2 After the switch box it goes to a buffer called buffer #1 for printers #1 and #2 the the same the other switch on printer #2 is a buffer that feed printer #3 and printer #4 So basically you do this Set printer / buffer #1, on on the buffer #1 you set printer #1 Print report - wait for lights to end Flick to Printer #2 Run report - wait for lights to end Set pc to printer switch/ buffer #2 Select printer #3 Print report - wait for lights to end Flick to Printer #4 Run report - wait for lights to end I think after than printer #1 and #2 would finish, then you flick back and run report no #5 and #6 something like that - very simple but complex and easy to stuff up, the worst is when you check every 5 mins then find paper jammed or it is printing all on one line, you have to cancel what is there and work backward in the legible print outs to find which report it was, then start from that one and redo Regards George
Those old late-70s teleprinters like the DECwriters and similar ran on very slow connections, I don't think any faster than 1200 baud. Between that and the fact that they only printed maybe 30-120 characters per second depending on model, and yeah, they could fill up and get behind *real* fast. The very first job I ever had at 16 in 1982 was doing crap work around a college computer center in my hometown--printing/bursting/decollating documents, stacking paper, cleaning up, hanging tapes on the weekend, stuff like that. Our system console was a TTY very similar to the one in this scene and man was it slow. Mercifully we rarely ever had to use it.
I was 8 years old when this movie came out and my parents wouldn't let me watch it because they thought it would scare the crap out of me. It only made me hungrier to learn atomic and high energy physics. Thanks for the clip.
I thought your music was excellent. In fact I didn't know until I read the info section that it hadn't been original. You ramped up the tension. Nice work.
The demented grin that the public relations guy gives is one of many great things about this scene. An absolute tour de force performance by many actors.
Been working as an operator in process plants, refineries and power plants for the last 20 years. My mentor taught me day 1 on my job to tap gauges before taking readings.
Legend has it shortly after this incident Mr. Brimley was sent to a remote outpost in Antartica and became assimilated by a unknown organism from space.
It disgusts me that he wasn't offered more roles. So many average movies of the 70's and 80's would have been a lot more tolerable had they featured a walrus mustache.
Yeah and TMI was inconsequential other than permanently damaging a working reactor, while the movie depicts some impossible doomsday scenario. Yet it took the span of two seconds for the world at large to conflate the two.
@@zolikoff TMI wasn’t inconsequential because it showed that mistakes can & do happen. It also was only a partial meltdown. Had it been any worse, it could’ve been a human & ecological disaster.
@@ktpinnacle People were evacuating due to superstition and fearmongering. That is not a consequence of anything related to the accident, it's a consequence of collective human delusion and stupidity. Yes, it's a serious consequence, but the power plant was not at fault.
@@walterbrunswick Depending on the era of the digital component, those circuit boards are not particularly more reliable. Especially when newer soldering alloys crashed the party. Tin whiskers, cold breaks, etc. Capacitor failures, resistor drift, IC degradation, etc.
@@walterbrunswick It a lot of ways better because it forced them to walk the room and be interactive instead if lay there sleepy and bored they had backups but didn't use them in this case.
@@walterbrunswick besides how else would you have this awesome accident? Compare. Gee an Led Segment Burned Out. Put in a new one. Disaster Averted! Movie: Jesus Jumping Christ the Core is Exposed!
@@atomic_wait Agreed. Dyatlov ignored all visual evidence to follow a narrative. Jack's fault here, I suppose, was believing that one gauge was the absolute truth when he never checked the other gauge which was operating correctly. Even when nothing was making sense to him, and he actually SAW graphite on the ground, Dyatlov refused to rethink his stance.
Watched this in the cinema when it first came out when I was 9 years old and it was this film that made me want to work in TV. That was 40 years ago and I’ve spent nearly half my life doing just that..... working in TV...Love it
He was. You can even see when he' starts waving his hand in frustration because of the contradicting pressure gauges but realizes he is being watched by the news crew. You don't get that kind of subtlety in actors anymore.
This score experiment is excellent. It really adds to the tension of the scene. The out of tune piano is the perfect addition. You should be proud of your work here.
@@mudsharkbytes no it sucks and thankfully when the film was made these kinds of over the top soundtracks weren't needed to create tension, the actors did that themselves.
@@stevenstritenberger1761 everyone’s a critic. If not for the soundtrack it wouldn’t even be allowed on RUclips. Besides, John Corigliano loved my work here so that’s good enough for me
@@TesterBoy Propaganda piece? Why because the company wouldn't spend the money to do it right and cut corners to save $$$ and endanger millions of peoples lives then hid all there criminal shit. That's straight out of the Trump play book you must be so pleased.
PlymouthVT It sounds you have been swayed by the movie. Every critical study I’ve read since the Three Mile Island Accident points to human error: www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-accidents-three-mile-island In it’s aftermath there were additional regulations and design changes. Why would a company knowingly cut corners if it caused the destruction of it’s own system? You are badly misinformed!
I, too, saw this in the movie theatre. I was 18 years old. Today I am 58 years young. This movie was amazing. The '70s were fantastic movie making years for Hollywood. With the oil crisis and recession, filmmakers did not have large production budgets and had to rely on great acting, great writing and camerawork. No moolah for pyrotechnic hooha. Thus the "Golden age of film" in 1970s Hollywood. Other greats from this period include but are not limited to, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice for All, The Conversation, Deliverance, French Connection.
@@bmasters1981 I think I brought the American Blu... actually come to think of it, it has a booklet, I think... can't remember lol. Probably the British one
@@bmasters1981 another film that has a lot of tension without needing any modern flashy gimmicks is The Andromeda Strain. I showed my friend the Blu and he found it very engaging despite often being bored with modern films. Funny that
Since I don’t see a lot of people mentioning, your score really added to the scene a lot I feel. Like, this scene works well without music, but the added score adds a lot of extra tension and atmosphere to the scene that I think really improves it in places (never mind that I just really enjoyed the piece you composed in general). I especially like how, when the water gauge first starts dropping, in the original scene, all we really have to tell us that something’s gone wrong is the reaction of the actors and I guess maybe the basic image of a gauge dropping rapidly. Here, though, the music clues us in immediately that something has gone wrong. Like, when the first sting of the piece came in with the meter falling, I really felt that immediate sinking feeling of fear that I think almost works better than it did in the original scene. Great work in general, just really added a lot of subtle atmosphere to an already great scene. Didn’t take away any of the tension at all, but rather added to it immensely.
Trere is one tiny problem whit alarms, they are good at getting your attantion, but too many alarms at same time may end up confusing crew, make it miss key points, it happend in TMI and it happend in 737MAX incidents as well.
Jack Lemmon was an actor of great range of talent from comedic to dramatic witnessed here. I'll always be proud he was so kind as to take the time to read my screenplay. He said no, ha! Still, it was a magnanimous deed and an honor he took the time for only me, an unknown writer.
I watched the movie the first time as a kid, then I enjoyed it even more when I rewatched it after becoming a control engineer. Seeing what they got right about working in the control room is a delight.
Switcharoo12 They also don't beat blacks with whips to do manual labor anymore. Maybe you should invent a time machine and go back to when it was all white schools and women weren't allowed to vote you filthy piece of shit.
Great nail-biter scene. Tension is ratcheted up by terrific performances, especially Jack Lemmon's. Less than 2 weeks after the film's release, a real nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island.
@@rivotrich7 That was a direct quote from the movie in which the casual viewer that knew nothing about nuclear tech learned what the "China Syndrome" was and why it was called that.
