That just ain't right.

[Rob Hall]

Cars that are anacronistic drive me nuts in movies...I can't avoid noticing them...stuff like a movie or TV show that is set in 1971 yet a 1975 vehicle is visble. One that I noticed in a recent movie was in 'The Debt'--there is a scene set in 1966 Berlin where 3 characters are walking across a runway...and an '81 Olds 88 is sitting there waiting for them..

[Kaleb]

One thing I like in drag racing scenes, is that one car is obviously with more horsepower and they talk it up like that. Yet both cars are bumper to bumper and the finish the 2 mile quater back and forth. Which one should had left the other one a long ways back.

[Wayne Buck]

Yep, drag race scenes are usually pretty bad... Even on the show "Pinks".

They show the cars leave the line, go to an on-board shot, back to an outside shot of the cars pulling ahead of eachother back and forth, go back to an onboard (of the driver shifting gears or something, back to an outside shot...over and over. And the "quarter mile" run seems to end up being like 30 seconds long. LOL

[Wayne Buck]

Looking through that same windshield, more often than not the rear view mirror is missing so it won't distract our view of the actors. Sometimes it even miraculously reappears!

Also, with shots like these, it seems like the driver is almost always moving the wheel back and forth like it has as much steering play as a well used dump truck from 1970, all while they're just driving straight down the road.

Another thing I've noticed with 'in car' shots is, sometimes the actor who is driving will just hold the wheel in any position. The movie "The Chase" for example, I've caught a few shots where Charlie Sheen is driving straight down the highway in a brand new BMW while holding the wheel almost 90 degrees off-center.

[MyBradKeselowski]

There's also a boo boo in the final scene of McQ notice in the video clip at :14 seconds and :27 through :30 seconds the 73 Impala has front bumper guards and at 1:57 until rollover the Impala has no bumper guards... :blink:

http://youtu.be/E2IQfxg2rN4

Edited April 22, 2012 by MyJoeyLogano20

[1930fordpickup]

The no review mirror is so you do not see the camera sitting in the back seat.

[deja-view]

I think it was one of the Clint Eastwood westerns with a jet airplane or vapor trails.

During a "Wagon Train" episode when Clint played "Rowdy" Yates if my mind recalls correctly. It was caught by a lot of people.

[Scale-Master]

Nobody noticed that it was a Camaro that gets smashed into the bulldozer and not the star of the movie Challenger in Vanishing Point?

Or the obvious discrepancies between the '55 Chevy that Falfa wrecks compared to the one that is used throughout American Graffiti?

[Jdurg]

I pretty much can't watch any movie or show where there is a good deal of forensic analysis done, or any type of chemistry. Mostly because what they do and show is so horrifically off that if a real chemist or forensic scientist did that, they'd be fired immediately. Generally speaking, it's things like when they go and grab samples or evidence, and you never see them fill out a chain of custody form or signature. Or when they go and grab a biological sample that is just sitting out at ambient temperatures. (For ALL biological samples, the sample is kept in a refridgerator and when it needs to be investigated, a small sample is taken from the main sample with a full chain of custody documentation done). You also see things like "chemists" wearing goggles that would be useless for what they are doing, or not wearing the proper gloves when handling certain materials. It's also funny how they butcher compound names or state that someone could make some mystical explosive in their own home. (Put it this way, it is possible to make things that go boom, but it's not with stuff you get from your local grocery store, nor will it go KABOOM as greatly as it's exaggerated in the movies. However, I can understand the purposeful misnaming of compounds or just making things up. This way, they don't have any liabilities if some idiot goes and kills himself trying to make it.)

I like how on the show Mythbusters when they made the nitrocellulose in one episode, they bleeped out the names of the compounds they were using and the labels on the bottles, but I still knew exactly what they were doing due to my degree.

[Agent G]

@Danny - they disable the ALB system for the special effects. Smoking skids are way more dramatic than a controlled stop. Same way the E Brake has it's ratchet removed. Stunt drivers use that E brake to lock up the rear end for slides, and what not.

@Justin - Sorry dude, the "I have a degree" thing is just lame. True the all the CSI shows are more Hollywood (fiction) than fact, but the explosives comment won't wash.

I spent two years at the Yuma Proving Ground, attended the FBI's "bomb school" in Huntsville Alabama, and worked in the PD's Bomb and Arson section until I screwed up and got promoted.

Let me in your house, and I will level it, with what's inside.

G

[Harry P.]

On those cop shows, they have to change things around for dramatic effect. If those procedural shows actually went through the real procedures and showed the whole bureaucracy/red tape process step by step, the viewer would fall asleep from boredom.

TV forensics shows are just that-,TV shows. They're for entertainment purposes, not meant to offer the average viewer a comprehensive class in forensics, biology or chemistry. I don't think they have to be 100% accurate to be entertaining, and besides, the average Joe wouldn't know the difference anyway. Yeah, if you are a chemist or a biologist or have some sort of degree in those sciences, you'll pick up on things... but the average viewer has absolutely no clue.

