Why do films and videos get the chessboard wrong?

The latest Sherlock Holmes movie offered a fairly compelling chess scene. There were no glaring mistakes, and I've seen the game analysed on this site and elsewhere. Not only were the pieces all in order but it was a real game.

As for why chess in the movies is so crappy, I believe it's because most of the time chess in the movies isn't about chess. It's a trope. Generally it's there to imply that a character has a certain type of intelligence, or is a certain sort of person, or that the conflict between two people is of a certain analytical sort, or that two people have a certain intellectual understanding. Because it's only used on this thematic level it doesn't need to be real. It isn't about chess. So directors and actors miss the point because they either don't care or aren't engaging with it on that level. It's like drinking from a fake coffee cup.

House and the West Wing are both glaring examples.

Moreover in advertisements and pictures in magazines, most boards are wrongly placed.

actually it took me many years before I knew the chessboard well enough to know a1 is always black and all color of the squares on the board.

even at the time I played in a club for 5 years I could place pieces wrong on the chess board

but after watching this great video by Daniel Rensch

http://www.chess.com/video/player/achieving-full-board-awareness

I can instantly tell if a board is placed wrong.

In the movie "From Russia With Love," they got it right. The match was based on a Spasky-Bernstein match two years earlier.

As far as From Russia with Love (1962) goes, I have heard an ancedote about the level of care and detail that went into that first scene and the chess game portrayed, but I can't for the life of me remember it now.  (Must be getting old).

I do remember that the hall in which that game with Kronsteen was filmed (pictured) was constructed especially for the movie, and was the biggest outlay in the film's budget.  

I thought I saw a wrong chess setup on the latest X Men film.(Magneto V Xavier)  It looks like the player of black has played 1...b6 and white hasn't moved. Perhaps one of chess.com's sleuths can track this down...

I've always looked at the other side of the board to make sure it's the right way around. "White on the right" is what I was taught. h1 if you're White, and a8 if you're Black, should always be white squares.

X-Men is swarming with those "dramatic" metaphorical duelling minds chess games... Nobody in those movies ever seems to enjoy their chess. 

There's a rather bizarre game at the end of the first movie with Magneto and Xavier in the jail... it's played with one of those glass chess sets, as well -- I guess to make everything seem more portentious and dramatic.

http://youtu.be/RWDDVuxFboI

It's glass so you can see through it to insure there is no metal inside.

That too... Although the biggest question is why doesn't Xavier just read minds when he plays chess... 

I stand by my original point: chess in these movies is bad because it's generally just there to serve as a sort of dramatic scaffolding. It's like wallpaper.

Yes, whoever mentioned that it's a trope hit it on the head. It is there to make the viewer say, "ohh, they're playing chess, they're really smart." And the fellow above saying it's dramatic scaffolding, yes. I guess we're not supposed to look too closely at the game(s) on the board, but just take it at face value that it's a real game. 

I'm reminded of an episode of Monk, a detective show where the detective is overly brilliant, and the tiniest of clues seem obvious to him, where the local police can't put 1 plus 1 together to save their lives. Anyhoo, in the episode, there is a strong chess player putting on a simul and he is playing white, as players tend to do when giving a simul. After moving, and receiving black's reply, the master said " Bird's opening. Hah! As if I haven't seen that many times today." You can see why I just rolled my eyes at that, shaking my head. Oh, it just makes you so frustrated!

in this article 11 movies with the board set up wrong:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12979/11-movie-chess-scenes-where-board-set-wrong

e.g
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me 

you can easily tell that a1 h8 is white instead of black in the movie.

This reminds me of the West Wing episode where Sam moves a pawn a single space (I just looked it up and it's d2-d3) and Bartlet says "Ahhh, the Fibonnaci opening." Please.

There's a current TV commercial for something (I have no idea what), but the key word is "focus," and the commercial shows a very intense player leaning over the chessboard and about to administer the final blow. And he reaches out with his piece and knocks over the opponent's KING. That's right, he captures the king!

The entire commercial is filmed with chess as the central metaphor, and no one on the crew mentioned that the king is never captured??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvayIrNg8hk

It's an ad for 5 hour energy. The "winning" move is Qd5xe8, a move that no piece can legally make, even if the King were allowed to be captured.

As far as I can tell, this is the position on the board prior to the move:

We can't see whether there is a pawn on h2 or g3, or something on h8 or anything at all on or below the d2-a5 diagonal, but Black is in check, so it clearly Black to move, and White just picks up a piece that is not giving check, and makes a move that would be illegal anyway, and apparently "owns his opponent".

But hey, at least White's bishops are on opposite coloured squares, and the board is set up correctly.

A funny thing I remember is from the Life with Luie series, the masked chess boy episode. Not only it is clear the creators did not have any idea what chess is, but also there is a mistake like Luie picks up a pawn to move, as he puts down the piece, it magically turns into a rook. It was a great elisode, but they could have put more effort into the chess part.