Revealing mistake: Freeman Lowell has several cargo containers dumped off the spaceship, to make it appear the ship has suffered an accident. A wide shot shows the ship receding in the distance, with the containers rolling weightlessly in the foreground. As the foreground containers pass slightly in front of the more distant ones, they don't mask them; their images overlap. The containers were apparently composited into the shot with simple multiple exposures. (00:35:40)
Silent Running (1972)
1 revealing mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Douglas Trumbull
Starring: Bruce Dern, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint, Cliff Potts
Character mistake: While he may not have figured it out the moment he found the forest dying, certainly a botanist like Freeman Lowell would know plants need light to survive.
Anderson: On this first day of a new century we humbly beg forgiveness and dedicate these last forests of our once beautiful nation to the hope that they will one day return and grace our foul earth. Until that day may God bless these gardens and the brave men who care for them.
Trivia: The space ship "Valley Forge" from Silent Running was re-used in one episode of the television series "Battlestar Galactica" (1978-1979). It was called the "agro-ship," used to grow food for the colonists.
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