Tell me about the most glaring crew/equipment visible errors you have seen.
I just finished watching The Great Escape on DVD – always an excellent film. As noted in the IMDB “goofs” section, there are several “crew visible” errors in the film.
We’re not talking about the edge of a boom mike appearing – it’s much more serious (it’s an old film about a real event, so I won’t bother with spoiler tags):
In the first scene with Steve McQueen in the “cooler” (a cinder-block jail cell), one can see the front edge of the left-side wall (i.e. where the fourth wall should be, but isn’t). What’s worse, you see a fellow behind the wall holding a boom.
When the prisoners are lined up for moonshine, you see a fellow wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses in full view in the left side, politely guiding the prisoners in line.
When the prisoners are assembled in the yard on the morning after the breakout, you see all kinds of equipment on the left side of the screen, beyond the fence: huge spotlights, scaffolding, ladders and the like.
What flagrant crew-visible errors have you spotted in films?
In Chasing Amy, when Affleck is walking back to the exploder in the rain, after pissing off his lesbian friend, the camera crew is clearly reflected in the windows of the building in the background.
Let’s run this one back up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes…
Anyone else have memorable “crew visible” shots from films?
I’ll offer another, in line with the reflective shots mentioned above:
In Pulp Fiction, all the while that Vincent and Jules are cruising along, discussing what’s so cool about Amsterdam, you can see their car reflected in store windows passing by – the car is sitting on a low trailer, you see the trailer’s wheels below and between the car’s wheels. This is not a fleeting glimpse. The scene is several minutes long and you see the reflection repeatedly.
In the scene in Gremlins where the gremlin jumps out of the Christmas tree, the crew member controlling the puppet is quite visible. He’s wearing a red shirt that stands out quite a lot as the tree falls over.
There’s the audible crew gaffe in Pink Floyd the Wall. At the beginning of “Comfortably Numb,” Pink’s manager walks into the trashed hotel room and takes a look around. An off camera voice says, “Say that again… say that again.” Pink’s manager nods and says, “Fuck me!”
I don’t know if this counts, but also in Excalibur:
Merlin is carrying the baby Arthur out of Uther’s castle. A young Morgana is very obviously pushed forward by this guy, I guess as a queue to deliver her line (but why would that be necessary?). At least the guy was in costume, but it sure did look like stage direction for a hesitant young actress.
According to “The Hollywood Hall of Shame,” the finale of of Marion Davies’s ** Cain and Mabel** was a big production number, and a member of the crew can be seen in the background, wandering across the back of the stage during the entire take. It wasn’t noticed until editing and it was too late and too expensive for a retake.
The IMDB doesn’t list the error, but the film isn’t shown enough for anyone to have seen it to confirm (on 46 users have voted on the film).
A member of the crew is visible in the mirror in Death on the Nile
In the 1926 Ben Hur’s famous chariot race, there’s a terrible crash between two chariots—you can clearly see an assistant director in shirtsleeves run out onto the track to warn off the approaching chariots. It’s a long-shot, though, and so much is going on that you have to look for him.
In Busby Berkeley’s "Gold Diggers of Nineteen Thirty-something, there’s an elaborate scene (as if Busby did anything BUT elaborate) with baby grand pianos floating across the stage. Well, there’s a bunch of guys under the pianos pushing them around. No matter…I still adore a big Hollywood production!
In the case of The Great Escape, it’s one of several movies in which the Aspect ratio for DVDs was set such that you can see things that weren’t intended to be seen. You don’t see any of that stuff unless you are watching that specific Region 1 DVD. The goofs section on IMDb verifies that:
I have that DVD as well as some others that are a few years old, and seeing that stuff is pretty common. I personally don’t hold that against the filmmakers, since they never meant for people to see that.
Here’s some I do hold against the filmmakers, as they aren’t errors in the aspect ratio but blatant shots that are in the middle of the screen.
• The aforementioned Logan’s Run has to be the winner - to watch that scene knowing that you can see the entire crew reflected in Box is hilarious.
• In Oxford Blues, as Rob Lowe is hugging his grilfriend goodbye, someone walks through the revolving door behind them and the whole crew is suddenly visible through the glass of the door. (This was the first time I never noticed anything like that, and it’s really obvious).
• At the end of L.A. Confidential, as Bud and Lynn are driving away in her car, you can see a cameraman reflected in the gloss of the car door.
• In 2001 when the men in spacesuits are excavating the monolith, you can see a cameraman reflected in one of their helmets, and a few seconds later, you can see two crew members reflected in the monolith itself.
• In Superman when young Clark jumps in front of the speeding train and the train whizzes by, you can see a crewmember and camera reflected in the windows of the speeding train.
I don’t think that’s the same thing. The crew was there, and wore black to make them hard to see, but no one expected that they’d be completely invisible. It’s sort of like the Japanese style full-size puppets, where the puppeteer is always visible (but wearing black), but you don’t notice them.
Can’t recall the specific scene, but it’s in Dorothy’s apartment building hallway in “Blue Velvet”…a PA steps out, and then quickly back into, a doorway.
If only I had checked to see the title of the film. Some seventeen years ago, I wandered down to the mess decks on my submarine after perfoming some preventive maintenance in the engineering spaces. As was usual at that hour of the night, a movie was playing.
On the screen, a very shapely young actress, wearing little more than a wisp of chiffon around her shoulders, was descending a staircase, quite slowly. There may have been some gothic-esque organ music playing on the soundtrack, but I don’t remember clearly those nipples were making it difficult for me to concentrate on such peripheral concerns, don’tcha know.
A striking anomaly in the scene was the presence of a bearded man, sitting in a moving chair (the technical name for which presently escapes me), tracking the woman’s slow glide down the staircase, with a movie camera trained on her oh-so-perfect chest. The man’s face displayed no expression, and he seemingly never moved a muscle throughout the shot.
The film might have had Mary Steenburgen being groomed to impersonate another woman for an elaborate blackmail cum fraud, where she thought she was training for an acting gig. If I’m correct about this, the film was titled Dead of Winter. If I’m not correct, it was another movie that had such a memorable crew-in-shot gaffe, and I’m sorry for associating Miss Steenburgen’s name with such a tawdry project.
I’m with you on that, Dooku. I spent a few years working as a projectionist, and I definitely remember how much of the frame was masked off. Still, I think I’ll side with Cartooniverse on this one since he’s a cameraman. Basically, his posts indicate that if it got on film, it’s an error – there are no guarantees that the theater (or DVD manufacturer) will provide the proper masking.
Engywook, I’m going to have to dig out my copy of The Wall and hear for myself. I know exactly which part you are referring to, but it always sounded like the proper script to me. Even if it wasn’t, it’s hard to pinpoint any errors in a film like that with so much strange stuff going on.