I wanted to address a couple of movies and production goofs that I have seen, but I wonder how many others have noticed them. I'll address each individually.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) – I saw this film in the theatre when it first came out. There were two production goofs I noticed on the big screen that may not be as noticeable on a small screen. During the opening montage about Vlad the Impaler, there is a scene where Vlad returns to find that his love has committed suicide, and her corpse is laying on the floor. In the shot, Winona Ryder is laying on the floor in the forefront, as Gary Oldman comes from the background and drops to his knees next to her. When I saw this in the theatre, you could very clearly see Ryder's face twitch in reaction to Oldman crashing to his knees. Later in the film, during the funeral of Mina's friend Lucy, everyone is grieving around the body, and in the theatre I could clearly see the actress playing Lucy breathing. I could see these things very clearly on the big screen, but I was watching the film alone at the time. Later, upon viewing it on a TV screen, I could see these goofs, but then I knew they were there and I could see how someone would miss them on the small screen.
Hannibal (2001) – Now, here I saw the film in the theatre with a friend, and he was able to see what I saw, but sometimes I had to point them out, so maybe I just have a keen eye for production goofs. These I could not believe I was actually seeing them. There were about four scenes I can think of off the top of my head where you could clearly see the boom mic dangling over actors. In one shot of Anthony Hopkins standing and speaking, you could actually see it bobbing up and down over his head. In another shot of Starling sitting at her desk, I could actually not just the mic, but the stand arm and all being moved. There were other instances but those were the most glaring. I had to turn to my buddy and say "did you see that?" In a couple of the cases he said "yeah, is that really happening?" Since then, I've never watched the entire thing again on the small screen, mainly because it was that bad a film, but I have watched some of the scenes I'm referring to, and I couldn't really see them, but I wasn't really studying the shots either, so it may be that the shots were discovered and fixed prior to releasing the film post-theatre.
Is anyone else here familiar with these shots? I've described the shots to others in conversation on multiple occasions, but have never talked to anyone that remembers seeing the goofs. They were so glaring that I have a hard time believing that I just have that good an eye, and I honestly don't think I do anyway. I figured if anyone else has seem them it would be among my fellow film obsessors.
In Mitchell, the chase when the mustang smashes suddenly is fixed and smashed again
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)... The only flaw I noticed was "the magic hat"... One of the guys accidently sit on the hat and crushed it and the next sene the hat is ok... :)
wow... I looked at the Bram Stoker's Dracula goof list on IMDB, to see what it said about "the magic hat"... I'm surprised to see the list is longer then my arm. hehehe
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/goofs
As for the first one, yeah, you see breathing/flinching corpses all the time if you look for it. Just saw a flinching corpse tonight in a low buget flick. A bit surprised that it would show up in a big budget flick like DRACULA, since they have the time and money to shoot over and over until they get it perfect. It must have been pretty subtle though, because I didn't notice it and I never heard anyone mention it.
As for the second goof, I think it was probably a badly cropped print that got sent to theatres by mistake, not a production goof. Apparently this happens sometimes (it recently happened to the SEX & THE CITY movie, the bad prints got recalled). Some idiot was supposed to frame the film in the proper aspect ratio after shooting was complete but screwed up. More a quality control issue than anything else.
In "Ace Ventura: When Natures Calls" at the end when Ace is confronting the villain and doing his rewinding schtick, there is a table that is full of chess pieces, when the camera goes back to it, the pieces have disappeared.
One of my favorites is in the Beyond, where one of the leads starts to try to load a gun by pushing a bullet the WRONG WAY DOWN THE BARREL OF HIS REVOLVER. The actress with him looks like she is starting to laugh too, making me think he was clowning around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bARwH0nXaEI
Starting at about 2:30.
Jim H you either have one hell of a good eye or you must of seen the Beyond a billion of times :)
I was watching Mimic Sentinel last night and couldn't help but chuckle that one actress' bra was sticking out of the back of her shirt, but in the next shot it wasn't. And back and forth, in multiple scenes.
