I know the history channel has to dramatize a lot of their footage to "fill up" their presentation.

But I wish the director would at least get the planes right. The "other plane" shown in the [obviously stock] footage was an F-100 Supersabre, NOT an A-4 Skyhawk. It doesn't take a lot of effort to get these sorts of details correct. Especially when it makes that show that much more credible.

Still, cool story!

That's what they get for not hiring actual history buffs and the like. The liberal arts types that are directing and producing don't know that stuff (nor how and where to fact check it). This isn't to say that LA majors are useless - us science majors probably wouldn't make great directors or producers, either. We'd get all techie-geeky and alienate the rest of the audiences with boring things like details and facts.

There's also the matter of what they had on hand, and what was freely available without requiring a license. A lot of these smaller documentaries are run on very tight budgets, small enough that paying a research assistant the hours it takes to find the "right" footage, and then perhaps paying a license fee for it, may substantially eat into their margin.

But yeah, it is annoying to see the same gun camera or test flight footage every time, no matter what's actually being shot or crashed.

uh Ron...at least at my college, History IS a liberal-art/humanity. Not sure that a 'science major' would care about the difference between an F-100 and an F-4, unless he was interested in 'opening up the hood' and taking a look at the propulsion system... ;-)

The thing is, historians may not make good directors, and film-majors may not make good historians, but simple details like this can be EASILY remedied with just a tiny bit of research.

Mark - why are you getting in the way of a good rant poking fun at liberal art majors?

That being said, I was pointing towards film majors, communications majors, and the like. History majors would likely fall under the history buffs. Scott does provide a good point about the economics of it (and yes, how many times do we all have to see that one scene of strafing the trains?!?), but simple fact checking isn't that difficult. Hell, there are enough geeks like us out there that it's possible to get the work done for free.