Building Is Welding

He's either welding midair or a tiny piece of random wire. But he is building something, isn't he?

What's the easiest way to show your characters hard at work fixing/repairing/building something? Show them welding, of course! Also, it will always be showy, sparky, manly welding, using electric arcs or oxyacetylene: Precision soldering irons are for wussies.

Can occur in a Creation Sequence, Hard Work Montage, A-Team Montage, and maybe a Forging Scene.

Examples of Building Is Welding include:

Film

• The Star Wars movies, particularly The Empire Strikes Back, do this.
• The trailers for the 2009 Star Trek show the USS Enterprise under construction, with lots of welding depicted.
  • The viral marketing site for the film showed lots of welding and not much else.
• Flashdance
• Iron Man has Tony Stark welding while working on his car, and on the armour. Iron Man 2 has Whiplash welding in a scene.
  • At least it's not the only thing Tony does—his various construction montages involved plenty of things melting, Rapid-Fire Typing, a holographic version of CAD, and, once, him hammering a faceplate into shape with a sledgehammer.
• Makaela in Transformers 2 was welding while helping out in her father's workshop. Turns out to be Chekhov's Gun; she later tortures a Decepticon with the blowtorch.
• In Blade, Whistler is welding in his first appearance. Similarly in Blade 2, Scud is shown welding in his workshop - on both instances, they're making weapons and equipment for Blade.
• 10 Things I Hate About You has Patrick welding in his metalwork class.
• The Fast and the Furious has the protagonists welding while building a car.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has Caractacus Potts welding as he's building Chitty.

Live Action TV

• The A-Team would have at least one scene every week of the Team hard at work building something out of scrap metal. Frequently, Mr T's character, B.A. Baracus, would be the one welding it all together.
• As part of the Used Future on Babylon 5, during the Title Sequence we see a worker welding, fixing something on the outside of the station.
• Often seen in the Hard Work Montage in |Mission Impossible, with Barney usually being the one doing the welding.
• Top Gear tends to have sequences where the presenters are modifying a car and there's typically at least one shot of one of them welding.
• Firefly: Kaylee is seen welding while she and Wash are building the ambulance for the heist in "Ariel".
• Averted in several episodes of Burn Notice where Michael and Fiona are seen soldering (usually bomb-related electronics).
• Star Trek: Enterprise. Towards the end of the Xindi War arc the NX-01 Enterprise picked up heavy battle damage, so set builders would be put in Starfleet uniform and do welding in the background of the actors.

Video Games

• Team Fortress 2: The engineer update video.
• In StarCraft, if you watch the SCVs closely you'll see that whether they are constructing or repairing, vehicles or buildings, all they ever do is weld. In fact, according to the manual, that's all they can do, since their only tool (or at least, the one that hurts the most when used as a weapon) is a "fusion cutter."
• In Theme Park, engineers repair rides seemingly by walking around them and welding in random spots.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons will frequently show Homer welding while working on a project, especially if it is something that wouldn't need to be welded.
• Sheldon has a couple welding shots in My Life as a Teenage Robot.
• Phineas and Ferb have had at least one.
• The Penguins of Madagascar will always include Rico or Kowalski welding if something needs to be fixed.
• Played for Laughs in The Looney Tunes Show episode "Peel of Fortune". There are flashes of arc welding from the garage and daffy is shown wearing a welding mask just before he unveils his latest invention... sliced bread!