Quote from: Rev. Powell on February 02, 2010, 10:58:07 PM
As for the first one, yeah, you see breathing/flinching corpses all the time if you look for it. Just saw a flinching corpse tonight in a low buget flick. A bit surprised that it would show up in a big budget flick like DRACULA, since they have the time and money to shoot over and over until they get it perfect. It must have been pretty subtle though, because I didn't notice it and I never heard anyone mention it.
As for the second goof, I think it was probably a badly cropped print that got sent to theatres by mistake, not a production goof. Apparently this happens sometimes (it recently happened to the SEX & THE CITY movie, the bad prints got recalled). Some idiot was supposed to frame the film in the proper aspect ratio after shooting was complete but screwed up. More a quality control issue than anything else.
That makes perfect sense regarding Hannibal. I thought I was seeing things. Every time I saw I expecting to hear gasps or mumbling through the audience, but I didn't, so again maybe I have a better eye than average for that kind of thing, but it was just so plain as day.
As for Dracula, I think it was much more obvious on the big screen, but I still see it on the small screen because I know it's there, kind of like one of those pictures where you have to stare at it awhile and a picture comes out, then, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
Quote from: Skull on February 03, 2010, 08:13:55 AM
Jim H you either have one hell of a good eye or you must of seen the Beyond a billion of times :)
I think it may have been pointed out to me before I saw the film. Not sure, it was quite a while ago. Either way, I notice weird weapon handling issues a lot in films.
Another example... In my review of Aberration on here, I point out how the slide lock on the bad guys gun keeps randomly locking and being unlocked while he shoots at the mutant geckos. You can see it in the clip I posted as well. For those not in the know, most pistols, the slide automatically locks back when you fire the last round.
Quote from: Jim H on February 04, 2010, 04:28:20 AM
Quote from: Skull on February 03, 2010, 08:13:55 AM
Jim H you either have one hell of a good eye or you must of seen the Beyond a billion of times :)
I think it may have been pointed out to me before I saw the film. Not sure, it was quite a while ago. Either way, I notice weird weapon handling issues a lot in films.
Another example... In my review of Aberration on here, I point out how the slide lock on the bad guys gun keeps randomly locking and being unlocked while he shoots at the mutant geckos. You can see it in the clip I posted as well. For those not in the know, most pistols, the slide automatically locks back when you fire the last round.
saddly I dont own a real gun and I wouldnt notice these things...
but I do enjoy watching movies when characters (mostly police officers) using guns like finger pointing devices and/or scratches himself with the barrel of a loaded gun.
I remember watching a movie where the length of a guy's necktie kept changing. Can't remember the movie. But the tip of the guy's tie was touching his belt, then a few seconds later it was about 4 inches higher than his belt, then it was touching his belt again, and it went back and forth like this a few times.
When I saw LOST IN TRANSLATION in the theater I caught the boom mic between Bill and Scarlett in a scene toward the end when they were having dinner somewhere. It was edited out when it went to DVD.
I hate to bag on that movie though, because it's one of my favorite GOOD good movies. :teddyr:
You guys probably know this one, but I like it anyway because it is so obvious. In The Little Shop of Horrors (the Original) when Seymour is out looking for food for the plant, he comes across a lady. Between shots her scarf changes from being slumped over her left shoulder, to being slumped over her right arm and sometimes shoulder. It's quite funny because of how obvious it is - she even flicks it over both shoulders in one shot, then it cuts straight away and its back only over one.
anybody checked out (moviemistakes.com) ?
Here's one I noticed, and it's a really glaring one...
In Super Mario Bros, when they go up the evelator in the unforms that look like what they wear in the video games, they're both wearing Stompers (that is, the boots that you click your heels together and they allow you to jump really high) but then, a few scenes later, when they come across a large gap they need to get across, they're wearing regular shoes (which is convinent plotwise because the stompers would have came in handy at that point.)
Here's one I can't BELIEVE I never caught (a friend of mine pointed it out while we were watching the film together) in John Woo's The Killer, the hospital has a sign out front that says, "Scared Heart". I believe that's SUPPOSED to be "Sacred Heart". I dunno if that's a goof on the movie production team, or if that's a goof from the hospital itself, but still, it was kind of funny once I saw it.
Yeah, the Scared Heart one is I noticed. I'd guess it is a movie error, but signs like that in Asia are hardly rare even today, especially in more outlying areas.