Yes I’m sure it would do just that if a meltdown happened and a significant amount of radiation escaped the containment building. That’s what actually happened at Chernobyl.
This was a great movie. When he taps that water level pointer and it drops, I feel my stomach drop too! The sound effects you added seem to fit well. Classic movie. Seen it many times and it still has that intense feeling during the control room drama!
It gets me a little bit that they have an indicator that is obviously malfunctioning, and yet they're still taking and using it's data... the guy at the panel with the other (working) gauge needs to be relaying that info.
Michael Free I agree with you. They did have a redundant indicator that they could have compared the reading to, but in the midst of the excitement, they didn't look at it until they were close to critical. Human factors at its finest. Scary to think that this event could have actually happened in real life at some point in time
@@Fireship1 this is a nice little lesson in terrible interface design, actually. It's why you should duplicate every critical instrument in systems like this, and put two, identical instruments right next to each other (ideally, you want three, so as soon as one fails, you can tell instantly which one it is because the other two should still match, but that's kinda expensive...). Here, the backup indicator is small and not in the same place as the main one. It's also why you need to have automatic shut-down systems, themselves triggered by multiple redundant sensors on redundant circuits. Of course, in real life, that's what they do. Even an oil-fired boiler on a ship will have that. But, in real life, sometimes people override the safety interlocks. One horrible irony of Chernobyl is that it took place during a safety test intended to make the plant safer, but the automatic shut-downs had to be disabled in order to carry out the test...
@@Fireship1 Both the USA and the USSR nearly started a nuclear war several times due to computer glitches and satellites mistakenly informing of an incoming attack. Plus Chernobyl was the result of both technical malfunctions and human error, so it definitely happens in real life.
The old Westronics paper chart recorders and Bailey 2500 series multi colored scroll chart recorders...Man! Those things were a money maker back in the day in the power plants. That and the old Baily pneumatic controllers that you see on the benchboard there in the movie...they always had a the bias control air relay getting worn out and needed repair fast to keep from tripping off units. All of that mechanical stuff wearing out made for a lot of overtime. Now the 800XA system will place all of that data on a Dell screen or a Yokogawa multi display recorder. Nothing to mechanically wear out. Even the Fisher level controllers for the feedwater heaters that used to have a float in a tube that sent pneumatic 3psi to 27psi signal to the control room has been replaced by a guided wave radar level indicator for 4ma to 20ma level control.....sniff...sniff... I miss those days...everything is all reliable and just gets replaced when it stops working, no more replacing gears and drive motors. Well, at least there was no way for a hacker to get access to plant controls back then.
I was an operator at Peach Bottom Power Station. Before you hit that button to Acknowledge/Silence the alarm, you are responsible to know and understand why each and every alarm is flashing. Also, some alarms will automatically clear when the button is depressed. You have to know what those alarms were too. There are more than 1200 alarms on each unit in the Control Room.
Yeah. Saw an interview with John Carpenter in which he talked about how the studio execs didn't think "Halloween" was the least bit frightening when he screened it for them without the score. Then he wrote the now famous piano music, overlaying it with the action and they said it was scary as hell
The real Three Mile Island incident is used as an example of how unfreindly to humans the control room was and how similar designs for other facilities contribute to errors in judgement and decision making.
David Hoffman This film is an example of operator based control and it was the standard back in the day. In other words the knowledge of the operator was thought to be sufficient for causality control. TMI proved that wrong. Humans are judgmental and easily fooled. So they developed a symptom-based method for causality procedures based on the experience of the airlines. Flip charts and checklists are now the norm.
Of course, this movie was released about a week before Three Mile Island and, although fictional, was very well researched. I've read The Warning, an account of the events before and during the TMI accident, - which was co-written by Ira Rosen (formerly of 60 Minutes) and Mike Gray (the writer of The China Syndrome screenplay). It is uncanny how closely the initial accident scenario in The China Syndrome mirrors what really happened at TMI.
Jim Allen. To clarify, the operators thought the relief valve HAD closed because the switch controlling it had closed. Other than that switch, they had no direct way of knowing if the valve was closed or open. And while I totally agree with you that the system would have NOT have worked fine and resolved itself if the operators had not intervened, let us not forget that it was the human intervention - by intentionally shutting down the ECCS during the initial stages of the accident - that accellerated the progression of the accident.
Soundtrack is very effective, very good, and not intrusive as to distract from the narrative and bring too much attention to itself, I forgot that was why I clicked on the video and got caught up in the scene. Fair play. Not sure Jack Lemmon ever got the credit he deserved.
Two absolutely awesome actors in this scene, Jack Lemmon and Wilford Brimley. If you want to see another closed room dramatic scene that just kicks ass check out Wilford Brimley at the end of Absence of Malice with Sally Field and Paul Newman. Another 80's movie that was very well written and acted. Brimley is only in it for maybe five minutes but it's one of the best movies scenes I've ever watched.
Love this movie! Saw it for the first time 6 months ago mainly because of this clip I believe! Love the new soundtrack that was added in. So damn eerie this came out 12 days before Three Mile Island. Extremely eerie.
This scene is good for the same reason that Alien's scenes are so good. No nonsense, no cgi, no soundtrack, just sounds and excellent acting to carry the scene. It creates far more suspense than any modern film, if you ask me. Also, superbly done music! It feels so natural, that it is hard to remember there is not any music during this scene. It really does add to the suspense here! You should be very proud of yourself.
Holy Crap. I sure hope you got an A+ on your assignment. That was chilling. Wow. That aside, my goodness, how young Wilf Brimley, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas look.
One of the strongest Best Actor fields ever: Lemmon/China Syndrome; Pacino/…and Justice For All; Sellers/Being There; Schieder/All That Jazz; Hoffman/Kramer
I've always been a huge fan of this movie, and the fact that it doesn't beat you to death with cheesy background music makes it even more of a masterpiece. Sorry, but I applaud the OP's efforts in any case.
aburg10s Actually, the alarm IS used in the soundtrack. I sampled it and used it during the ending passage - several alarms lifted from the audio were sampled and processed to make the soundtrack.
Soooo. Let's talk about the music! I watched this and was impressed with the music and wondered why I did not notice it in prior viewings of the movie (some years ago). THEN I read your introduction. Excellent choice to anticipate the realization of danger with the first four notes at 3:12 matching the facial and eye movements of Lemmon and Brimley, followed by a simple, quiet series of chords on the piano when the indicator drops. Then the strings/synth take over with their long-suspended crescendo all the way to the resolution four minutes later. Simple, effective and unobtrusive. It matches the pall that descends over this drama. The release of tension at the end is left in silence and leaves a sense of foreboding that fits the place of this scene in the entire movie. Well done. I'm going to go listen to your other links.
Didnt watch the original scene with its audio but your version puts an extra dramatic level of tension to the moment the reactor was leaking and the staff tried to correct this; good job!
"China syndrome" is a term that describes a result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth, "all the way to China".
I saw this when I was a kid. My mom and aunts were huge fans of disaster movies. This brought back a lot of memories! And OMG Wilford Brimley as a young man! (Still the same mustache though!)
This clip made me get a copy of the film, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. I have an interest in nuclear energy and engineering disasters, so this was a gem for me. Recommended!
