The other night I rented this stupid, straight-to-video movie called “Mercy” starring Ellen “What-the-hell-happened-to-my-career?” Barkin and Julian “I-never-really-had-one-anyway” Sands. Just a putrid, predictable piece of shite.
Anyway, in one of the very first scenes, Barkin’s police detective character is examining a homicide victim who has had her eyelids cut off. The camera pan’s up the victim’s body to Barkin bending over her face and…the “dead” woman blinks! And not just any old “I think I saw her blink out of the corner of my eyes” kind of blink, but a full, slow “hey, look what I can do even though I’m dead and supposedly have had my eyelids removed!” kind of blink.
How Barkin didn’t catch it I’ll never know (she’s looking square in the face of the actress playing “Corpse #1”). Ditto for the other two “detectives”. The editor could have conceivably missed it because he/she was sleeping through this boring piece of crap. Or maybe they all just thought, “Fuck it. We’re only in this one for the paycheck.”
So…what’s your favorite movie/TV gaffe or blooper?
My absolute favorite movie screwup is in Star Wars (that’s episode IV:A New Hope, not episode I). Toward the end of the movie, after the Death Star has been demolished, Luke(Mark Hamill) is getting out of the X-wing and Leia (Carrie Fisher) yells “Luke!”. In return, Luke yells, “Carrie!”. Oops! Hehe.
However, even the mighty starwars.com cannot debunk the fact that Han Solo’s vest magically appears and disappears during the Carbonite Freezing Chamber scene in The Empire Strikes Back.
My favorite is one that i just saw a couple of days ago. I bought the new Star Wars Movie Phantom Menance on video a while ago but put off watching it due to the fact that i saw it in the movies. The gaffe or was it on purpose Mr. Lucas is this: During the Senate Meeting on Corasant <sp?> they pan over a couple of the other Senate Hover Offices and inside one of the offices are 3 E.T.'s running around. I literally fell outta my chair and rewound the tape 5 times to make sure i saw what i thought i saw. They look way too much like E.T.'s to be anything else, even made up characters.
At least a dozen scenes in that movie had a boom mike showing. I’m not talking about a hint here, either: in one scene I keep expecting the mike to hit Natalie Portman in the noggin.
It’s on purpose. Lucas likes to throw in things from his past movies or pay homage to others. If you look closely during the junkyard scene in TPM you’ll find the pod from 2001 in the background.
In one of the Lethal Weapon movies (don’t even ask which one, they all seem the same to me) Danny Glover pulls out a small revolver (a S&W 640 .38 special) rapidly fires six shots, ducks behind the car, opens the cylander to dump the FIVE spent shells. Its a five shot revolver…Doh!
If you see a boom mike in a movie at a theater, see if you can see it in the video. If the film isn’t framed up right, you may see more of the picture than the filmmakers wanted you to. Was Natalie’s face always closer to the bottom of the screen? It may have been misframed (I think I made that word up).
I noticed while previewing Snow Day for out ‘kiddie show’ that, when one of my splices was off, I could see a lot of boom mikes. Maybe the filmmakers intended it to be a close-up, but decided to pull it back… etc.
I was not able to find any info on this. This has been an assumption of mine based upon personal viewing experience. Could you post an exact link to the information you refer to?
There’s a scene in PeeWee’s Big Adventure – he’s supposed to be travelling really fast – and you can see stuff moving alongside the road rather than PeeWee moving. (Sorry I can’t explain it better.)
I don’t know if this is part of his trip with Large Marge or what. Haven’t seen it for awhile.
Same sort of thing happens in Beetlejuice – they have a hell of a time keeping everything sized the same from one shot to another when Keaton’s doing the miniature stuff.
Does Tim Burton not pay attention or what? Actually, the movies are so much fun, it doesn’t really matter. Part of the charm, maybe?
Ok, here’s what he’s talking about, I hope this is the best way to explain it. Go to this link http://www.popstudios.com/film/FORMATS.html and look at the two images under where it says “Academy Aperature.”
The one on the right has a sorta letterboxed image, and that’s about the ratio most movies are projected at. The one on the left has a bit more room at the top and bottom and it’s assumed those areas will be masked when projected in theaters. If the film is being projected “out of frame” (in other words, not centered, with more of the top or the bottom of the image showing); or the theater has an improperly cut aperature plate (on the projector) or improperly aligned masking (on the screen) you’ll see the extra junk you aren’t supposed to because it’s technically out of the projection ratio. There’s no rhyme or reason to how films are printed. I’ve seen films with both full frame images and the letterboxed ones, sometimes in the same reel, so it’s not anything dictated by studio or anything like that.
Thanks, voguevixen I guess that will teach me to reply without checking how many times whoever I am talking about has posted At least I gave you a proper opportunity to expound
Let’s try this again…
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This is the link I am looking for. Hehe, sorry :o
Oh, BTW another one in Star Wars: A new Hope is only visible in Widescreen. When Luke and his uncle are buying the droids, and Luke starts to lead the little red bugger away, it spurts and croaks. The scene switches back to the droid line a couple seconds later, and the little red guy is still sitting next to R2. Fun.
And then there’s the most famous Star Wars mistake of them all, in the first film. During the scene where Stormtroopers are cutting their way into the communications booth where R2D2 and C3PO are hiding, watch the last Stormtrooper on the right. As they run into the room, he smashes his forehead on the doorframe - in war, the first casualty is dignity.
I guess that will teach me to reply without checking how many times whoever I am talking about has posted 
Fun.