Moviemistakes.com.. I see a lot of goofs reported on there that aren't really mistakes at all. So, I don't go there too often. They usually get taken care of eventually, but it's not as quick as the goof section on IMDB. For example, there were several "mistakes" reported on Avatar that were clearly explained within the films logic, or just weren't mistakes at all.
It can be fascinating to look at all the misreported errors for films though, followed by explanations.
http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8157/corrections (http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8157/corrections)
In particular, it's a little baffling how many people don't understand what a pressurized cabin is.
Quote from: Jim H on February 06, 2010, 04:05:20 PM
It can be fascinating to look at all the misreported errors for films though, followed by explanations.
http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8157/corrections (http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8157/corrections)
Yeah, those can be interesting. I remember one "mistake" (not sure if was reported on MM or not) from the film Independence Day where someone nitpicked the idea that Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum could be smoking cigars when they meet up with their respective family/loved ones at the end of the film, because they had lit the cigars earlier while in the alien ship. Thing is though, cigars, unlike cigarettes, will go out if don't keep puffing on them. So they could have just thrown the cigars onto the floor of the ship, where they went out, and then picked them up later and re-lit them.
Course, this leads me to another possible mistake from a different film. In the movie Sahara, a guy uses a cigar as a fuse to blow up a gas tank on board a boat (never mind the debate on whether or not the gas tank would have enough oxygen in it to blow up). The cigar should have went out since no one was using it. BUT some people have told me since the character who owns the cigar usually just leaves cheaply made ones on the boat (cause he knows his crewmates like to steal them), then that cigar may not have been packed tightly enough to go out.
Now, I can't really say either way, I don't smoke, so I don't know a hell of a lot about cigars or cigarettes.
That's an interesting point. I do smoke cigars, so maybe I can offer a bit of insight.
It might be worth noting that good quality cigars, you can smoke them for like two hours. It's not like they were on the alien mothership for THAT long. But yeah, they could also have relit them pretty easily. Tastes a little gross for a while, but it's not bad eventually.
As far as the fuse thing.. I see them do that with both cigars and cigarettes. And yes, a cheap crappy cigar will often stay lit - not just because it is loosely packed, either. Cheapest cigars don't use whole tobacco leaf, they use chopped tobacco like cigarettes. And sometimes, they have stuff added so they burn faster, in the hopes of getting people to smoke more.
But, still not so sure there's enough of a flame to ignite things the way they always do in movies. Just movie magic I guess.
Quote from: Jim H on February 12, 2010, 01:26:07 PM
That's an interesting point. I do smoke cigars, so maybe I can offer a bit of insight.
Oh, cool, thanks for the info!
As for the gas tank explosion stuff, there's a neat page on that at Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics if you're interested.
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html (http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html)
Heh.. just noticed one from Hell Night. A girl gets dragged into a cellar room or something of the sort while walking outside of a mansion. Just before she's beheaded the killer swings the blade and you can see it hit her chin and the fake body falls. Good attempt at an effect, as the actress has stuck her head through a hole while the killer grabs her hair, so she can facially react as the cleaver approaches. Too bad the aim was off. :)
Quote from: Rev. Powell on February 02, 2010, 10:58:07 PM
As for the second goof, I think it was probably a badly cropped print that got sent to theatres by mistake, not a production goof. Apparently this happens sometimes (it recently happened to the SEX & THE CITY movie, the bad prints got recalled). Some idiot was supposed to frame the film in the proper aspect ratio after shooting was complete but screwed up. More a quality control issue than anything else.
If you watched non-letterboxed movies on broadcast tv or on vhs you could catch a lot of these misframed accidents. A glaring one I remember is in PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. When Pee Wee is pulling the endless chain out of his bike bag in the full frame version you can see the chain feeding up through the bottom of the bag
very clearly.
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorthy's hair style and length change several times.
I remember some 80's Italian horror film where a Volkswagen changes to a different model after being totaled. Was it Demons 2?
Check out any Uwe Boll film, there's usually several of these in each one.
Neat example: In Alone in the Dark, the "dead" trooper played by Françoise Yip raises her head as Steven Doriff's character steps over her.