I liked the part at about 6:40 that builds to the point where it drowns out all dialog. It's as if that is all the fear, anxiety, pressure, and anticipation, is building up inside of Jack Lemmon's mind to the point he can't hear any external noises. In the beginning, all those noises from the alarm are an outside distraction, with no real danger, so he calmly shuts them off. By the end, when Jack is scared, all those distorted alarms are going off in his head, and he can't shut them off, because the threat is very real and imminent! Was that the general idea of what you were going for? If so, bravo! A+ on you work 😉
What I love about scenes like this (and, for example, scenes from the Chernobyl miniseries) is how well they highlight the human factor in situations like this. The people involved are called upon to make the best decisions they can with the information they have available. Everybody in the room knows what's at stake, and is working desperately to keep things running properly. But ultimately, there are errors, and there are oversights.
holy crap that was ...tense...Jack Lemmon.. ..such a incredibly wonderful actor....please tell me he won an award for this sensional preformance .. R.i p Jack ..
Wow, nicely done! This movie is a favorite of mine, and though one of my favorite things about it is the absence of background score during very tense scenes, this was really well done! Great job!
"These were highly trained electronics men, Senator, looking for an electronic fault. The trouble was purely mechanical of the simplest kind, but for them it was like trying to see an elephant through a microscope. The sliver had peeled from the roll and wedged between the bell and striker, preventing the bell from ringing."
Fun fact: Wilford Brimley, the balding engineer guy, was 44 when this was filmed. So, the same age as Ryan Reynolds and Cillian Murphy are now (2020). Diabetus is a hell of a drug!
You can with that hot bowl of Quaker oats when you join the science club at Fernard State School for boys. ... This just maybe the darkest meme on the net at the moment.
I haven't seen this movie before, but that soundtrack fit right in. I honestly wouldn't have doubted it for a moment. It really pulled me in, good job!
A think a lot of people today have forgotten just how damned good Jack Lemmon was. He's remembered a lot for his comedy but the man was a damned fine actor all around. Would totally suggest anyone interested look at his interviews with Dick Cavett.
So true, One of my all time favorites. Ive seen every one of his movies multiple time. All I have to do is think "the out of towners" and I start laughing!
For me, scenes like this create much more suspense than jump scares or CGI.
Real-life scenarios can make a more scary/suspenseful movie than a horror movie can
The problem is, in order to achieve such emotion, you need good writers. I mean GOOD writers. It is much more simple, fast and cheap to recicle jump scares over and over. Also, young audiences nowadays have the proportional capacity to keep focused of a baby....so, in those wonderfull 7 minutes, half of the theather would left.
It helps to have a healthy functioning mindset unlike today's Gen, cursed with dillusion, fantastical arrogance, and ignorance.
Not their fault.
Our Gen handed them this baton.
Happens every 20 yrs I would say.
@@versetripn6631 It is COMPLETELY their fault. Millennials think it's "cute" to be stupid.
@@ct6502c like saying, fighting dogs think its "cute" to fight.
One cant decide 'A' is preferrable over 'B-Z' if one hasn't been APPROPRIATELY guided past 'A'.
To touch on your point, EACH younger Gen views itself as 'advanced' over their predecessors, as I did.
Not speaking for others, It's simply
(as M. Crue once stated),
"...the Same 'ol Situation,
...Same 'ol Ball and Chain!"
Or to quote Michael Biehn as Latin-speaking 'Johnny Ringo':
"Juventus stultorum magister!"
*Youth is the Teacher of Fools*
😎
Jack Lemmon, widely known for his comedic talent, CARRIED this scene! It was all built on his ability to convey concern even to the point of terror.
ruclips.net/video/zUeQm6XUPZg/видео.html
I saw an interview in which the director admitted he asked Lemmon to do many of the scenes dozens and dozens of times. Lemmon was so well known that he didn't want the actor's previous acting personae to enter this film "Too 'Lemmony!'" the director would say. Every time, Lemmons said "OK, lets' do its again and get it right". A true professional.
I always thought it would be a great inside joke to have Lemmons character be named Frank Pulver.
I never thought he was funny at all, but his dramatic roles are always tight.
But he also doesn’t over do it. He goes from professional detachment to panic, but the change is subtle. It’s a wonderful scene.
"What's that noise?"
"That's our everything's fine alarm. Everything's fine!"
LOL....awesome.....or "That's our everything has gone wrong alarm"....."Everything's fine"
You did not hear it, because it's NOT THERE!!
You say that, but at Three Mile Island, which occurred 12 days after release, there were so many alarms, that it was normal to dismiss alarms because there was everything was fine alarms. The alarm readout at TMI took over 8 hours after the accident to print all of the alarms, and the accident at TMI was relatively tame with only one reactor damaged and recoverable with no radiation release.
Noise is another name for a loud sound. But that's not important right now!
@@Xithia It is a joke referring to an episode of the Simpsons I think
God I miss movies like that, no cgi no gimmicks just fantastic acting directing and score brilliant!
just turn to water back on🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeap. No explosions every 5 minutes, no gallons of blood, magic weapons and cars.
@@brayli86 no green screen and no slow mo.
Only for certified boomers like me.
Reminds me of the andromeda strain
@@LunchBokth remember not to let the core melt down or your dead
The tension and drama in this film is very much like WarGames. This was back when closed room dramas were the focal point of movies. No spectacular visual effects, no cutting to something taking place outside the room, just great actors and a great story that drew moviegoing audiences to see the movie in theaters.
It's extremely effective how there are no cuts to the outside. I am sure it would be tempting with a higher budget to include "cool" shots of control rods dropping, or water boiling in a reactor core, or valves opening, but it feels much tenser when we are shut in with the characters. All we hear and see are what the operators and TV crew can see and hear, with the exception of the plant workers running to safety.
Agreed, there's a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind that's similar, the interior of an Air Traffic Control Center that only takes place with what the controllers saw. It helped that most of the actors in the room were actual former controllers, so them doing everything realistically made that scene even better. The closed room tension scene is rarely done nowadays, I can't think of any modern film off the top of my head that does it anymore
Kurtis Knechtel I’m a huge fan of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that scene you’re referring to had never occurred to me as using the same technique, but you’re right. Also, new Hollywood directors like Steven Spielberg were aiming for a level of everyday realism that had never been seen before in movies. If Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been written by Spielberg but directed by someone else in the 1950s, the look and feel of the movie would have been different. An air traffic control center would have been built on a small set, and actors would have been hired to play the air traffic controllers. The radio transmissions from the pilots would have been crisp and clear and a lot of dramatic music would have been played to accentuate the suspenseful mood of the scene. A good technique for the time, but not nearly as realistic as what would really happen if air traffic controllers encountered a UFO on their radar screens.
I'm currently a student learning ATC, and they nailed that scene. Everything from the phraseology, to assigning the primary target a partial datablock was all spot on. I can't speak to nuclear reactors, but everything in THIS scene sounded right enough where I didn't feel the need to question it. Realism, even if it's not something 99% of people would be able to catch, is SO important when you're doing scenes like this. If all you're gonna have is dialogue and tension, the dialogue has to be right. Like I said, I've never noticed in modern movies, but I'm gonna be watching for scenes like this from now on
Kurtis Knechtel the first Final Destination from 1999 has its pivotal scene filmed only from inside the aircraft. A budget limitation turns the scene into something memorable. Still, 1999 is a while ago now...
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue”
what do you call a building with a restaurant on one side and a paint store on the other?
Huff and munch
"And stop calling me Shirley!"
@@MrRooibos123 Shirley you can't be serious...
MFXdump Otto?
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines.
Jack Lemon; what an INCREDIBLE actor!!!!
Barney Rubble. Now THERE'S an actor!
He is actually really great in this one, I'd forgotten ...
I wonder if William Shatner would've pulled this scene off?
@@MrDavidh4 nope
Hard to believe that's "Fate the Magnificent!" & the prince from The Great Race.,,,,,more Brandy MORE BRANDY!!!
