Question: Why did everyone at the baseball game decide to leave upon seeing the meteor descend from the sky?
Revealing mistake: The "baby" looked quite "rubbery" at times and its limited movements (even motionless) and lack of sound are indicative of a "fake" baby (doll) most of the time. The baby was mostly kept covered in some kind of box and did not even cry when the mother was running with it (while in her arms or in the box). (00:14:35 - 00:20:30)
Suggested correction: This is not really a "revealing mistake." Fake babies are used in movies all the time. Due to the complexities of filmmaking, it is simply impractical and impossible to use real infants for most scenes. Child safety and labor laws strictly limits how long a baby can be on set. A fake baby may or may not look "rubbery" but that is what they had to work with.
Your correction is precisely what makes it a revealing mistake. Explaining why a mistake occurs doesn't invalidate the mistake. You could only argue that it doesn't look fake or a real baby was used, but since that's not the case, the mistake stands.
A "mistake" is an unplanned and/or unwanted circumstance. Obviously using a fake baby was an intentional decision. At best, this should be classified as a "Deliberate Mistake."
This very website defines "revealing" mistakes as: "Anything which gives away filming techniques, such as stunt wires being visible, or glass smashing before anyone goes through it." (And I could be wrong, but I believe the definition used to be even broader.) An obviously fake baby falls under that umbrella, and always has. You simply can't argue that it's not a revealing mistake by the rules of this site just because it was a deliberate choice by the filmmakers. Heck, even under your strict definition of mistake (which is very problematic, because it doesn't really account for plenty of things that 99.9% of people would commonly consider "movie mistakes"), it's still a mistake, since the filmmakers wanted people to think it's real, and we obviously don't - ergo an unplanned circumstance.
It is a revealing mistake. They could have used CGI, shot some baby sequences separately and edited them in, etc. There are many ways they could have done things differently; they would just have been more complicated and cost more. The option they went with wasn't all they had to work with; it's just what they chose to work with.
Answer: It didn't look or act like a normal meteor streaking through the sky and burning up in the atmosphere. It was large, the fiery mass seemed suspended in air, and it was close enough to the ground that spectators, erring on the side of caution, sought shelter.
raywest ★
What does a "normal" flaming meteor look like? How many meteors do you think the people of a small town in upstate NY have seen? Don't know what you mean by "seemed suspended in air." It was passing over and would land miles away, posing zero threat to the people of the town.
Jizzmopper
1. Smaller and less fiery. 2. Probably lots on TV. 3. Means it was moving slower than a meteor would be expected to move. 4. They had no way of assessing the potential threat. As it turned out, it posed a very real threat to them.