On television, when you watch a high-speed sunrise, it is always going backwards, as if they filmed a sunset and are just playing it backwards for a sunrise.
Is that all there is to it? Is there some deeper underlying reason?
How can you tell that it’s going backwards at all?
I have never noticed it.
Are you talking about a sunrise over the ocean? Maybe it was filmed on the west coast and they had no choice.
Well, when you look at a sunrise, and the path the sun makes across the sky, while facing it it would travel towards the right across the sky, or if you prefer, clockwise.
On television however, it most often, especially in commercials, travels counter-clockwise, or to the left.
I, too, have noticed many filmed sunrises rising to the left. Either they are playing a sunset in reverse, or they are showing a sunrise that was filmed in the southern hemisphere. I just assumed it was stock footage of a sunset and they were too lazy to go send a film crew to film the real thing.
Yeah, it’s not like these things happen every day.
What’s with all the sunrise/sunset threads I’m posting into this weekend?
What did Cecil say about “television addled bozos with barely enough brains to spit”?
If the camera is facing south the sun rises to the left and travels clockwise, if the camera is facing north the sun rises to the right and travels counterclockwise.
Huh? If the camera is facing south, the sunrise, taking place east of you, won’t be in the frame at all.
If you mean slightly south (or north) of due east, the sun will still move clockwise. If the camera is facing southish, the sun will start on the left side of the picture and move toward the right as it rises. If the camera is facing northish, the sun will start on the right side of the picture and move right, possibly out of the shot, as it rises.
Camera crews are party animals. They aren’t awake, or at least alert enough, to film a sunrise when it happens, but they’re rearing to go once the sunset hits. So they film that and ‘fix it in post’.
Though actually the more likely reason is that they want the ocean in shot, and yet they’re filming it on the west coast.
Actually, the sun does rise over the ocean on the west coast, at least in a number of locations. I used to spend many weeks a year in Santa Barbara, CA. A friend there made me get up one morning to witness it, and we wound up doing this ritual frequently, getting up predawn and making the treck to some nice spot on the beach or with a high view of the ocean, to watch the sun rise there. This is one of those things like the Panama Canal running from west to east to take you from the Atlantic to the Pacific, having to do with twists in the geography that got so convoluted one gets all turned around. But, sure enough, the Sun rose over the Pacific, again and again and again.
I think the main point the OP was trying to make was, when you watch the sun rise or set, it won’t be going straight up and down, but at a slight angle (unless you’re on the equator, where the sun IS going straight up and down.)
If you’re in the northern hemisphere, the sun will go to the right as it rises, and as it sets, it’s coming down from the left (as you’re facing it.)
If you’re in the southern hemisphere, the sun will go up and to the left (the equator’s on you’re left, remember?) and come down from the right (you turned around to face the sun, equator’s on your right.)
Hope this clears up more than it confuses. 
Glenoled