Anachronisms: “drehen” in German in connection with film

[pne]

I posted an entry about (among other things) the use of “dial” for the process of selecting a telephone endpoint even if the device you use no longer has a dial a while ago.

Today, I watched a film (in German), which included an acknowledgement in the credits for an organisation which allowed them to do the “Dreharbeiten” on their site. And I thought that that’s starting to become an anachronism.

It means the process of shooting a film, but literally means “turning work”, because einen Film drehen “to turn a film” is the verb used for shooting a film (i.e. recording it): presumably because this was originally all done on, well, film (yay, another anachronism), which would turn on reels while you recorded.

But now, I imagine more and more, er, video content is captured electronically onto flash memory, or the like, so there’s no film or turning involved any more. But I’m sure people will still ask, “Wird hier gerade gedreht?” (Is there turning going on here?) if they see cameras around and want to know whether a film video production is being made.

Comments

[pauamma]

I'm pretty sure this is still the case in French. ("tournage")