This week I was inspired to write about change/inattentional blindness that occurs during movies. Obviously, the entire movie can’t be shot in one take, so there are going to be discrepancies and errors, but I enjoy trying to find them and pointing them out. The one I always remember the most clearly occurred in the movie Anchorman. Will Ferrell was sitting in his office drinking a beer talking to some of the other guys that work at the news station, and every time they cut to one of the other characters and then cut back to Will Ferrell, the amount of beer in the bottle is different. Sometimes there is more foam, sometimes less. Its fun to try to rearrange the takes in my mind to see what order they actually filmed the scene as he is supposed to drink his beer continually. There are often similar errors in movie fight scenes, where a character gets a slash across the face one minute, and then in the next shot, his face looks perfectly fine! I guess the filmmakers didn’t grab my attention well enough with the fight scene to get me to ignore their mistakes…or maybe I’m just that perceptive!
Another time that you can really notice these errors occurs in video games, especially in sports games. There are glitches in the game where all of a sudden, you’ll be dribbling down the court, turn to your right to pass to somebody on your right, and the ball appears to shoot out your back and go to the guy on your left. Sometimes these glitches can be advantageous. For example, sometimes in role-playing games, if you run into a certain spot on a wall, you will magically travel through the solid wall and onto the other side! Whether they are intentional or not, these somewhat meta-physical moments are always good for a little chuckle.
