I watched Star Trek VI the other week and there’s a shot in the film of the Golden Gate Bridge with some futuristic buildings in the background. Something about the shot made me think something was wrong, and I rewound to look at it again.
This is the shot I saw. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong: the filmmakers have reversed the shot!
The stuff on the right hand side of the picture is actually on the west side of the bridge, while the stuff on the left (excepting the non-existant buildings, of course ) is actually on the east. The little cypress tree up at Battery Spencer west of the bridge (visible under the roadway) is what gave it away.
Why would they do this? What is there to gain from taking a real shot and inverting it left/right in a science fiction movie?
(Incidentally, this shot, looking towards the east, couldn’t be manipulated to give the same effect, but then again, it wasn’t in the film.)
Actually, I’m more curious as to why the Golden Gate bridge would still be standing in a future age wherein flying cars zip across the water any which way they can. The bridge is obviously unnecessary, and would by then be in a serious state of disrepair.
Either the director thought reversing the background would provide better framing for the action, or some numbnuts simply reversed the master when they were putting the effects in.
The alternative, of course, is that the original bridge was destroyed during the Eugenics Wars and the replacement was located a few hundred yards away.
It’s not like China’s in any real danger of Mongolia invading any time soon so the Great Wall serves no function and after so many centuries, is doubtlessly not in the best shape it could be.
Continuity. Since this is just an establishing shot, this is the least likely reason for the specific scene you’re asking about to be flipped, but it often applies in other films. If, in one scene, a character walk out of a room on screen left, and in the next scene enters another room from from screen left, it’s disorienting. Flipping the first scene so that he exits screen right, instead, creates a continuity of movement between the two scenes.
Artistic. After getting the shot, they decided they wanted the bridge to be arching off screen right instead of screen left. There’s a theory, in filmmaking, that things that seem to be moving from left to right are more “positive” than things moving from right to left. The audience subconciously reads left-to-right direction as “forward,” and the reverse as “backwards.” Possible something to do with how we read. Starfleet is supposed to be a benevolent, progressive organization, so the director or editor might have felt that the Golden Gate appearing to spring from Starfleet HQ and off screen right would create a more positive image in the audience’s head. Considering that this is a Star Trek movie, and not, say, The Cremaster Cycle, I find this to be pretty unlikely, too.
Accidental. A strip of developed film looks pretty much the same, no matter which side you look at it from. Unless there’s lettering in the shot, it’s hard to tell if you’ve reversed it or not. This was especially true back when they used to manually edit films on a flatbed; I don’t know how true it is for editing on a computer, but I assume it still happens from time to time. The whole image could be flipped with a mouseclick, which could have happened purely by accident at any point, especially during the insertion of the special effects. Given the attention to detail normally exhibited by the Star Trek franchise, this seems the most likely explanation.
I suspect that this is the reason. Open up the image in a photo editor, and flip it back. The un-flipped version feels closed off and cramped when you compare it to the shot used in the film.
Peter Jackson used this effect a lot in the Lord of the Rings. If you notice, the fellowship almost always walks from left to right on their journey to Mordor.
There are several in LOTR, Saruman looking down from the tower (hair and flags move incorrectly) zoom in on Eowyn at Rohan. The flags are wrong there too.
That’s a little bit different. In these examples, the image isn’t just flipped. The film is actually running in reverse–hence the unnatural billowing of hair and flags. You can also see smoke being ***sucked into ** * the chimneys. In the commentary, Jackson explained about the Eowyn zoom that he just liked the shot better in reverse order of the way it was filmed.
) is actually on the east. The little cypress tree up at Battery Spencer west of the bridge (visible under the roadway) is what gave it away.
