Some Wardrobe guys don’t like dressing actors as ‘real’ soldiers, so they fudge things. The other is that something will aesthetically look ‘better’ than the real thing so they just go with that. I’ve worked on a few military projects and it’s entirely dependent on the military costumer and what they want to do.
One picture I was a Russian mercenary and they threw random ranks on everyone. The costumer thought I was nice so he gave me an FSB velcro patch that I got to keep, which was pretty cool. Another I played a SEAL and we had some well known SEAL dudes behind the film, so they were very attention to detail on everything so that was really cool.
It’s 50:50 two things.
Some Wardrobe guys don’t like dressing actors as ‘real’ soldiers, so they fudge things. The other is that something will aesthetically look ‘better’ than the real thing so they just go with that. I’ve worked on a few military projects and it’s entirely dependent on the military costumer and what they want to do.
One picture I was a Russian mercenary and they threw random ranks on everyone. The costumer thought I was nice so he gave me an FSB velcro patch that I got to keep, which was pretty cool. Another I played a SEAL and we had some well known SEAL dudes behind the film, so they were very attention to detail on everything so that was really cool.