Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack as Chef is firing the rear machine madly Captain Willard walks from the front to the rear of the boat to try to stop him. Just as he swings into the back part of the boat he slips and falls backwards. In the next shot he's up and running toward Chef. (02:21:50)
Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack Lance shouts out, "Cut it out, quiet". The boat is traveling straight ahead but 10 seconds later Lance shouts out again, "Quiet" and the shoreline behind him is the exact same spot. (02:21:55)
Continuity mistake: As Captain Willard tries to get Chief Phillips to stop the men from firing he says, "They're just little sticks. They're just trying to scare us". Watch the Captain's left hand closely as his rifle becomes arrows between shots. (02:22:00)
Continuity mistake: After Willard kills Kurtz, and Willard is leafing through some papers that belonged to Kurtz, he opens the memoirs halfway through the stack. As he closes the stack, the visible page changes to a different page and different placement. (02:22:00)
Audio problem: After Captain Willard says, "They're just little sticks. They're just trying to scare us", Chief Phillips has some prime words that he shouts at the captain which are edited out. (02:22:05)
Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack Chief Phillips grabs a machine gun and starts shooting. At first he and Chef's guns are both pointing in the same direction, starboard. In the next shot one gun is facing one way and the other is facing the opposite way. (02:22:15)
Other mistake: During the arrow attack Chief Phillips says to Captain Willard, "you son of a bitch, you f@$". The closed captioning here is wrong and indicates he says "you bastard". (02:22:15)
Continuity mistake: Chief Phillips yells, "You son of a bitch" as he shoots wildly. After he says this and Lance guns the engines look closely at the back of the boat because Chef is not at his machine gun. In the next shot he reappears where he should be firing the rear machine gun "Canned Heat". (02:22:20)
Continuity mistake: As Chief Phillips yells, "you savages, come and get it" Captain Willard grabs him with his right hand to try and make him stop shooting. In the next shot he's holding him with both hands. (02:22:20)
Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack as Captain Willard grabs Chief Phillips to try and make him stop shooting, the sun can be seen setting over his shoulder. Several other shots in this scene, like the next one, were filmed in the mid afternoon with the sun overhead. (02:22:20)
Continuity mistake: As Chief Phillips is shooting he yells, "You savages, come and get it". After he says this the warrior with the spear who eventually kills him can be seen on the shore running in the opposite direction. In the next shot Lance, who is now at the controls, guns the engine. The boat moves forward, not in a circle, yet two shots later when the warrior throws the spear the boat is further back down the river than it was before not further up the river where it should be. (02:22:20)
Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack Captain Willard orders Lance to take control of the boat as Chief Phillips is shooting. When we first see him at the helm look at Lance's head, he doesn't have the broken arrow in his hair. In the next shot he does. (02:22:25)
Continuity mistake: Just before the warrior throws his spear at Chief Phillips there's a shot of Lance at the helm of the boat and we see the right side of the arrow in his hair pointing straight out and the left side pointing upward. In the previous shot both sides of the arrow were pointing straight out. (02:22:25)
Continuity mistake: Captain Willard tries to stop him from shooting but Chief Phillips yells, "you son of a bitch" as he pushes the captain to the floor. In the next shot the captain is up and holding onto the roof of the boat with his left hand. (02:22:25)
Continuity mistake: One spear is thrown and it goes through Chief Phillips horizontally, but in the close-up shot of Captain Willard a fraction of a second before the impact we see the spear in a vertical position in front of the captain's face. (02:22:30)
Continuity mistake: When Chief Phillips is speared we first see Lance at the helm of the boat and it's going forward. In the next shot after Chief Phillips is speared the boat is going around in circles. (02:22:30)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where the Boat captain gets speared, a poor job was done with the whole thing. First, the spear that the native throws is much bigger than the one that is actually stuck in the captain. Second, the spear that is in the captain would have been too small to throw with any accuracy, let alone that distance. Third, a spear of that size would not have had enough velocity to penetrate the captain all the way through his body. (02:22:31)
Continuity mistake: As Chief Phillips is speared he holds on to the roof of the boat with his left hand. The straw has been rearranged from previous shots and is no longer hanging over the side of the roof as it was in the shot before. (02:22:35)
Visible crew/equipment: After Chief Phillips is speared if you look closely at his left shoulder you can see his shirt bunched up by the harness underneath that holds both ends of the spear to his body. Later you can see a blood bag underneath his tee shirt as he lies on the floor of the boat dying. (02:22:40)
Continuity mistake: After Chief Phillips is speared he falls to the floorboard of the boat. As he falls Lance is not at the helm of the boat where he just was a second ago and where he will be in the next shot when we see his legs. (02:22:50)
Answer: It should be noted that "transmutation" is a word Coppola has used to describe the film making process. Https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LFTQcwgq4CY.
Bishop73