I'm so glad 24 came back for a night, although now that we have DVRs the TV season is pretty random. We had Sunday's two hour episode and then the real season starts in January. Why? Idunno.
But it's still the most ridiculously fun show there is. It almost takes the sting out of the cancellation of Pushing Daisies. Almost, but not quite.
I'm sad about PD going the way of Firefly. I do think this season has faltered a bit - this last episode in particular felt lost somehow, like the premise of the show has gotten muddled in too much backstory. But sometimes shows need a bit of time to wiggle through the rough patches. But we're an impatient culture and we go straight to divorce these days, so of course we're not willing to keep a show around unless it's bringing home the bacon as consistently as it did last year.
So anyway, back to 24. I wanted to point out this nice little blunder in the season premier. Somewhere around the 33 minute mark when all the kids and Jack and that other guy are running into the woods away from the helicopter, if you pause the screen you can clearly see a camera man dressed in black, standing still as the kids run by him. Hell you don't even have to pause it to see it - he's clear as day in the middle of the damn woods.
Maybe he was some white guy shooting a documentary in a made up African country when the shit hit the fan. But I doubt it.
I know that kind of stuff happens on set but how did that get past editing? Was that the only take they had? Did nobody see that guy standing there? Did they think we wouldn't see him?
I know it doesn't matter in the scheme of things because the show is still awesome as ever and Jack is still a heroic whirlwind of violence, but you don't often see a mistake that obvious on TV these days. That's probably a good thing.
Re the "24" cameraman, I've heard of worse. When I was a kid, there was a rumor going around of a western that was shot in the mid-seventies that ended up getting shelved - no one noticed until post-production that the lead actor was wearing a DIGITAL WATCH the entire time, in an era when even wristwatches were pretty uncommon. But I've never had that confirmed, so it could be urban myth.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're working on a movie or TV show in a big scale, the more elements you have to take into account, the greater the chance that something will slip through the cracks in the form of continuity errors or just plain old-fashioned gaffes. The ones that stands out in my mind the most is from "Raiders of the Lost Ark". First one: Marion is in her tavern, looking at the headpiece from the Staff of Ra on a chain around her neck, cut to next shot in which the pendant is still in her hands, but the chain magically slipped off her neck. Second one: when Indy is thrown into the pit of snakes and sealed in, you can see reflections in the glass where he landed - there was a glass partition separating him from the snakes.
I'd wager you could name an endless list of the ones you've spotted over the years, if you thought about it a while.
I liked REDEMPTION. I think it was done to give us a taste of 24 before the real season starts, especially since it's been off for so long. It definitely functioned as an effective teaser.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the guy at the 33:00 mark, but in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN a crew member can be clearly spotted in a mirror at one point. I always remember this because the DVD commentary at that very second is adressing the film's cinematography but doesn't mention the giant blunder that is obviously visible.
They were probably way behind schedule, especially if there were kids in the shot. If setting it up again would put them past the limit they could work for the day, they would have sighed and accepted the error.
ReplyDeleteHarry C. (<-- Didn't watch the show)
P.S. On her blog, Doris Egan talks about a much-maligned flub on SMALLVILLE, where the actress playing Lana said "descendents" when she was supposed to say "ancestors." (or vice versa.)
Viewers excoriated them for the mistake, calling the actress and writers stupid for not knowing the difference (!), but Egan explained that they were exhausted from a long shooting day, way behind schedule and they felt they had no choice but to accept the mistake and move on.