One of my favorites is in Max Dugan Returns. The scene is when Michael (Matthew Broderick) is coming into the kitchen to eat a pancake breakfast provided for him by Max Dugan (Jason Robards), who is his grandfather, but Michael doesn’t know this yet. His mother, Marsha Mason as Nora McPhee, is on the phone with the cop she met, Brian (Donald Sutherland). Michael, as he sits down and begins to eat, is decidedly barefoot.
The camera begins to pan from one angle, looking into the kitchen, moving around a door jamb, then to another angle where Nora’s face is in close-up and Michael and Max are behind her. This is all done to convey real time, as we hear the unbroken phone conversation during the two or three second pan.
Once the shot is on Nora, look at Michael behind her, still sitting in the same place. Still eating the same pancakes. a couple of seconds have passed, and he’s wearing socks!.
I think that would be called a continuity error but along the same lines in Superman you can see director Richard Donnor in the reflection of the glass when Clark and Lois come out the revolving door and bump into Rex Reed.
I found this out watching the DVD and Donnor pointed it out during his commentary. He was pretty embarrassed.
I’d say this is an example of a problem in editing. Sometimes numerous takes of scenes are done. Each is a little different, natually. Sometimes a director will select the cut that does what she or he wishes the scene to do and be forced to ignore a continuity problem. Sometimes there IS no other take and you’re stuck with the socks.
Not that I do much editing, but as I write scripts for (public) TV, I’m present for much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth in the edit suite.
Chances are the conversation was filmed over two days, and on the second day he forgot to put on his socks, and the director liked parts of the conversation from the first day of filming, and parts from the second.
Or perhaps they never intended to have Broderick’s feet visible in the frame, and thus didn’t pay attention to his socks.
Titanicsucked. Everything about it sucked. Everyone in it sucked. It was three agonizing hours of incomperable suckitude. Thus the whole thing was a Directorial Boo-Boo.
Wow, thanks. Now I have something else to discuss in my thread. Imagine having two takes without every detail identical. Serves them right. […shaking head… it’s a lonely world…]
Continuity mistakes are not at all uncommon. Another that comes to mind is in The Wizard of Oz. Keep your eye on the length of Dorothy’s hair during the sing and dance number with the Scarecrow.
One of my favorite mistakes is from North by Northwest. (Do I really need to give a spoiler alert for a movie over 40 years old?) There’s the Mt. Rushmore cafeteria scene, where Eva Marie Saint “shoots” Cary Grant. Watch the background, there’s a kid (towards the left of the screen I think, but I’m not sure) who plugs his ears well in advance of the shooting.
One big directorial mistake was in the third TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, which was filmed in the hilly regions north of Los Angeles, with lots of mountains visible in the background. Remember, the film is supposed to be set in Texas, a rather flat state.
Actually, more than mistakes, I have favorite moments that look like mistakes but were actually intentional: the backwards Volkswagen in the final sequence of CARRIE (which subliminally tips us off that we’re seeing a dream) or the wrong-side-of-the freeway car chase in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.
Question:
I have seen Carrie quite a few times and I never remember seeing a Volkswagen often enough for it to resemble any signifigant meaning. Perhaps I am missing something oblivious (wouldnt be the first time) but this brings me to my question
[SPOILER ALERT]
When you say the end of the movie are you referring to when Carrie reaches out of the grave and attacks the girl? If this is true, are you then saying that the sequence is only a dream?
If so that takes away from the movie, IMHO, as it dealt with the supernatural and I thought Carrie coming back from the dead was pretty cool. If it was just a dream and Carrie’s hand never came out of the grave, well, that just sux.
In the final sequence of CARRIE, we see Amy Irving’s character walkign to the grave of Carrie White. Before she reaches the cemeter, there is a slo-mo shot of her walking down the street, and there is a Volkwagen in the background.
The entire sequence was shot in reverse motion, so Irving was walking backwards while being filmed backwards. When the film is run through the projector, she appears to be walking forwards. However, the Volkswagen in the background was going forward during filming, so now it appears to be going backwards.
Since the front end of a Volkwagen bug doesn’t look that different from the rear, this image is not immediately obvious unless you’re looking for it, and it flashes by very quickly. You’re not supposed to notice it consciously. The idea is that it registers somewhere in the back of your mind, setting you up to suspect that something is not quite right with what you’re seeing.
And yes, the whole sequence is a dream. After the hands comes up from the grave, the film cuts to Amy Irving in bed, awakening from her nightmare, still holding her arm out as if it’s being gripped by the hand from the grave. (I suppose one could argue that in her nightmare she is reliving a flashback of something that actually happened, but I’ve never heard anyone try to argue this point.)
Kate Winslet got naked on screen in Titanic. Prima facie proof that not everything in Titanic sucked.
Speaking of sucking…
Watch Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. During their first night together when Julia starts going down on rich-boy Gere his tie keeps appearing and disappearing from shot to shot.
Maybe it was some sort of symbolic thing…but I doubt it.
Oooo, lotsa stuff. Where to begin?
[list=1]
[li]Jack said he went ice fishing on Lake Wissota, Wisconsin. That reservoir wasn’t created until 5 years after Titanic sank.[/li][li]Nouveau rich matron Margaret Brown wasn’t called “Molly” in her lifetime.[/li][li]A closeup of Captain Smith reveals that he is wearing contact lenses.[/li][li]Jack takes Rose and Molly’s arms to go into dinner. They start walking, but in the next shot they are still standing apart.[/li][li] In the shot where Rose “flies,” the faces of Jack and Rose are lit from a different angle, though still from the left.[/li][li]When the radio operator sends out the “CQD” message, the pattern of dots and dashes he makes with the key is not intelligible Morse code.[/li][li]We are shown a shot of Rose’s view of the Statue of Liberty from a ship, yet to obtain a view as indicated she would have to be on land.[/li][li]The dolphins shown in the film following the ship are Pacific White Sided Dolphins. They do not occur in the Atlantic, where the ship was meant to be.[/li][li]As the Titanic is sinking and begins to pitch forward, you can see passengers sliding forward across the deck. In one short scene, you can see a few people hit what’s supposed to be a large metal reel. When they hit it, it crinkles, revealing that it’s made of foam.[/li][li]The world map on the wall of the radio room shows countries with present-day borders.[/li][li]On a closeup of the Captain, you can see his left ear is pierced.[/li][li]In some shots it is visible that people who hang or fall off the Titanic cast shadows on the Titanic’s hull, although the only source of light was Titanic itself.[/li][li]Filtered cigarettes did not come out until the mid-40’s.[/li][li]Rescuers’ voices echo even though there is nothing in the middle of the ocean for them to echo off of.[/li][li]The mass given before the ship sinks includes the rosary in English; it was supposed to be in Latin (before Vatican II).[/li][li]During the overhead shot of the Titanic splitting in half a victim slides upward, defying gravity.[/li][li]If Rose is 101 and she was 17 when she was on the Titanic, that makes the movie date 1996. But the crew members of the Keldysh wear jumpsuits with patches on them that read “CCCP,” despite the fact that the Soviet Union has been nonexistent since 1989.[/li][li]When Rose is searching for someone to help her when Jack is handcuffed, she punches a porter in the nose, but he has blood on his hand before he touches his nose.[/li][li]The safe that was opened on deck was much bigger than the one shown being used eighty years earlier.[/li][li]When “saving” Rose from jumping off the ship, Jack removes his jacket twice.[/li][/list=1]