The concentric rings of vibration in his cup of coffee. That's when you knew the T-rex was just about to breach the control room.
ruclips.net/video/YKURr_YoNXI/видео.html
The concentric rings of vibration in his cup of coffee. That's when you knew the T-rex was just about to breach the control room.
Or JAWS hitting the side of the Orca
The vibrations at 3 Mile Island were a sign that the pumps that circulate the high temperature pressurized water were dealing with pockets and big bubbles of steam. A leak bled off pressure that kept the water in a liquid state. Bad sign.
So that was how Godzilla came to be, complete with epic super powers!
@@johnstuartsmith In the MOVIE, the vibrations are evidence of increasing imbalance in one of the high-speed turbines. It tore itself apart. This can easily happen: look at this: same thing but pushed by hydropower where 920-ton turbines FLEW.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident
Ah, the old 132-character green bar continuous feed printer paper! Those printers were soooo loud, but mesmerizing to watch. Good times...
Chuck Taylor Yup, did that, too.
My dad had a dot-matrix printer on a small metal storage case in his room where he worked (not a nuclear plant lol) that printed out logbooks each day from all the interaction people made moving around in the buildings with their security cards.
When printing the logbook (on the continuous feed printer paper :P ) the head of the printer would reach a resonance speed causing the case in which it stood to rock from side to side like 6-7 centimeters each.
Over the years the case had totally bent connection points for the plank it was standing on, but boy was it fun to watch the thing rock from side to side like that.
Loud but very quick!
We had music ruled printer paper, each bar was actually 5 lines. They lived in an annexe at the rear of our control room because they were that loud...good times indeed
@C.O. Jones
I remember seeing in computer magazines in the very early 90's, adverts for solid metal stands, with a brownish translucent plastic lid, that two black handles, and supported on two small gas struts, with the insides having 'egg box" foam on the two inner sides, made specifically for dot-matrix/golf ball printers, with the inlet/outlet slots, having brush like strips, as used for windproofing letterboxes in front doors; I think it was connected up with two gasket ports, one for power, the other for the parallel cable. No wonder it was soundproofed, because the sheer noise working next to them was loud enough to be deafening. For extra, you could add two shelves, one for the box the z-form paper came in from, plus another for a box to collect the printouts in, with the whole thing made up of thin-walled, steel tubing. I can't remember how much they costed then, but something tells me the whole soundproof stand, plus the two extra shelves, cost almost as much as the printer itself ...
I wish Jack Lemmon did way more serious movies, he was such a killer actor.
He was sadly a bit typecast but in the serious roles he *did* do he was always top notch in his acting.
He did a remake of 12 Angry Men. He was nominated for Oscar for that role too.
I liked him in Glen Gerry Glen Ross. Deadly serious role with killer dialogue
Quite often comedic actors play the best serious roles, look at Tom Hanks and even Billy Connolly has done his share of serious roles
Days of wine and Rose's was his best.
Wilford Brimley plays a perfectly stereotypical 70s American Engineer
Diabetus
Lindsay Kay I wanted to be an 80s automotive engineer with Michael Keaton
My favorite role for him though, was as the Federal official in 'Absence of Malice': "Two things are going to happen here. We're going to find out the truth of all this, and I'm going to leave this room with somebody's head in my briefcase."
Quaker Oats
@@thomasthedoubter6813 My favorite character in one of my favorite movies.
It's interesting to watch this now, after a full career as a nuclear power plant engineer, manager, and Code committee chairman. I also worked in the control room simulator at the plant where this was supposedly taking place, Diablo Canyon. We went through accident scenarios similar to this one. I can tell you that this could not have happened for a number of reasons. First of all, a single stuck instrument would not have caused the operator to take action - the important instruments such as level, pressure, and temperature generally have three of them and the values are auctioneered, meaning the anomalous one is thrown out. Then, the high pressure safety injection system has mutiple paths to the reactor coolant loop. Also, before the HPSI is initiated, the charging system is used to depressurize the reactor coolant loop. There are also two different HPSI systems. There are also four accumulators that can dump their contents into the loop to drop pressure. There is also the RHR system, but that is for long term cooling when the pressure has already been lowered. A turbine trip is no big deal, but you do have to dump steam, which means opening either the interior steam dump valves or the ones that vent to atmosphere, which is not a problem, other than making a lot of noise.
The control room set in this movie is fairly accurate, although the real one is a lot bigger with more people walking around. Also, a lot of this stuff is computerized now, such as feedwater flow to maintain steam generator level, because when you change a valve position to correct level, there is a delayed reaction of up to a minute until you see the effect of your change, and the computer does a better job.
The simulator used in the movie is for a BWR.
This was a liberal anti-nuke film. Everything you said is correct. This was highly dramatized for maximum effect.
it curious how three mile island incident happened about the same time this move came out, can you explain three mile island then. nothing is infallible, nuclear plant incidents can and do happen.
Thanks - really interesting stuff.
@@alphonsocarioti512 It is definitely dramatized, it's a hollywood film after all. But, I think the message is more cautionary than an anti nuclear power message. The benefits of Nuclear Power are immense for humanity, but we need to approach it with utmost caution and care, at all times.
Jack got fired and was reduced to selling real estate in the Glen Garry subdivision. No wonder he became a grumpy old man.
That and the fact he couldn't have his coffee......because coffee's for closers only.
As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Do you get the picture? Are you laughing now?
_Patel? _*_Patel!?!?_*
Don't you mean Professor Fate?
Your name's Levine? You call yourself a nuclear power plant manager you son of a bitch?
Jack Lemmon, at the top of his game. One of his greatest roles.
imagine him being in the control room for Chernobyl reactor unit number 4 when they were playing around with it and made it explode what would he do in that situation besides shit himself?
You're right Gavin. His fear & concern was real on screen -- all chiseled on his face -- great actors have that ability to "act" with their expressions & mannerisms. Jack gave many acting lessons in this film. It's something very hard to teach. But like a monster scaring you -- Jack did it with that intense look & he didn't over-dramatize it. It was like contained anxiety. Yes, one of his greatest roles.
Cover it!
.
.
.
!!!COVER IT!!!
This part was memorable, when Jack Lemon as Godell tapped the gauge, the reaction he & Willford Brimley made looked so authentic. A believable reaction of "Shit just hit the fan!" in a very bad way. This is a good movie.
It’s fantastic acting. Very raw.
Bullshit lying propaganda movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah always blame the instrumentation
It is scary when grizzled old veterans are freaking out.
@@TesterBoy The movie is propaganda? For what? To invade Canada?
Quite possibly the best Jack Lemmon performance ever done! He was absolutely terrific in this movie and his acting made this film even better!
I don't know if I can agree or disagree!!!! Days of Wine and Rises, The Apartment, Glengarry Glennross, The out of towners!! Geesh!
Lol... c'mon man! It's Jack Lemmon! He also played Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts. He was toying with fulminate of mercury long before Walter White.
This is what happens when you fire Health & Safety coordinator Homer Simpson.
Get Frank Grimes in there
Damn that Mr. Burns!!!! :-P
venting prevents meltdown
LOL
If I learned anything from 20 years working is the right people never get fired
People like Jack Lemon are missed in Hollywood..
H B
Oh there are some modern day "Jack Lemmons" today - but unlike him they're not noticed by the public.
A consummate actor
@@spacecat7247 he was a lying pos
@@TesterBoy lol many actors are. I watch them for acting ability not their personal issues.
rest in peace jack lemmon and wilford brimley,thank for leaving a great body of work.
