I love Movie Set Memes; it’s always good for a laugh. But sometimes the conversations there are toxic. It very often sounds like people who don’t know how movies are made yelling at other people who don’t know how movies are made about how little they each know about how movies are made.
What really gets my goat are the ones who bitch about continuity errors and visible equipment (usually booms) in the shot. Because I promise you, you have never, ever, even once in your life, spotted a mistake like that which the director and editor (and a myriad other post production personnel) aren’t well aware of.
Even if you worked on the film, on set every day, and you know for a fact that there were six perfectly good takes without the boom in the shot, you still don’t know why they chose to use the seventh. There’s the performance to consider, the specific words of dialogue (which may or may not be important), the lighting, the set dressing and on and on.
And besides the individual shot, one must consider the shots that come before and after. Maybe to you, it seemed like the actress’s hair matched the wide shot, but you filmed that before lunch and it was three hours previous. Maybe the speed of the dolly move didn’t quite match the reverse angle until the 7th take. Maybe, as a whole, the composition juxtaposed more elegantly than any other take, despite the boom mic.
So, yes, a boom in the shot is a mistake. But don’t just assume the filmmakers were being careless or lazy. If you weren’t in the editing room, you don’t know if this was simply the least bad option.
As a film-goer, you’re perfectly within your rights to not like a movie. But as a filmmaker, you really shouldn’t cast aspersions on those behind the scenes without being there yourself.
