Drumline (2002) - 37 mistakes

Continuity: When Shawn is teaching the new drummers not to look at their drums while they play, he and Devon play together until Shawn drops a stick. At this point, Dr. Lee comes over and starts playing with Devon, until Devon drops a stick. The drum stick falls from Devon's hand and bounces around on the field. In the next shot, Dr. Lee is talking to Devon, neither has moved, but now Devon has both sticks in his hand.

Audio problem: In most of the drumming scenes, the drumming usually doesn't match up, especially during closeups with Devon. This happens throughout the movie.

Continuity: When the Morris Brown band is playing in the stands during one of their games, the first shot shows the band director wearing a purple suit to match the band uniforms. In the next shot, his suit is blue.

Continuity: When the Panthers are marching out for the first football game, you can see the track is wet. When the camera switches to the cheerleaders the track is dry. Then the camera switches again and shows the wet track again.

Plot hole: In the scene of the first game, the camera pans across the fans at the game. They are mostly dressed in sweaters, coats, sweatshirts, etc. Also, the breath is seen coming from the mouths of the band during their performance. The setting however, is Atlanta, Georgia. The first football game of the season is always in late August or early September. Average temperature during the day is about 90 degrees. This scene was shot somewhere during the winter.

Factual error: When Devon gets a package from his father, the stamp on it reads "Atlanta" when it should be New York, where Devon's father is from.

Continuity: When Devon is paying for Leila's food, Leila says something and has this big smile. Then they focus up on Devon's face and in the corner of the screen you can see Leila, but she's not smiling. After the closeup, they show Leila again, with the same smiling face as before.

Continuity: When Donell challenges Jason for the spot in the show, you can see the Drum majors. You can see that one of them has braids, but when the camera angle switches, you can see that neither of the drum majors has braids. Then when the camera angle switches back, the guy with the braids is back again.

Continuity: After the band's first performance, they are shown in a cafe and the one guy is eating a large hamburger very quickly. He takes a large bite of a sliced pickle. Two shots later, the pickle is sitting on the plate, whole.

Factual error: When Devon receives the tapes from his dad, the zip code for Brooklyn is 11258. The 11258 zip code is actually for Massapequa.

Continuity: When Dr. Lee is watching the tape from the first game, as you watch Devon perform, you can see that his playing on the tape is not the same as it is at the game.

Other: The guy that fights Devon at the homecoming game is playing a snare drum but later on at the BET classics the same guy is playing a trumpet.

Factual error: At the graduation in the beginning, the percussion section is playing on concert snares, but they sound like marching snares. The two have distinctly different sounds.

Continuity: In the scene in the cafeteria where Ernest is pigging out, Ernest is shown eating half a burger, then the shot changes to his friends watching him. When the scene changes back to Ernest he's shown taking a bite out of a whole new burger, but only a few seconds went by. When did he have time to get a new burger?

Continuity: When Jason and the other bass drummer are about to challenge each other, Sean lifts his hand up to signify the unit to stop playing. When he does that signal, he drops his hands behind his back with his drumsticks. Then, in the very next shot, when Dr. Lee is talking, you see Sean's hands right back on his drum as if they were there the whole time.

Continuity: When Dr Lee is teaching Devon to not look down and to follow him, he starts to move backwards and Devon takes a step or two forward. Before he drops his stick, he is ahead of the rest of the line. When they show him from the side view, he is parallel with the rest of the line. He should have been standing outside the line.

Continuity: When Ernest is inducted into his fraternity, Devon, Jayson, Charles and Deidre congratulate him after his induction ceremony. As the camera switches back and forth from Ernest, the position of his scarf changes. The markings are even when comparing the left and right side of the scarf, then they are uneven, then even again, then finally uneven for the remainder of the scene.

Continuity: During the beginning of the drum-line tie breaker between MBC and Atlanta A&T, the section leader for the snare line for MBC starts the band off, then holds his hands up in air and looks around and behind him at the drum-line as they do a roll. In the next shot that pans across the snares, they are all rolling, including the section leader. but in the next shot of the cymbal players spinning their cymbals for effect, the snare section leader is just standing there kinda messing with his sticks, moving them around the rim of his drum and turning them around, butt end forward, front end, etc.

Continuity: During the first half-time performance by Atlanta A&T, during one shot of the band, the scoreboard is shown with 13 minutes remaining for the half-time performance. The problem is that the clock is standing still.

Continuity: When Ernest is inducted into his fraternity, Devon, Jayson, Charles and Deidre peek through the bushes and see the ceremony. One shot shows Jayson and Deidre together looking through the same opening, then Devon and Charles are seen side-by-side looking through another opening. The next shot, from behind, shows all four characters looking though separate locations along the bushes. The following shot shows Devon and Charles looking through the same opening again.