Brimley - Absence of Malice
Lemmon - Disappeared
The way you can just see the characters in the control room visibly age by 10+ years without physically changing hardly at all...amazing. And the music really helps sell it, too.
I broke out laughing at the that scene where he looks at an analog strip chart recorder, taps it, and the level falls. An analog recorder, back then, could get stuck, but all alarms were and are handled by a computer. And, at that, two out of three alarms used to have to agree before the annunciators go off. How do I know? Fifty years in the process control business.
Coincidence logic, I like it. 2 of 3, incase 1 were to fail it would not cause a loss of reactor protection, or a spurious reactor protection action.
Did the alarm not go off becuaes of high water levels, and then after he opened the relief valves the needle then stuck as to not show the rapid drop in water level after the feed water was shut off.
@@jonnytightlips513 High Steam generator water level and Low Steam generator water level are two separate alarms, so he would get another alarm for how dangerously low it went.
@@tartus4916 yes I was just describing what happened in the scene. Also it was not the level in the steam generator it was coolant in the reactor core.
That makes sense. What is the water, is it cooling or reactor?
At 4:55 it's pretty scary when "Jack", fearing the increasing pressure is forcing coolant out of the core, begins to dump pressure, and in doing so the entire control room begins to "quake". The printer that is used to make a hardcopy of all events in the control room is an interesting point in relation to real life events at 3 mile Island. It is said that there was so many commands and so much data being produced during the real "event" at TMI and the data transmission was so slow, that the actual printer in the control room at TMI was still printing out hardcopy for 2-1/2 hours after the fact.
yeah, i am actualy surprised that it didnt have buffer owerflow problem,...
@@marianmarkovic5881 Perhaps there was a special "buffer" for this system? That's a LOT of printer buffer for a 1970's era "dot matrix" printer. My brother is blind, he has a special printer that "prints" out braille in very thick almost "cardboard" like paper. When that things fires up you certainly know it, but that dot matrix printed in "The China Syndrome" makes my brothers braille printer sound quiet.
Wow. Never knew that.
Hi, back in @ 1997 i worked for a bakery / food factory, production was about 12 hours 3pm to 3am/6am is late
All of the orders were printed on that 132 wide column fan folded printers - a dos screen of 80x25 = 2k - the program would print out in larger and wider font so that people could read it better
We had 2 printer buffers, it took me a while to understand them as the instruction for the afternoon guy ( 12 to 7 ) were a bit "strange"
Basically set the switches everything to buffer #1, set printer no #1 - print report #1 - wait for the 4 or 5 lights to start "dancing", once i think whatever it was light #1 or #2 - whichever it was went solid it meant the buffer was full - or all recieved.
Now set the PC > Printer cable to buffer #2 - do the same thing, it would print to its printer no #1
There were 4 or 5 reports, so when buffer #2 was full you go back and set the PC to Printer switch back to #1, then select printer #2 send the report form the PC and the next set of 5 lights would start flashing / dancing
Anyway, the most important was report #1 , it told them what to take out of the fridge eg 200kg butter , 300 litres milt , 200 kg flour etc
The next report was a break down by product, eg Qty 1,000 #6 bread rolls white, 500 pink donuts, 600 plain orange glaze etc
the last 4 reports were the details for each customer order - packing list
Anyway, douggy used to finish between 6 and 7 all of the printing, the send command from the PC was in the first 20-30 mins when he started, so yeah printing on 4 machines took about 4 to 5 hours
While it was dead simple job, it was hard, and you had to do the process correctly, plus not much fun when the ribbon fades or rips or you get a paper jam, plus each detail printer box had to be 100% full , some time he would carefully sticky tape left over sheets to make a continuous roll again
One Sunday afternoon the casual who used to come in for sunday night production forgot about the buffers and checking lights and it was still running 8am when i came in, ( 1pm to 8am - 17 hours , luckily the first 2 reports had the total qty or ingredients and the qty of units , they had used the downstairs bakery office pc to look up customer orders 1 by one and yell them out for people to scribble them on plain paper
So the way it worked
SALES PC has 1 printer port that goes to a switch box called Printer #1 and Printer #2
After the switch box it goes to a buffer called buffer #1 for printers #1 and #2
the the same the other switch on printer #2 is a buffer that feed printer #3 and printer #4
So basically you do this
Set printer / buffer #1, on on the buffer #1 you set printer #1
Print report - wait for lights to end
Flick to Printer #2
Run report - wait for lights to end
Set pc to printer switch/ buffer #2
Select printer #3
Print report - wait for lights to end
Flick to Printer #4
Run report - wait for lights to end
I think after than printer #1 and #2 would finish, then you flick back and run report no #5 and #6
something like that - very simple but complex and easy to stuff up,
the worst is when you check every 5 mins then find paper jammed or it is printing all on one line, you have to cancel what is there and work backward in the legible print outs to find which report it was, then start from that one and redo
Regards
George
Those old late-70s teleprinters like the DECwriters and similar ran on very slow connections, I don't think any faster than 1200 baud. Between that and the fact that they only printed maybe 30-120 characters per second depending on model, and yeah, they could fill up and get behind *real* fast. The very first job I ever had at 16 in 1982 was doing crap work around a college computer center in my hometown--printing/bursting/decollating documents, stacking paper, cleaning up, hanging tapes on the weekend, stuff like that. Our system console was a TTY very similar to the one in this scene and man was it slow. Mercifully we rarely ever had to use it.
I don't know why anyone hasn't commented on the film score. It's very good and fits the scene perfectly. Great job!
i think the added effects of the score really help heighten the drama in this scene.
I think because it fits in so seamlessly that people forget that the whole point of this post was the added score.
Seriously? Its' freaking horrible, sounds like Friday the 13th and it wasn't needed at all.
Yes, seriously. It was a project for a film class. It's not a matter of being needed or not needed.
Attention spams of 20 seconds thanks to Dik Dok
what a brillant scene just shows you how talented jack Lemon was
I was 8 years old when this movie came out and my parents wouldn't let me watch it because they thought it would scare the crap out of me. It only made me hungrier to learn atomic and high energy physics. Thanks for the clip.
velet
bizde biliyoz ben nükleer mühendis olacam. türk olanlar anladı
Ever seen the day after or threads?
Luke, you would like the Chernobyl episode of Surviving Disaster
ruclips.net/video/yk3-XUe0oEU/видео.html
This is why we don't have nuclear power in NewZealand; such serious pathos and highly pitched incidental music would scare all the sheep !
I thought your music was excellent. In fact I didn't know until I read the info section that it hadn't been original. You ramped up the tension. Nice work.
The demented grin that the public relations guy gives is one of many great things about this scene. An absolute tour de force performance by many actors.
Been working as an operator in process plants, refineries and power plants for the last 20 years. My mentor taught me day 1 on my job to tap gauges before taking readings.
Same reason we test click tongs at the grill. Gotta make sure it works.
Legend has it shortly after this incident Mr. Brimley was sent to a remote outpost in Antartica and became assimilated by a unknown organism from space.
It disgusts me that he wasn't offered more roles. So many average movies of the 70's and 80's would have been a lot more tolerable had they featured a walrus mustache.
I thought he got a job in Memphis, TN as a Security Chief for an exclusive law firm.
Rich Weigel and he got dibeeeties
Bunch of smart asses, aren't you?
Yep, I heard he was put in charge of the South Pole Penguin Census (with apologies to Jay Ward).
The scariest part of this movie is the fact that it was released just a few weeks before the Three Mile Island accident.
