Old Films.

[peteshimmon]

Some old moving wallpaper last night was The
Battle of the River Plate. The Royal Navy is
cruising off the coast when the Sun comes up
behind the coastline. Now I admit this is the
first time in forty years I have realised that
the Sun should rise in the East over open sea!
Its those pesky film editors. Also check out
North by NorthWest. Cary Grant is set down on
the Prairy road with his shadow pointing one
way. The next shot has it 180 degrees
different! Then cars go by with the Sun
overhead! And it continues zipping all over
the sky. He He He!

[sarongsong]

In "The Graduate", Dustin Hoffman is portrayed in the aerial shot driving his Alfa Romeo on the top deck of the Bay Bridge to Berkeley from San Francisco, when in fact it's the lower deck that leads there.

[Gillianren]

And, of course, the moon is always whatever phase is convenient for as long as it's convenient. But since most "night" shots are filmed during the day with filters, who's to know?

[Rivertree]

Those visual effects are all merely minor details.

Now, take the new movie, The Lake House, for contrast. There are so many seeming disconnects between (and within) scenes that to find a few that didn't affect the plot would have been rough.

[Tim Thompson]

... Cary Grant is set down on the Prairy road with his shadow pointing one way. The next shot has it 180 degrees different! ...

I think that shadow thing is ubiquitous in movies, where it is not uncommon for the frames molded into a given scene to come from multiple shoots, or mixing studio & on-site shoots. Consider the 1951 classic The Thing from Another World (commonly known simply as The Thing, not to be confused with the typically inferior 1980's remake The Thing). In one scene they are standing by a patch of ice where the spaceship has crashed. Two different camera angles were clearly filmed either at different times, or under different lighting. In any case, their shadows flip back and forth constantly from shot to shot during that whole scene, always stretching away from the camera. Maybe they think the actors just look better with that shadow?

One of my cousins is a painter & retired art & art history teacher. I went to one of his shows, and there was a painting of a house with a wall next to it. House shadow went this way, wall shadow went that way, in the opposite direction. So I asked him why he made the impossible shadows. His answer: "Because the wall looks better with that shadow". They call it artistic license.

In the movies its usually a continuity problem, because of multiple takes & etc. I remember watching a bullet hole in a wall appear, disappear, and reappear in a John Wayne movie (Rio Bravo). Every movie has some tweak in it, the shadows & sun & moon are just the tip of the legendary iceberg.

[BigDon]

not to be confused with the typically inferior 1980's remake The Thing).

That's your opinion.

It was the first film I saw after a very long deployment at sea that included a stretch that lasted 110 days without pulling in anywhere. I found the portrayal of stresses' between the characters very accurate, save for not enough swearing. (Mono-gender enviroments REALLY are unpleasant). The original was good, the remake was better.

[publiusr]

I loved both of them.

[Graybeard6]

Ah, yes; I fondly remember John Wayne in "The Green Berets" walking away into the sunset over the South China Sea.

[Maksutov]

[edit]He He He!

He he he, indeed.

Funny that that one can find just as many errors in films made in the last 10 years*, if not more. He he he!



*5 years ago if you consider films from 10 years ago to be "old".

[SpecialEd]

My all-time favorite- An old, bad 60's movie called "Krakatoa-East of Java." Look at a map. Krakatoa is west of Java.

[Maksutov]

My all-time favorite- An old, bad 60's movie called "Krakatoa-East of Java." Look at a map. Krakatoa is west of Java.

You missed the "Krakatau" misspelling part. It's how the Indonesians spell it. They should know.