petermorwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
petermorwood) wrote2006-12-17 12:21 pm
petermorwood) wrote2006-12-17 12:21 pm
Lens cap?
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was on one of the Sky movie channels last night, so – since the lens cap question had been itching at me since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaxomsride commented about it in the previous post (yes, I have that sort of mind when it comes to annoying detail) – I recorded the movie on the Sky+ box and had a look.
Reminder to self before watching: this is a movie where aircraft can become submarines, so cut it a bit of slack (or check critical faculties at the door.) Okay, the techie-ness is just about acceptable in a deliberately pulp-style "1930s scientific romance", but I wish the plane-to-sub procedure didn't start with a near-vertical high-speed dive into the sea. Hmmm. Memory says that Gerry Anderson's "Supercar" did the same thing (complete with the same Ju-87 Stuka dive-siren sound effect. Deliberate homage, or just coincidence?) Water doesn't compress, and the effect would be similar to a high-speed dive into concrete, as happens to the pursuing Villainous Flying Machines. So we've got selective compressibility, that can tell the difference between Good Guys and Bad Guys...
But the camera/lens cap business isn't wishful thinking, it's just carelessness: like the scene where an automatic pistol becomes a revolver (that's not "is replaced by"; it's "turns into".) You'd think that in a world full of people willing to hit "freeze-frame" at the slightest provocation, continuity editors would be more careful; it seems the reverse is the case. The camera, size and shape of a brick though it is, comes and goes as required, occasionally hung over Polly's shoulder but just as often nowhere in sight - and that dapper suit she wears a lot of the time doesn't have big enough pockets for other explanations.
(1)The lens cap is in place when we first see the camera; there's a close-up after she opens its case in her newspaper office, right at the start of the movie. She doesn't remove the cap on-screen, but it certainly isn't in place when she's photographing the giant robots, or during any other occasion when she’s taking – or putting off taking – photographs.
(2) It's back in place when she and Sky Captain first see Totenkopf's Space Ark; she removes it to take her last available photo, but doesn't use the shot and doesn't put the cap back on, either.
(3) And finally, it isn't in place in the final scene, despite being specifically mentioned - in fact being the very last line of the movie. Either it was a truly sloppy continuity error (right up there with the disappearing-reappearing tank turret of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) or an equally sloppy bit of direction, since what must then be assumed to be one character deliberately winding-up another isn't properly resolved.
Ah well. Not my problem. And the itch has been thoroughly scratched, so that's all right.
jaxomsride commented about it in the previous post (yes, I have that sort of mind when it comes to annoying detail) – I recorded the movie on the Sky+ box and had a look.Reminder to self before watching: this is a movie where aircraft can become submarines, so cut it a bit of slack (or check critical faculties at the door.) Okay, the techie-ness is just about acceptable in a deliberately pulp-style "1930s scientific romance", but I wish the plane-to-sub procedure didn't start with a near-vertical high-speed dive into the sea. Hmmm. Memory says that Gerry Anderson's "Supercar" did the same thing (complete with the same Ju-87 Stuka dive-siren sound effect. Deliberate homage, or just coincidence?) Water doesn't compress, and the effect would be similar to a high-speed dive into concrete, as happens to the pursuing Villainous Flying Machines. So we've got selective compressibility, that can tell the difference between Good Guys and Bad Guys...
But the camera/lens cap business isn't wishful thinking, it's just carelessness: like the scene where an automatic pistol becomes a revolver (that's not "is replaced by"; it's "turns into".) You'd think that in a world full of people willing to hit "freeze-frame" at the slightest provocation, continuity editors would be more careful; it seems the reverse is the case. The camera, size and shape of a brick though it is, comes and goes as required, occasionally hung over Polly's shoulder but just as often nowhere in sight - and that dapper suit she wears a lot of the time doesn't have big enough pockets for other explanations.
(1)The lens cap is in place when we first see the camera; there's a close-up after she opens its case in her newspaper office, right at the start of the movie. She doesn't remove the cap on-screen, but it certainly isn't in place when she's photographing the giant robots, or during any other occasion when she’s taking – or putting off taking – photographs.
(2) It's back in place when she and Sky Captain first see Totenkopf's Space Ark; she removes it to take her last available photo, but doesn't use the shot and doesn't put the cap back on, either.
(3) And finally, it isn't in place in the final scene, despite being specifically mentioned - in fact being the very last line of the movie. Either it was a truly sloppy continuity error (right up there with the disappearing-reappearing tank turret of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) or an equally sloppy bit of direction, since what must then be assumed to be one character deliberately winding-up another isn't properly resolved.
Ah well. Not my problem. And the itch has been thoroughly scratched, so that's all right.
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I wouldn't have noticed the typeface anachronism myself, but I have the same twitch-response with things that I do spot - usually military, based on years of making tanks and planes, or painting figures of everything from Greek hoplites on up. Never mind paying for an expert (whose contract says "must be paid" but not so far as I know "must be heeded"), just send the production people to any general or hobby bookshop, buy the appropriate Osprey titles for the movie's period, and base the major visuals on their excellent colour plates.