Yeah and TMI was inconsequential other than permanently damaging a working reactor, while the movie depicts some impossible doomsday scenario. Yet it took the span of two seconds for the world at large to conflate the two.
Home Kitchen here we go with the conspiracy theories.
zolikoff sure wasn’t “inconsequential “ at the time. People were evacuating due to the report that were being released from the facility.
@@zolikoff TMI wasn’t inconsequential because it showed that mistakes can & do happen. It also was only a partial meltdown. Had it been any worse, it could’ve been a human & ecological disaster.
@@ktpinnacle People were evacuating due to superstition and fearmongering. That is not a consequence of anything related to the accident, it's a consequence of collective human delusion and stupidity. Yes, it's a serious consequence, but the power plant was not at fault.
this is a cool scene! i love footage of old control rooms with tons of huge room sized equipment
I do too - particularly the old USSR stuff. Have you seen the HBO series on Chernobyl? I made a clock with that display because it looks cool
Dyatlov: "It's perfectly normal, It's just a routine turbine rebuild."
gonna be honest, this guy rite here handled it well...
I don't know how many times I've seen this movie but I never get tired of it. It is a great movie.
Fun fact: The scenes for the death star superlaser control were filmed here as well.
Shiiii... Looking at it now, it's true! The Death Star's were dark and moody though lol.
Where is this room in reality?
@@visionist7 It's at a power station in California.
Imagine Mr. Lemmon playing Chief Tenn Graneet.....
lol. oh, ha ha ha.😋
"ok let's pull the hammer back and cock this sodder!"
Ahh the magical late 70's and analog control systems and gauges. Good times..
Indeed. Far more magical than the lifeless digital displays of today.
@@hochhaul Crude, bulky, basic, prone to sticking/failure. So magical.
@@walterbrunswick Depending on the era of the digital component, those circuit boards are not particularly more reliable. Especially when newer soldering alloys crashed the party. Tin whiskers, cold breaks, etc. Capacitor failures, resistor drift, IC degradation, etc.
@@walterbrunswick It a lot of ways better because it forced them to walk the room and be interactive instead if lay there sleepy and bored they had backups but didn't use them in this case.
@@walterbrunswick besides how else would you have this awesome accident?
Compare.
Gee an Led Segment Burned Out.
Put in a new one. Disaster Averted!
Movie: Jesus Jumping Christ the Core is Exposed!
Jack: It's perfectly normal.
Dyatlov: He's delusional, take him to the infirmary.
Jack is dyatlov
@@20PINKluvr Seems like he was much more competent in this case, he was just misled by a faulty gauge into making the wrong call.
@@atomic_wait Agreed. Dyatlov ignored all visual evidence to follow a narrative. Jack's fault here, I suppose, was believing that one gauge was the absolute truth when he never checked the other gauge which was operating correctly.
Even when nothing was making sense to him, and he actually SAW graphite on the ground, Dyatlov refused to rethink his stance.
Hey Dyatlov? Didn't you go hiking recently?
3.6 seiverts an hour. I'm told it's the equivalent to a chest x-ray, so if your overdue for a check-up 🤟
Watched this in the cinema when it first came out when I was 9 years old and it was this film that made me want to work in TV. That was 40 years ago and I’ve spent nearly half my life doing just that..... working in TV...Love it
Me too! So much fun - and luck!
Look how good Willford Brimley and Jack Lemon are! The tension in just one boring room is incredible!
Lemmon's acting is incredible here. The stress is ridiculous.
ALWAYS tap your mechanical gauges!
He was. You can even see when he' starts waving his hand in frustration because of the contradicting pressure gauges but realizes he is being watched by the news crew. You don't get that kind of subtlety in actors anymore.
This score experiment is excellent. It really adds to the tension of the scene. The out of tune piano is the perfect addition. You should be proud of your work here.
Thanks, I am proud of this!
@@mudsharkbytes no it sucks and thankfully when the film was made these kinds of over the top soundtracks weren't needed to create tension, the actors did that themselves.
@@stevenstritenberger1761 Jesus Christ man that’s kind of mean
@@soarinskies1105 Truth can't be mean or nice, but it can hurt the proud.
@@stevenstritenberger1761 everyone’s a critic. If not for the soundtrack it wouldn’t even be allowed on RUclips. Besides, John Corigliano loved my work here so that’s good enough for me
Jack Lemon was fantastic in this movie. I'm so old I saw this in the movie theater.
Jack Lemon was an old liberal fart. Too many of his movies such as the China Syndrome were just propaganda pieces.
@@TesterBoy Propaganda piece? Why because the company wouldn't spend the money to do it right and cut corners to save $$$ and endanger millions of peoples lives then hid all there criminal shit. That's straight out of the Trump play book you must be so pleased.
PlymouthVT It sounds you have been swayed by the movie. Every critical study I’ve read since the Three Mile Island Accident points to human error:
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html
allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-accidents-three-mile-island
In it’s aftermath there were additional regulations and design changes. Why would a company knowingly cut corners if it caused the destruction of it’s own system? You are badly misinformed!
I, too, saw this in the movie theatre. I was 18 years old. Today I am 58 years young. This movie was amazing. The '70s were fantastic movie making years for Hollywood. With the oil crisis and recession, filmmakers did not have large production budgets and had to rely on great acting, great writing and camerawork. No moolah for pyrotechnic hooha. Thus the "Golden age of film" in 1970s Hollywood. Other greats from this period include but are not limited to, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice for All, The Conversation, Deliverance, French Connection.
I saw it in a theatre, too. Specifically, the Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, WI, where I was working as a ring master at the Circus World Museum.
One of those movies you still want to watch today, especially this scene. What an actor JL was!!
Seeing this clip on RUclips made me buy the film
@@visionist7 I have it too (the region-free British Blu from Indicator/Powerhouse).
@@bmasters1981 I think I brought the American Blu... actually come to think of it, it has a booklet, I think... can't remember lol. Probably the British one
@@visionist7 The British one is the one that does.
@@bmasters1981 another film that has a lot of tension without needing any modern flashy gimmicks is The Andromeda Strain. I showed my friend the Blu and he found it very engaging despite often being bored with modern films. Funny that
I wasn't aware this movie didn't have music. This is an excellent job.
Gotta love the Dot matrix printer in this movie. That little gem really added suspense in the scene and towards the ending.
Jack's reaction at 3:20 is one of the best acting performances I have ever seen !
I think his realisation that the gauge is stuck and that water pressure is low really hits the severity of the situation for me.
@@shugaroony it could have been a lot worse or an explosion
4:52 does it for me. Sheer, authentic disbelief.
Exactly, i watched the scene over and over again. Never thought its great acting. Years later i know it was fantastic acting.
That warning alarm when the plant starts shaking is so eerie I'm sure it's been used in other films
Again a fantastic performance by Jack Lemmon! Great tension build-up, great acting, great movie.
Since I don’t see a lot of people mentioning, your score really added to the scene a lot I feel. Like, this scene works well without music, but the added score adds a lot of extra tension and atmosphere to the scene that I think really improves it in places (never mind that I just really enjoyed the piece you composed in general). I especially like how, when the water gauge first starts dropping, in the original scene, all we really have to tell us that something’s gone wrong is the reaction of the actors and I guess maybe the basic image of a gauge dropping rapidly. Here, though, the music clues us in immediately that something has gone wrong. Like, when the first sting of the piece came in with the meter falling, I really felt that immediate sinking feeling of fear that I think almost works better than it did in the original scene. Great work in general, just really added a lot of subtle atmosphere to an already great scene. Didn’t take away any of the tension at all, but rather added to it immensely.
