Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Near the end, when the little league ball field is under construction, mob hit men suddenly appear and Vinnie dives for cover behind a stack of pallets; as soon as Vinnie dives for cover, he almost instantly stands up behind the pallets and opens fire. Of course, Vinnie is played by two people in this shot: A stuntman (who dives) and Steve Martin (who stands up). Watch the right side of the screen, and you will see the shadow of Steve Martin crouched and hiding behind the pallets while the stuntman makes his dive for cover. As the stuntman dives out of sight, you then see Steve Martin's crouched shadow stand straight up.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When Doctor Detroit and his girls make their escape from the automobile salvage yard, they drive a wrecker straight through a large sliding wooden gate, which punches a perfectly clean outline of the truck and Doctor Detroit through the gate. Problem is, the resulting (pre-cut) hole does not match the dimensions of the wrecker or Doctor Detroit at all. In fact, at the point of impact, the stuntman playing Doctor Detroit hugs in close to the wrecker for protection as it plows through the gate, and the outline of his body just magically opens up two feet away from him.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Near the end, during the night-time bridge exchange scene, the Americans enter from one end of the bridge and the Soviets enter from the other end. Suddenly, the Soviets switch on multiple flood lights directly behind the Soviet party, which should have cast shadows from their bodies dozens of meters in length. Instead, the shadows from the Soviet party are quite short, only a couple of meters, indicating that the primary lighting is out-of-frame, far above their heads.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: In the opening scenes, we see a very pregnant Draka reclining on a bed of animal hides as Durotan watches over her. In the extreme closeup, we see Draka twitch her lips, and her small tusks flex from side-to-side with her lips, instead of remaining firmly aligned with her jaw as they should.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When Luke tries to ram the gate with his car, a huge piece of spear-point wrought iron falls and impacts the roof of his vehicle. As the others rush to rescue Luke from the car, we can see the wrought-iron spear points flexing and bending, because they are made of rubber.

Charles Austin Miller

In Our Own Image - S4-E26

Revealing mistake: When the android Mac 27 tries to plug a digital cable into the data port on the back of his neck, the camera cuts to an extreme close-up and we see the data port very obviously slip and move by a quarter-of-an-inch across his skin.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: In the beginning, a three-column newspaper story about the Arizona Quints is shown for a couple of seconds. Aside from the lead paragraph, the entire, lengthy newspaper story is composed of the same three paragraphs repeated over and over.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When the Nazi doctor starts to torture Solo in the electric chair, he turns off all lights in the room except for a single dim light bulb over Solo's head; so, we know that the background is uniformly dark. Moments later, when Ilya comes to the rescue, a lighted control room appears behind the doctor, off to one side. After they strap the Nazi doctor into the electric chair, there is now a lighted control room directly behind the chair.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Several shots and whole scenes throughout this film are flipped horizontally in such a blatant fashion that even the name of the ship, "Sans Souci," appears as a mirror image.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Not bad digital effects for a combination "Predator" and "Jurassic Park" monster movie, except that the dinosaurs don't cast shadows about half the time.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Ash faces the oval, wall-mounted mirror and tries to reassure himself that he's fine, until his mirror-image lunges out and tries to strangle him. Throughout this scene, the background set and lighting "reflected" in the mirror changes very noticeably between the real mirror and the hole-in-the-wall practical effect. Additionally, the Ash that lunges through the mirror is NOT a "mirror-image" of the other Ash, as the blood patterns on their faces are distinctly different, which is obvious in the face-to-face profile shot. For that matter, the blood patterns on Ash's face are inconsistent all throughout the film, frequently from one shot to the next.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When the gigantic mother ship appears and sweeps over the rendezvous base at Devil's Tower, the camera cuts to look straight up at the advancing craft as it blocks out the starry night sky. Watch carefully to see some stars passing right through the leading edge of the mother ship, revealing a flaw in the traveling matte effect.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When Dr. Manhattan is interviewed on TV, his ex-girlfriend Janey makes a surprise appearance in the television studio and launches into emotional accusations. In one shot, we see both Janey shouting in the background and a live television monitor close-up of her face in the foreground. However, the TV monitor close-up shows Janey making completely different head movements than she is making in the background.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: In the Kentucky church-massacre scene, Harry briefly scuffles with a man in a light blue sweater. Harry elbows him in the ribs, sticks a grenade in the man's pocket, spins him around and delivers a crushing blow to his neck, then hurls him head-first into a wall. Throughout this sequence, the man is obviously a live human being. However, a fraction of a second before he impacts the wall, he transforms into a life-size rubber dummy before our eyes, in mid-frame, without any obvious camera cut. This demonstrates the complexity of the scene - it is a digitally-edited collage of action sequences almost seamlessly strung together into what appears to be one long traveling shot.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: During the big car chase (in the 1950 Mercury Monterrey), Cobretti throws the toggle switch for a nitrous boost, and the speedometer immediately leaps to well over 100 mph. However, all the exterior shots show that the cars are barely going 35 or 40 mph, in traffic.

Charles Austin Miller

Wetwired - S3-E23

Revealing mistake: In the opening sequence, a man who is hallucinating badly is apprehended by the police. They find a dead blonde woman in the trunk of the man's car. In a close-up of the dead woman, all the dried blood on her face is an added digital effect; however, the dried blood "drifts" around, seemingly out-of-sync with the video. Similar "drifting" digital effect problems are seen in other X-Files episodes.

Charles Austin Miller

Avatar - S3-E21

Revealing mistake: As Dana Scully is examining the dead woman found in bed with Skinner, she observes a strange luminescent glow on the woman's nose and lips. It's apparent that this glow was added digitally; but the digital effect is "drifting" around the dead woman's face, seemingly out of sync with the video. Similar "drifting" digital effect problems are seen in other X-Files episodes.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Early in the movie, aboard the passenger jet, Stewie Gluck accidentally releases an emergency exit hatch and is sucked out of the plane (as is another passenger in a wheelchair). As the hatch stands wide open for a few seconds, with the wind howling outside, it's obvious that the "clouds" passing in the background are nothing but a large, billowing nylon sheet.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: In virtually all the outdoor attack scenes (but most noticeably in the phone booth sequence), the rotoscope seagulls and crows are proportioned about 150% to 200% of their natural size, about the size of turkeys.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When hundreds of sparrows pour out of the fireplace, filling the house, they do not cast shadows on the furniture, walls or people.

Charles Austin Miller