The Magical Moving Apple

Continuity. Every movie has its share of continuity mistakes. There are even websites and books devoted to catching these errors!

Case in point: the movie Mary Poppins. Watch closely when Mary Poppins reads the children’s torn-up note to Mr. Banks; you'll notice she is wearing a pair of white gloves. The next shot is a close-up and suddenly her gloves are black! Finally a room shot, and she’s back to wearing the white gloves again. (From Movie Mistakes by Jon Sandys, p. 110)

Okay, so Mary Poppins is a magical character. She can pull all sorts of furniture from her carpet bag, right? She can float up to ceilings to have tea parties. She's always one step ahead. So, why couldn't her gloves change color!

And that was precisely our explanation for our moving apple.

For our feature film Dear J, the courtroom scenes needed an apple for the prosecutor Dubious (played by Carson Grant). The apple also later figures into the testimony of the trial. And its spot was on the lawyer's table.

Except that it kept moving off its mark. Or rather, we never really knew where its mark was...

We were beginning to enter into a debate over the moving apple when someone realized... It really didn't matter where the apple was because, guys, it's an imaginary courtroom!

Yep! We used the old Mary Poppins magic trick. Probably solved a lot of headaches, too. Continuity-wise.

So, all you people out there trying to catch all our movie mistakes... the moving apple is NOT a mistake! It's an imaginary courtroom. It's meant to be that way.

Just as sure as Mary Poppins' gloves change color.

P.S. Note, that apple must have still caused some grief to someone on the cast or crew. As you can see in the bottom photo (above), someone took their frustration out on one of those magical moving apples. Either that, or they needed a pencil-holder and couldn't get a hold of one... and so used the best alternative they could find. The apple.