The finale of James Cameron’s epic “Aliens” (1986) features the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) getting severed in half, but still functioning enough to save Newt (Carrie Henn) from getting sucked into the vacuum of space. The action-packed scene features an absolutely wonderful accidental reveal of how the cut-in-half android was accomplished on the set:

“Aliens” (1986)

The amazing makeup effects applied to Henriksen’s body covers the bottom half of his body which is hidden through a hole in the set. But in order to get that little bit of extra athletic stretch to grab Newt, Henriksen popped his body out of the hole a little too far, revealing the classic stage trick. However, I’d gather that 99% of the audience has never noticed this little reveal of stagecraft since our eyes are fixed on Newt on screen right, sliding toward the airlock, and not on the ground contact of Bishop’s half-body, which had already been firmly established in the scene.

Avoiding reflections of the crew appearing to camera is a constant struggle for filmmakers. In Steven Spielberg’s first masterpiece “Duel” (1971), David (Dennis Weaver) gets into a phone booth to make a call, with the front glass face of the booth aimed directly at the camera, and if the audience’s gaze drifted off of Weaver’s face, they could catch a glimpse of the crew:

“Duel” (1971)

In the reflection, we see a few crew members on screen left, the camera itself, and director Spielberg on the right (he’s the one shuffling left and right, who lowers his head in the middle of the take). Again, like all the examples I’m providing in this article, hardly anyone would ever notice these moments. When a viewer catches these brief moments, the illusion of the movie is briefly broken, but for fans of the filmmaking process, it’s a joyful reminder of the overall magic trick. The most intimate movie scene with only two characters in a desolate, isolated environment actually was created by dozens and dozens of crew members standing slightly out of frame.

Look for another accidental ‘crew caught on camera’ moment in the reflection in a car window in the ‘leave the gun, take the cannoli’ scene from “The Godfather” (1972), one that very few people ever notice.

Here’s a super quick revealing mistake from “The Dark Knight” (2008) that is a true “you’ll never see this in real time” moment:

Although “The Dark Knight” example gives the audience a much clearer look at the camera operator, the focus puller(?) and the camera itself reflected in the interrogation room’s mirrors, the shot is a lot harder to see the crew members and equipment in real time due to the chaotic and energetic camera movement, as opposed to the locked off nature of the “Duel” example.

“The Abyss” (1989)

Amazingly, many folks who watch that clip from the dramatic drowning sequence cannot consciously see the bit of filmmaking that literally blocks the actors in an intimate moment. This is my favorite example of a movie’s incredible emotional power — the scene is so dramatic and intense that most viewers cannot consciously see a giant cloth wiping away water from the lens of the camera in the middle of a shot.

Incidentally, some of these revealing mistakes are being erased from cinema history due to overzealous restoration projects — the process of “cleaning up” a film for newer formats like Blu-ray and 4K — which is deeply wrong. This is a much bigger topic on which I have very strong thoughts and the hottest of takes. Just look at what modern restorations have done to two of these revealing mistakes from “Goodfellas” and “Aliens”:

Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong. What’s in the movie is in the movie, and altering the movie to this extent is a form of revisionist history. Cinema is worse off when over-aggressive restorations alter the action within the frame. To me, this is equivalent to swapping out an actor’s performance with a different take, or changing the music score during an action sequence, or replacing a puppet creature with a computer graphics version of the same creature decades after release. But I digress.

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Like I said at the start, movies are handmade, and that’s true even in today’s landscape where digital visual effects are a prominent part of filmmaking. In the same way that physical crews use physical tools to build sets, construct costumes and craft props, visual effects artists use digital tools to craft an image. And with the hand-made nature of any art form, the lack of c