Hey, Mando — we know you're a man of few words, but can you say whoops?
After the fourth installment of The Mandalorian hit Disney+, fans took to the internet in
droves to point out that the episode had fallen prey to one of the oldest, most common boneheaded
errors in filmmaking history: the old boom-mic-in-the-shot gaffe.
The mistake occurred roughly 16 minutes into the episode, as the Mandalorian was having
a chat with Omera, the farmer who had given him refuge during a stop on the planet Sorgan.
Their conversation took place in a rather dimly lit area, and unless you had your screen's
brightness turned up pretty high, it was fairly easy to miss — but once you know it's there,
it's impossible not to see it.
The mic comes creeping in from the top of the frame, then bobs around a little bit;
it's even visible from multiple angles.
"Oopsie!"
On Twitter, Mando fans were split pretty evenly between "Well, this is just inexcusable,"
and "Geez, cut the crew some slack."
While it might seem like a series with The Mandalorian's high profile should be able
to avoid making one of the most well-worn production errors in the book, the fact is
that the series is actually produced by human beings, and darned if human beings don't drop
the ball every now and again.
"Yes, there were a great many dangers involved.
But perhaps the most dangerous were the poisonous fish."
All in all, it's really not worth pulling the ears off your gundark; the gaffe basically
amounted to an out-of-place dark blob intruding on the frame in an area where viewers' eyes
aren't trained to look.
It's not as if an item which clearly had no place in the show's fictional world was left
prominently in the frame, as astutely noted by one Twitter user who wrote, quote, "It's
still better than the GoT coffee cup."
And, hey — if it's really shattering your immersion like so many poorly built Death
Stars, just pretend it's a droid or something.
We present to you…
BM-MC, the galaxy's first personal audio amplification droid.
Action figures coming Christmas 2020.
All joking aside, you may be curious as to whether any other such ridiculous mistakes
have made it into the Star Wars franchise, one of the most beloved in the world the films
of which have been dissected and analyzed frame-by-frame by legions of dedicated fans
for decades.
The answer: oh, yes.
Oh, God…
Just... so many.
In fact, you may not have realized that one of the most famous errors in the entire series
actually was an error, because home video releases starting with the DVD release have
made it appear intentional.
In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, when a trio of Stormtroopers burst into the Death
Star control room in pursuit of our heroes, the one on the right just clocks his head
on the door frame; since the sound effects for the sequence were added in post, there
was no accompanying klunk when this happened.
After fans caught the mistake, just such a sound effect was added for the home video
version but don't let them fool you.
The actor portraying the clumsiest Stormtrooper in the galaxy absolutely did not mean to give
himself a concussion while making his big entrance.
There are plenty more examples to be found in A New Hope alone, many of them having to
do with C-3PO; it turns out that the shiny, reflective quality of the droid's dome wasn't
exactly accounted for in a number of shots in which camera operators and/or cameras are
visible in it.
There are also several instances of crew members briefly wandering into the frame, and, yes,
one shot corrected for home video releases in which the boom mic is visible, as Luke
Skywalker arrives at the Mos Eisley cantina in his landspeeder.
MovieMistakes.com lists a whopping 279 errors in the film par for the course for the movies
of both the original and prequel trilogies, which all contain a similar number of mistakes…
and no, we don't just mean Mr. Binks.
Of course, most of these fall within the realm of simple continuity errors objects jumping
from one hand to another, or things on a table rearranging themselves between cuts, for example
which are common to just about all movies.
But although the sequel flicks have cleaned up their acts just a bit, it's safe to say
that the Star Wars franchise has a long history of bloopers and blunders which somehow survived
the editing process to make it all the way to the screen.
So, yes, we're inclined to come down on the side of giving the hardworking guys and gals
who bring us The Mandalorian, the best new series on television by virtually any measure,
a break.
Unless and until, that is, a future episode ends up with a shot of a discarded Big Mac
carton chilling on the control panel of Mando's ship.
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