But the obvious goofs in continuity or the guy "driving" down the road with the same exact traffic scene behind him happening over and over again... that stuff is noticeable to the average viewer. I've even seen scenes where something is happening while it's supposedly daytime, and then a few seconds later it's dark out. Stuff like that is obvious to the average couch potato.

One of the most common mistakes I see is when a TV show or movie is set in a certain year or era and you see cars on the street that didn't exist yet at the time the show is supposedly taking place.

[ZTony8]

I forget which specific show it was but there was a feature on the making of Jay Leno's '66 Toronado.The first scene you see is a Toronado being rolled off a flatbed into the shop and the car is '67 Toronado!I ran into a GM Performance Parts marketing yahoo at the Detroit Autorama(where the Leno car was on display) and mentioned this to him.He congratulated me on my sharp eye and said that the feature production was begun after the Leno car was already underway so they just fudged the shot and hoped nobody noticed it..

Then there was the Mickey Rooney movie in which he played a racer.This movie was made sometime in the 1940s.But in the last scene,which shows him being transported to hospital after a racing accident,the wide shot shows the ambulance careening around a corner-and it's a 1954 Cadillac!

[MachinistMark]

So l put on "Easy Rider" to go to sleep to. After the 'deal' when the camera is scrolling up Fonda's scoot, l notice "Avon" is backwards. l check out his jacket & sure enough the flag is too! I've never noticed it before. Has anyone else noticed weird things in movies that just ain't right?

like the charger in bullitt losing 5 hubcaps?

[Agent G]

I never said you were.

Just stating fact.

G

[Bartster]

Starsky & Hutch and Beretta(sp?) were the worst offenders by far!

[Draggon]

"Hunted by Night" a "B" movie tho somewhat entertaining. Long range shot shows a Ford F-350 ( ? ) towing a trailer with a swamp buggy/hunting buggy thing on it, in all of the close ups of the actors through the windshield, there is NO trailer or buggy. Then close to the end a bad guy is in a Chevy dual cab, bleeding so much that it is running down the drivers door. In all the subsequent scenes, there is no blood, and the bad guy has been injured on the opposite side. Sheesh! Do they think we're not paying attention?

[deja-view]

I'd like to know by what law of physics a car....especially a '70s-'80s flat-fronted boatmobile like a Lincoln....can run square into the back of a car/truck/whatever and go flying OVER the top of it, and then sail 50-60-70 feet through the air. That has to be the most phony, unrealistic bit of special effects garbage they have ever come up with...over, and over, and over.

And, didja ever look at the refrigerators in shows like "Friends" or any other house-based sitcom? Yeah, 1950's Kelvinators and Frigidaires. Like they would still even be working in the '90s, or after 2000. C'mon prop guys, we're not totally blind. That's like having a main character driving a Model T in a modern movie.

Edited April 24, 2012 by deja-view

[Harry P.]

And, didja ever look at the refrigerators in shows like "Friends" or any other house-based sitcom? Yeah, 1950's Kelvinators and Frigidaires. Like they would still even be working in the '90s, or after 2000.

You're right! I've noticed that, too. I think the producers think it adds "character" to the set.

My uncle calls a refrigerator "the frigidaire."

"Hey, you want a beer? I think there's some in the frigidaire."

[Agent G]

CHiPS was the absolute worst for "flying autos". Fender benders, fatalities, you name it, the cars always flew over each other.

G

[martinfan5]

Knight Rider was another one, well heck, really any show from 80's that had something to do with cars in the show

[Junkman]

You're right! I've noticed that, too. I think the producers think it adds "character" to the set.

My uncle calls a refrigerator "the frigidaire."

"Hey, you want a beer? I think there's some in the frigidaire."

How on earth could anyone call a Kelvinator a frigidaire?

[Harry P.]

How on earth could anyone call a Kelvinator a frigidaire?

To my uncle they're all "frigidaires"...

[Craig Irwin]

A bit of trivia, in the opening of American Graffiti the drive in used for the set was on the wrong side of the road to film the setting sun behind it. They filmed a sunrise and ran the film backwards.

Also, my brother has an OLD roundtop Norge fridge in his garage for "barley pops". Works just fine!

[Harry P.]

A bit of trivia, in the opening of American Graffiti the drive in used for the set was on the wrong side of the road to film the setting sun behind it. They filmed a sunrise and ran the film backwards.

Also, my brother has an OLD roundtop Norge fridge in his garage for "barley pops". Works just fine!

Those old "frigidaires" work longer than the new ones do!

[Chuck Most]

In "Forensic Files", they ALWAYS use the wrong cars for reenactments.

Yes! The murder took place in 1978, but somehow the vicitim is drove a Dodge Shadow. Or something along those lines.

If you watch the Blair Witch Project, and still believe it's real, if you look carefully you'll see a '97/8 Ford F-150 in the background in one shot, even though the footage was supposedly shot in 1994.