Thanks - I deliberately selected a out of tune piano for that very reason to help highlight the "something's gone wrong" aspect of that moment.
The vibration on the coffee was always chilling.
T-Rex? Whew, only a nuclear reactor rumbling.
But what did it mean?
@@TheEilypily - You have to watch the whole movie. No spoilers.
@@TheEilypily The welds on a pump support structure were substandard and.... oh, just watch the movie.
Excessive milk was chilling. Looked like tea
"DONT WORRY JUST RELAX ALL THESE ALARMS ARE JUST NORMAL AND PERFECTLY OK"
Trere is one tiny problem whit alarms, they are good at getting your attantion, but too many alarms at same time may end up confusing crew, make it miss key points, it happend in TMI and it happend in 737MAX incidents as well.
@@marianmarkovic5881 Also note the habbit of just putting all the warning indicators in a grid with no order of significance or danger.
Stumbled across this scene, then went to watch the movie. Now I watched the scene again.
Goosebumps all three times.
Jack Lemmon was an actor of great range of talent from comedic to dramatic witnessed here. I'll always be proud he was so kind as to take the time to read my screenplay. He said no, ha! Still, it was a magnanimous deed and an honor he took the time for only me, an unknown writer.
So perfect at 3:10 when actors expression tells the story with no words. Subtle incidental music accentuates it perfect
"Just a routine turbine trip."
There's NOTHING routine about an unexpected unit trip!
I watched the movie the first time as a kid, then I enjoyed it even more when I rewatched it after becoming a control engineer. Seeing what they got right about working in the control room is a delight.
This scene doesn't need music which make it so eliquent.
They don't make movies like this anymore.
Yeah now there's like one 'splosion' ever 3 minutes, shaky cam and loud generic music..
Switcharoo12 They also don't beat blacks with whips to do manual labor anymore. Maybe you should invent a time machine and go back to when it was all white schools and women weren't allowed to vote you filthy piece of shit.
Well. That happened.
Music kinda ruins the scene, it really didn't need it.
Johansen Jockular lmao so triggered by a simple non offensive comment. Seek psychiatric help!
Really great score. Subtle but powerful. Thanks for sharing!
Great nail-biter scene. Tension is ratcheted up by terrific performances, especially Jack Lemmon's. Less than 2 weeks after the film's release, a real nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island.
Amazing coincidence and similarly.
@@rivotrich7 Render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable. Not to mention the cancer that would show up later. [sic]
cpufrost if it got outside of the containment/ shielding
@@rivotrich7 That was a direct quote from the movie in which the casual viewer that knew nothing about nuclear tech learned what the "China Syndrome" was and why it was called that.
Yes I’m sure it would do just that if a meltdown happened and a significant amount of radiation escaped the containment building. That’s what actually happened at Chernobyl.
This was a great movie. When he taps that water level pointer and it drops, I feel my stomach drop too! The sound effects you added seem to fit well. Classic movie. Seen it many times and it still has that intense feeling during the control room drama!
It gets me a little bit that they have an indicator that is obviously malfunctioning, and yet they're still taking and using it's data... the guy at the panel with the other (working) gauge needs to be relaying that info.
Michael Free I agree with you. They did have a redundant indicator that they could have compared the reading to, but in the midst of the excitement, they didn't look at it until they were close to critical. Human factors at its finest. Scary to think that this event could have actually happened in real life at some point in time
@@Fireship1 this is a nice little lesson in terrible interface design, actually. It's why you should duplicate every critical instrument in systems like this, and put two, identical instruments right next to each other (ideally, you want three, so as soon as one fails, you can tell instantly which one it is because the other two should still match, but that's kinda expensive...). Here, the backup indicator is small and not in the same place as the main one.
It's also why you need to have automatic shut-down systems, themselves triggered by multiple redundant sensors on redundant circuits. Of course, in real life, that's what they do. Even an oil-fired boiler on a ship will have that. But, in real life, sometimes people override the safety interlocks. One horrible irony of Chernobyl is that it took place during a safety test intended to make the plant safer, but the automatic shut-downs had to be disabled in order to carry out the test...
@@Fireship1 Both the USA and the USSR nearly started a nuclear war several times due to computer glitches and satellites mistakenly informing of an incoming attack. Plus Chernobyl was the result of both technical malfunctions and human error, so it definitely happens in real life.
The old Westronics paper chart recorders and Bailey 2500 series multi colored scroll chart recorders...Man! Those things were a money maker back in the day in the power plants. That and the old Baily pneumatic controllers that you see on the benchboard there in the movie...they always had a the bias control air relay getting worn out and needed repair fast to keep from tripping off units. All of that mechanical stuff wearing out made for a lot of overtime. Now the 800XA system will place all of that data on a Dell screen or a Yokogawa multi display recorder. Nothing to mechanically wear out. Even the Fisher level controllers for the feedwater heaters that used to have a float in a tube that sent pneumatic 3psi to 27psi signal to the control room has been replaced by a guided wave radar level indicator for 4ma to 20ma level control.....sniff...sniff... I miss those days...everything is all reliable and just gets replaced when it stops working, no more replacing gears and drive motors. Well, at least there was no way for a hacker to get access to plant controls back then.
your newly composed soundtrack definitely makes it that much more intense, great job man.
Saw this film many years ago and it’s excellent.China Syndrome
Guy: "We still have high radiation on level 8!"
Comrade Jackinov: "The Cerenkov effect. Perfectly normal phenomenon"
It was only 3.6 Roentgens. Not that bad...
@@EtzEchad About as much as a x-ray, so if anyone is overdue a check up......
kek
It's just another faulty meter, you're wasting our time
@@averyvaliant You're delusional, get out of here!
Please take these guys to the infirmary!
I was an operator at Peach Bottom Power Station. Before you hit that button to Acknowledge/Silence the alarm, you are responsible to know and understand why each and every alarm is flashing. Also, some alarms will automatically clear when the button is depressed. You have to know what those alarms were too. There are more than 1200 alarms on each unit in the Control Room.
This just goes to show how well a score/music can really influence and set a scene. Great job on this!
Yeah. Saw an interview with John Carpenter in which he talked about how the studio execs didn't think "Halloween" was the least bit frightening when he screened it for them without the score. Then he wrote the now famous piano music, overlaying it with the action and they said it was scary as hell
Excellent movie. Jack Lemmon was superb.
Love the soundtrack btw!! You captured that 70’s disaster type feel perfectly in the score!!
The real Three Mile Island incident is used as an example of how unfreindly to humans the control room was and how similar designs for other facilities contribute to errors in judgement and decision making.
David Hoffman
This film is an example of operator based control and it was the standard back in the day. In other words the knowledge of the operator was thought to be sufficient for causality control.
TMI proved that wrong. Humans are judgmental and easily fooled.
So they developed a symptom-based method for causality procedures based on the experience of the airlines.
Flip charts and checklists are now the norm.
Of course, this movie was released about a week before Three Mile Island and, although fictional, was very well researched. I've read The Warning, an account of the events before and during the TMI accident, - which was co-written by Ira Rosen (formerly of 60 Minutes) and Mike Gray (the writer of The China Syndrome screenplay). It is uncanny how closely the initial accident scenario in The China Syndrome mirrors what really happened at TMI.
My impression was that the book is unbiased.
broomsterm. Also remember that they came to within 30 minutes of total core meltdown and rendered Unit 2 completely unusable.
