Deliberate mistake: Often in rainy scenes in movies, the crew has the rain machines set to have the rain drops far far larger than natural. Huge water drops so that they will actually be visible in the final print.
Common movie and TV mistakes - page 6
This is a list of mistakes, things done wrong, etc. that happen so frequently onscreen we barely notice any more. 'Movie logic', stupid behaviours, and everything related.
Character mistake: Chess boards being set up wrongly, or pieces being in places that make no sense and they would never have got there in the course of a normal game.
Continuity mistake: Cigarettes and food items changing size/shape between shots.
Factual error: Using a car door as a shield for bullets. They're really thin and you'd be shot right through them really easily.
Factual error: Stun guns and Tasers do not knock people unconscious. They are designed to incapacitate by either interrupting motor control or causing pain. Movies and TV shows often show someone is zapped with a stun gun and falling unconscious almost instantly. Electroshock weapons simply cannot be used this way, nor are they designed with this in mind. It is absurd for a spy to use a stun gun as a stealth weapon, the first thing the target would likely do is yell from the pain.
Factual error: When the character holding a gun keeps cocking the slide whenever they are about to get into trouble. Once a weapon is cocked, it's loaded. Every other time the slide, or cocking handle is manipulated, the weapon will extract a round from the chamber and draw a new round from the magazine. Whenever this happens in movies or shows, the weapon never extracts the round in the chamber.
Deliberate mistake: How many times have we seen cars and trucks drive through snow, dirt and mud, only to arrive at their destination perfectly clean.
Revealing mistake: Vehicles that are about to be involved in a crash have their windows cracked, shattered or blown out immediately before (a fraction of a second to 1-2 seconds). Conversely, some vehicles suffer no glass shattering when they roll over. The Good Son can serve as an example of both "mistakes." in chapter #9: "Mr. Highway", the first bus that turns on its side has no window breakage; the car that smashes into the bus has a crack in the driver's side windshield; at least two other cars get their windows blown out before ramming into the wrecked cars ahead of them.
Factual error: Women didn't start routinely shaving their legs until the 1920s, but in films and TVs shows set before then, women's legs are always hair free.
Factual error: An especially stupid but common blunder in film and TV over the decades involves a character picking up a random object from nearby and bashing a heavy padlock and steel chain a few times until the lock and chain break and fall away. Of course, steel chain and heavy padlocks are designed to withstand tons of stress that a human being couldn't possibly exert through striking alone.
Deliberate mistake: When a man and woman have sex in a movie scene, after the sex is over the woman covers her breasts with the blanket/sheet and the man covers up from the waist down. Also, if the woman gets up off the bed, she drags the bed-sheet with her to cover up. You just had sex, why would you all of a sudden have modesty? Also, they always have sex under the covers. Who has sex under the covers?
Deliberate mistake: Trains should stop when the engineer is killed or otherwise incapacitated because of a switch known as a "Dead man's" which is used in these events to stop the train. This mistake is often done purposely to keep the action going and for plot purposes. This is especially common in action films.
Deliberate mistake: Modern cars crashing without airbags going off. Probably a deliberate mistake for safety (trained stunt drivers can create the scene safely with the airbags removed) and visibility (deflated airbags would obscure the actors and getting past them would slow down the action).
Factual error: In movies where people are fighting with bows and arrows, whenever someone gets hit by an arrow, they flinch in pain and die on the spot. In most cases, the arrow injury is insufficient to cause a person's immediate death. Or they may die from the arrow wound, but only after they bleed to death, which takes time.
Revealing mistake: Often times in movies when people are watching footage recorded that was supposed to be from the perspective of someone else, ie. from their eyes or recording glasses, or from a camera, it is not shown correctly. Rather than actually showing the images from the first person perspective, it shows camera footage of that person or previous footage from the movie the people are in.
Deliberate mistake: Where as its not as common in modern movies, the 80's and 90's movies were really bad about vehicles exploding into huge balls of fire over the littlest things. Cars would hit each other and explode. One would flip over and explode. They would hit walls and boom! Or hilarious ones like Escape from LA, a motorcycle runs into a metal barrel and explodes instantly. As if the cars were filled with nitroglycerin or something.
Other mistake: Primitive people or people cut off from civilization that still have brilliantly white and perfectly straight teeth.
Deliberate mistake: Especially in action movies and westerns, people in gun scenes often go through way more ammo in their weapons than possible and never reload. Especially the heroes.
Character mistake: When someone gets shot and the first thing people try to do is remove the bullet, often with a knife and no anesthetic.
Suggested correction: This commonly happens but this is not a mistake. What is wrong with removing the bullet with a knife and no anesthetic. Many times the characters don't have access to a medical facility with all the accoutrements to remove a bullet or don't want to go to a hospital where bullet wounds are reported to law enforcement.
It seems my original entry was edited to make it more brief. But in real life, bullets are not commonly removed because there's no need. The bullet is not the concern, it's the hole the bullet caused that's the concern. They (and more specific to what I was trying to suggest, they as in medical experts) are increasing the risk factors for no viable reason and are never addressing the main cause for concern. And the point of not using anesthetic is they are increasing the risk factors even more for an already pointless surgery.
Character mistake: People who carry a loaded pistol, or keep a loaded pistol next to them, that never have a round in the chamber, just so the character can cock it right before a shootout. Or when a round is suppose to be in the chamber and the person cocks the gun anyways and no round is ejected.
Suggested correction: On the first point, this is not a mistake. Proper gun handing would dictate that you don't have a round in the chamber until you are going to use the gun. On your second point, you are assuming too much that there is a round in the chamber.
Proper gun handling would be to use the safety. It's ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun that they're planning on using, or think they might use. On the second point, I'm not assuming anything. I'm saying when it's suppose to be chambered because we saw it chambered, or it was fired and a round was chambered, etc. I didn't say when it's assumed to be chambered.
You are right that it would be ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun they are planning on using, but that is not my point. My point is that proper gun safety would be to not normally keep a round in the chamber unless you were going to use it. Cocking the gun shows the audience he intends on using it. Before that, you didn't know his intent. On the second point, OK, you provided additional clarification.
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