Factual error: During the scene at the first show that the band plays, the drumline finishes by playing a cadence at the end of the song. When the head section leader comes out to play his solo, Devon also plays with him. At the end Devon gets on his knees and starts playing a roll. There are two different camera shots of this, one where you see Devon's hands playing, and one of his upper body. Every time they show the shot of his upper body, his arms and shoulders are moving way too fast for the roll that he is playing on the drum. But when they show the shots of his hands playing, his arms are moving like they should when you play a roll.

Continuity: In the last scene, the A&T drum line is facing off against Morris Brown. In some shots, the quint drummers are next to the snares and in other shots, they are behind them. This is odd because the quint drums are on stands.

Audio problem: When Shawn starts to play his solo in the first game before Devon starts to copy him, take a good look at the way Shawn plays and notice how his left hand plays every hit while his right hand is doing that circle effect. When Devon comes in, take a look at what he's playing. it may seem close, but there are a few shots where you can easily see that he isn't playing the full part of the solo. He basically hits every accent in the shot right after he starts. Right before Devon moves in front of him, there's a close up of the arm circle effect while the other hand plays, but you can see Devons stick in his other hand which is not playing. In another shot he raises his right hand for the circle effect and his left hand is not playing while its supposed to, neither is Shawn, but you can still hear it. It helps to listen to the drum and watch the sticking.

Continuity: In the BET Classics, when Morris Brown is playing their first tie-breaker, they pretend to drink something and throw the cups away, but the cups are never seen again.

Audio problem: When Devon and Shawn are in the band room challenging each other, the printer makes the sound of a dot matrix printer. The printer that was actually being used was an Hewlett Packard all-in-one ink jet machine. They do not make the same sound.

Visible crew/equipment: During the scene where Dr. Lee is telling Devon not to look down you can see the white reflector threw his sunglasses.

Continuity: Right before Devon gets into a fight with the opposing drumline, the top of all the snares are clear, yet when Devon starts to move forward followed by the line, Sean's drum now has a white top.

Audio problem: In the tiebreaker between MBC and Atlanta A&T, after the initial roll and cymbal players spinning their cymbals for effect, the section leader for MBC hits four quarter notes on his snare drum, but if you look closely, the sound is not synchronized with the video and he hits after the sound plays.

Continuity: When the main character is trying out for his position, after he is done, the percussion leader is talking and the wind blows a piece of paper over his hand, but the shot cuts to him immediately afterward, and the paper is gone.

Factual error: After Devon gets the package of tapes from his father he is sitting on his bed and he is about to practice. When that shot starts, he is twirling his drumstick and his fingernails are dark in color, but Devon's nails are actually light in color.

Other: On the DVD, when you put the subtitles on, in the scene where Devon, Jason and Ernest are in their dorm, one of the subtitles say "Jason groans," but Jason is just sitting there doing nothing and it is really Ernest groaning.

Continuity: At the end of the very last drum scene, all the A&T snare drummers drop their sticks onto the other drummers' snares. They all drop them, most the sticks fall to the ground, the shot changes and you see all the sticks still bouncing on the drum, and the snare drummer closest to the camera is just dropping his stick.

Continuity: In the scene in the cafeteria when Nick and Zoe are arguing, almost every cut is a jump cut with hands and expressions not matching.

Continuity: When Sean is showing the line a snare part, he refers to it as "the part before my solo." Yet, at the field show in which Sean has his solo, this snare part never appears, though it is used in one of the cadences used for the tie breaker drum battle at the Classic.

Factual error: In actual band competitions, the band is rated on several different factors - one being the Drumline (the third of four songs in each performance is the "Drum Break"). However, the final decision will never be based on an encore performance by the Drumline. If two bands happen to tie (which is very unusual, especially for first place), there is no "tie-breaking" performance.

Factual error: During Devan's audition to get onto the A&T drumline, Devan is using a Pearl Competitor CSD snare drum with a high-tension Remo K-Series Falam marching snare drum head with a black center dot. This snare drum head can only be used on snares designed for use with extreme-high tension heads, such as the Pearl FFX-1412 snares that the P1 and P2 drumline members use. If used on the Competitor CSD snare drum as Devan was, the lug casings and bearing edge could face possible damage and failure because of the extreme high-tension required for use by the Kevlar head.

Continuity: When Shawn and Devon go into Dr. Lee's office to show him the music they created, Dr. Lee has no glasses. In other shots he has glasses on.