Jim Allen. To clarify, the operators thought the relief valve HAD closed because the switch controlling it had closed. Other than that switch, they had no direct way of knowing if the valve was closed or open. And while I totally agree with you that the system would have NOT have worked fine and resolved itself if the operators had not intervened, let us not forget that it was the human intervention - by intentionally shutting down the ECCS during the initial stages of the accident - that accellerated the progression of the accident.
Jack Lemmon, what a great actor he was! Love that guy!
Ok, that was a great addition, keep this coming ! Will bring many new watchers to old classics !!
If that wasn't the original soundtrack you did an EXCELLENT job. That SHOULD have been soundtrack. That was incredible! Nice work!
Soundtrack is very effective, very good, and not intrusive as to distract from the narrative and bring too much attention to itself, I forgot that was why I clicked on the video and got caught up in the scene. Fair play. Not sure Jack Lemmon ever got the credit he deserved.
Two absolutely awesome actors in this scene, Jack Lemmon and Wilford Brimley. If you want to see another closed room dramatic scene that just kicks ass check out Wilford Brimley at the end of Absence of Malice with Sally Field and Paul Newman. Another 80's movie that was very well written and acted. Brimley is only in it for maybe five minutes but it's one of the best movies scenes I've ever watched.
“I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in my briefcase”. Mr Brimley was spectacular.
Love this movie! Saw it for the first time 6 months ago mainly because of this clip I believe! Love the new soundtrack that was added in. So damn eerie this came out 12 days before Three Mile Island. Extremely eerie.
This scene is good for the same reason that Alien's scenes are so good. No nonsense, no cgi, no soundtrack, just sounds and excellent acting to carry the scene. It creates far more suspense than any modern film, if you ask me.
Also, superbly done music! It feels so natural, that it is hard to remember there is not any music during this scene. It really does add to the suspense here! You should be very proud of yourself.
Thank you for the kind comment.
Holy Crap. I sure hope you got an A+ on your assignment. That was chilling. Wow.
That aside, my goodness, how young Wilf Brimley, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas look.
Did Jack Lemmon get an Oscar for this? If not, he SHOULD have!
No don't think so, he definitely won for Save The Tiger though. A superb versatile actor.
Nominated but lost to Dustin Hoffman
One of the strongest Best Actor fields ever: Lemmon/China Syndrome; Pacino/…and Justice For All; Sellers/Being There; Schieder/All That Jazz; Hoffman/Kramer
This is the when movies were great! Good actors and a story selling the scene with simple shots! What a great group of actors too!
This is an awesome scene, but I gotta say, I love it even more your score!! You’re super talented! Thanks for uploading!
The alarm is the soundtrack.
I've always been a huge fan of this movie, and the fact that it doesn't beat you to death with cheesy background music makes it even more of a masterpiece. Sorry, but I applaud the OP's efforts in any case.
aburg10s Actually, the alarm IS used in the soundtrack. I sampled it and used it during the ending passage - several alarms lifted from the audio were sampled and processed to make the soundtrack.
It seems like they’ve incorporated the alarm into a Shepard Tone to create constant tension.
@@Westsoid2009 Read the description, you fucking idiot.
Soooo. Let's talk about the music! I watched this and was impressed with the music and wondered why I did not notice it in prior viewings of the movie (some years ago). THEN I read your introduction. Excellent choice to anticipate the realization of danger with the first four notes at 3:12 matching the facial and eye movements of Lemmon and Brimley, followed by a simple, quiet series of chords on the piano when the indicator drops. Then the strings/synth take over with their long-suspended crescendo all the way to the resolution four minutes later. Simple, effective and unobtrusive. It matches the pall that descends over this drama. The release of tension at the end is left in silence and leaves a sense of foreboding that fits the place of this scene in the entire movie. Well done. I'm going to go listen to your other links.
Thanks for the kind comments, and yes, you nailed exactly what I was trying to do with the music. Hope you enjoy my other links!
Great movie, Jack Lemon is just outstanding in this.
The look on Lemons face at the end is, "How will I explain this nuke disaster at the hearings?"
Didnt watch the original scene with its audio but your version puts an extra dramatic level of tension to the moment the reactor was leaking and the staff tried to correct this; good job!
"China syndrome" is a term that describes a result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth, "all the way to China".
Indeed. In reality, the material would get no further than the water table.
Yes it s a stupid fucking term by people who do not show sht about anything. morons, fucking morons.
@@nkt1 Incorrect
@@Michael_in_Vt Really? You're suggesting a nuclear meltdown could actually burn its way through the earth's core?
@@nkt1 Grow the fuck up!
I saw this when I was a kid. My mom and aunts were huge fans of disaster movies. This brought back a lot of memories! And OMG Wilford Brimley as a young man! (Still the same mustache though!)
It makes him look like a walrus.
This clip made me get a copy of the film, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. I have an interest in nuclear energy and engineering disasters, so this was a gem for me. Recommended!
I liked the part at about 6:40 that builds to the point where it drowns out all dialog. It's as if that is all the fear, anxiety, pressure, and anticipation, is building up inside of Jack Lemmon's mind to the point he can't hear any external noises. In the beginning, all those noises from the alarm are an outside distraction, with no real danger, so he calmly shuts them off. By the end, when Jack is scared, all those distorted alarms are going off in his head, and he can't shut them off, because the threat is very real and imminent!
Was that the general idea of what you were going for? If so, bravo! A+ on you work 😉
Actually, at the point where it builds up there is no audible dialogue, Brimleys comment is virtually inaudible
I got this movie in the greatest top 10 movies ever put on film. I am 67.
What I love about scenes like this (and, for example, scenes from the Chernobyl miniseries) is how well they highlight the human factor in situations like this. The people involved are called upon to make the best decisions they can with the information they have available. Everybody in the room knows what's at stake, and is working desperately to keep things running properly. But ultimately, there are errors, and there are oversights.
That sound track had my sub amps almost clipping in the infrasonic range..... Good job!
RIP Wilford Brimely
holy crap that was ...tense...Jack Lemmon.. ..such a incredibly wonderful actor....please tell me he won an award for this sensional preformance ..
R.i p Jack ..
Wow, nicely done! This movie is a favorite of mine, and though one of my favorite things about it is the absence of background score during very tense scenes, this was really well done! Great job!
"These were highly trained electronics men, Senator, looking for an electronic fault. The trouble was purely mechanical of the simplest kind, but for them it was like trying to see an elephant through a microscope. The sliver had peeled from the roll and wedged between the bell and striker, preventing the bell from ringing."
Andromeda Strain!
Something very similar almost started WWIII. TTY bell was supposed to ring when time to recall bombers.
Mr. Lemon, you were one amazing actor sir. See you in the next dimension.
every second is fully loaded tension ! superb ...
Fun fact: Wilford Brimley, the balding engineer guy, was 44 when this was filmed. So, the same age as Ryan Reynolds and Cillian Murphy are now (2020). Diabetus is a hell of a drug!
"There's some Quaker Oats in the core and I'm going to dump it."
"Jack you can't do that, it's not the right thing to do."
You'll get diabethus.
You can with that hot bowl of Quaker oats when you join the science club at Fernard State School for boys. ... This just maybe the darkest meme on the net at the moment.
I haven't seen this movie before, but that soundtrack fit right in. I honestly wouldn't have doubted it for a moment. It really pulled me in, good job!
A super film..with good actors 👍
A think a lot of people today have forgotten just how damned good Jack Lemmon was. He's remembered a lot for his comedy but the man was a damned fine actor all around.
Would totally suggest anyone interested look at his interviews with Dick Cavett.
So true, One of my all time favorites. Ive seen every one of his movies multiple time.
All I have to do is think "the out of towners" and I start laughing!