Remember this? Go and have a look at how sad we are, and then report back.

All done? In that case, take a look at 8:00 – 8:03 of Camille – the shot where Camille reaches down to rescue Kryten from falling. Or just take a look at these screengrabs – click to get a full-size version:

Camille screengrab Camille screengrab

Can you see the refinement in the funnel… erm, sorry. Just look at the top right. A great big whacking paste-in of the previous bit of the shot!

What the hell it’s covering, I don’t know – presumably a boom shadow. But what gets me is how OBVIOUS it is once you’ve noticed it – and yet I’ve watched Camille countless times, and never seen it. It’s just not the part of the screen your eye is drawn to, I suppose. Unlike the Inquisitor repair, it’s not really very well done at all once you see it – but then, we never noticed it before now, so it can’t be that bad. But whatever it was created to hide must have been pretty damn distracting for them to feel they had to do it – it’s hardly a seamless repair.

Well done to Danny Stephenson for noticing this one. If “well done” is really the phrase to use. I’m really not convinced that it is.

22 comments on “Stare Mode Engage

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  • Took me a while. But that whole shot is so distorted towards Krytens legs… my eyes never looked to the top.

  • Weird. I thought it might be a bit of blue in the foreground, something from the original shoot covering a section for the composite. But, looking at the DVD, it’s clearly a post-production wipe.

    Which, I guess, still means the same thing – that there was a section of the set that wasn’t covered in blue and had to be wiped out…only no-one noticed Camille leaning in under it.

  • OK, shame mode: I never realised it was a bluescreen shot.

    In my defence, it’s quite a well done one, a fairly short shot, and also quite dark, which disguises it.

  • I think we would have heard a tad more about that shot if it had actually involved Robert hanging from that height!

  • It IS a well-done shot, though, as John says. it’s only when you start to look at the edges that it becomes clear – and in the cut you don’t get much time to do that.

  • And in The Man In The Rubber Mask, we hear Robert moaning about the rig he’s on in Camille cutting into his privates as he swings out…

  • This shot reminds me of The Inquisitor dangle, the same shot almost, except as Craig jumps forward the camera is shaken but not sturred.

  • Lots of boom shots there!!

    The only one i’ve ever spotted and never really thought about is the one from Demons and Angels with the camera tracking Lister’s feet, I’ve seen a second shadow before now but never really thought it was a mistake…

  • I think the show gets away with a lot of the shadows thanks to the in-scene lighting/set design – there are shadows everywhere.

    The booms in shot…I do wonder how much of that is DVD-based, looking at areas around the edge that weren’t visible on a regular TV. Though, blimey, the quantity on V seems high.

    Still – the D&A feet shot DID always bug me.

  • I couldn’t even spot many of the boom mike shots in those scenes, just shows how keen my eyes are.

    Shadows I don’t see as much of a problem since it gives the impression that it’s a 360 degree set. I.e. the shadow could be from anything from the camera/audience side. I.e. I know it’s the mic, but only cos you told me so. For all I know it could be a piece of machinery or piping/whatever.

    The Cat’s sabre teeth though was so obvious. I noticed that one on screen. I guess you could get round it by arguing the ‘bad Cat’ adopted them to fit his image- thus they’re a prop for the character as well as the actor… if that makes sense.
    ;)

  • Those vids are excellent. He’s done other series of Dwarf as well – well worth a look. A few too many boom mikes, and a few more interesting errors missed – but good stuff, including a lot of things I hadn’t noticed.

    Some of the boom mikes thing is definitely because we can now see the overscan, mind you. At the very least, some of them become a LOT more obvious because of this – a tiny blip at the top of the screen becomes something a lot more noticable. But then, *technically*, it’s not much of an excuse – the show would have been using broadcast monitors, which showed the overscan area. (Of course, practically, doing booms for sitcoms is a really difficult job, and considering how technically demanding Dwarf is, it’s hardly a surprise they creeped in on occasion.)

    My favourite boom error is in Kryten (not seen the Series 2 video yet – he might mention it) – in the Androids parody, they do a hilarious boom mike joke with it obviously pulling out of shot in the wide shot… and yet, in the very next bunkroom scene, there’s a stray boom mike in shot above Rimmer at one point! Very much a case of the pot calling the kettle… Afro-American.

    (Which reminds me – Dwarf should have done more telly parodies. Androids, and Stairway to the Stars are excellent – and they fit right into the Dwarf universe.)

    I always disliked the feet shot in Demons & Angels, too – Cat’s face just doesn’t match with the audio. For a while, I thought it was him grimacing at getting burnt – as described in TMWTRM – but the deleted scenes show that he’s just saying his lines.

  • The only thing that bugs me and really stands out in any episode of the show is in D&A, where Lister is on the ground being shot at by his evil counterpart. He rolls away behind a set of barrels, and the Evil Lister moves his Bazookoid to follow. But the bazookoid goes in front of the barrels, not behind them. This is because good Lister was composited in afterwards with bluescreen, and for some reason the SFX team chose to have Lister go behind a barrel that, really, should have been behind his current position, not in front of it.

  • LEAVE ME ALONE.

    Oh, and I’ve just realised you’re talking about the Lister feet shot, not the Cat/Kryten one. Never mind.

  • Well, the introduction does say “The show that shows you the stairway to the stars”… so close enough. ;)

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