Blooper
A blooper is a short clip from a film or video production, usually a deleted scene, containing a mistake made by a member of the cast or crew. It also refers to an error made during a live radio or TV broadcast or news report, usually in terms of misspoken words or technical errors. The term blooper was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s in a series of record albums produced by Kermit Schafer entitled Pardon My Blooper, in which the definition of a blooper is thus given by the record series' narrator: "Unintended indiscretions before microphone and camera."
For other uses, see Blooper (disambiguation).
Bloopers are often the subject of television programs and may be shown during the closing credits of comedic films or TV episodes. Prominent examples of films with bloopers include The Cannonball Run, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Rush Hour. Jackie Chan and Burt Reynolds are both famous for including such reels with the closing credits of their movies.
In recent years, many CGI-animated films have also incorporated bloopers, including a mix of faked bloopers, genuine voice-actor mistakes set to animation, and technical errors. Examples can be found in A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).
Humorous mistakes made by athletes are often referred to as bloopers as well, particularly in baseball.
Origins[edit]
United States[edit]
The term "blooper" was popularized in the United States by television producer Kermit Schaefer in the 1950s; the terms "boner" (meaning a boneheaded mistake) and "breakdown" had been in common usage previously. Schaefer produced a long-running series of Pardon My Blooper! record albums in the 1950s and 1960s which featured a mixture of actual recordings of errors from television and radio broadcasts and re-creations. Schaefer also transcribed many reported bloopers into a series of books that he published up until his death in 1979.
Schaefer was by no means the first to undertake serious study and collection of broadcast errata; NBC's short-lived "behind-the-scenes" series Behind the Mike (1940–42) occasionally featured reconstructions of announcers' gaffes and flubs as part of the "Oddities in Radio" segment, and movie studios such as Warner Brothers had been producing so-called "gag reels" of outtakes (usually for employee-only viewing) since the 1930s. As recently as 2003, the Warner Brothers Studio Tour included a screening of bloopers from classic films as part of the tour.
United Kingdom[edit]
Jonathan Hewat (1938–2014),[1][2] who had a vast personal collection of taped broadcasting gaffes,[3] was the first person in the UK to broadcast radio bloopers, on a bank holiday show on BBC Radio Bristol at the end of the 1980s.
He subsequently produced and presented a half-hour show on that station called So You Want to Run a Radio Station?. This was nominated for a Sony Award. The transmission of humorous mistakes, previously considered private material only for the ears of industry insiders, came to the attention of BBC Radio 2. They commissioned a series of six fifteen-minute programmes called Can I Take That Again?,[4][5] produced by Jonathan James Moore (then Head of BBC Light Entertainment, Radio). The success of this series led to a further five series on Radio 2 (the programme ran from 1985 to 1990),[3] as well as a small number of programmes (called Bloopers) on BBC Radio 4.
Some of the earliest clips in Hewat's collection went back to Rudy Vallee "corpsing" (giggling uncontrollably) during a recording of "There Is a Tavern in the Town" and one of the very earliest OBs (Outside Broadcasts) of The Illumination of the Fleet.
The comment made by newsreaders after making a mistake "I'm sorry I'll read that again" was the origin of the title of the radio show which ran on the BBC during the 1960s and 1970s.
Bloopers are usually accidental and humorous. Where actors need to memorize large numbers of lines or perform a series of actions in quick succession, mistakes can be expected. Similarly, newsreaders have only a short time to deliver a large amount of information and are prone to mispronounce place names and people's names, or switch a name or word without realizing it, as in a slip-of-the-tongue or Freudian slip.
Some common examples include:
The famous old chestnut of show business "Never work with children or animals" demonstrates two other causes of out-takes: Children, especially those who have no acting experience, often miss cues, deliver the wrong lines or make comments which are particularly embarrassing. (The Kids Say the Darndest Things series, conceived by Art Linkletter, deliberately sought these kinds of remarks.) Similarly, animals are very likely to do things not in the script, generally involving bodily functions.
A third type of blooper is caused by failure of inanimate objects. This can be as simple as a sound effect being mistimed or a microphone not working properly, but frequently involves doorknobs (and doors) not working or breaking, props and sets being improperly prepared, as well as props working in ways they should not work.
In recent years, mobile phones have been a new source of bloopers with them frequently going off. Many of them belong to actors, presenters, and contestants who may have forgotten to turn them off or put them in silent mode. The effect is especially pronounced when the film setting is before the modern era (e.g., ancient Greece or Rome). However, this blooper is rarely seen in recent films (most productions enforce 'no cellphone' rules while on-set to prevent plot or production details from leaking) but is commonly used in fake bloopers for animations.
The reaction to bloopers is often intensified in the stressful environment of a movie or television set, with some actors expressing extreme annoyance while others enjoy the stress relief brought on by the unexpected event.
Acceptance of out-takes[edit]
The proliferation of out-takes/gag reels/blooper reels, especially on recent DVD releases, has received mixed response by actors and directors. While many do not mind the extra publicity offered by such material being shown to the public and others simply enjoy seeing the mistakes, other actors complain that out-takes are demeaning to themselves and/or the craft and refuse to allow them to be made public.
Director Hal Ashby's decision to include a blooper reel of star Peter Sellers in his 1979 film Being There, for example, is sometimes blamed for Sellers' failure to win that year's Academy Award for Best Actor (for which he was nominated). Sellers had reportedly urged Ashby not to include the outtakes in the final edit of the film, to no avail.
Among his other issues with Star Trek's producer Gene Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy was not happy that Roddenberry showed the show's blooper reels to fans at conventions in the early 1970s. He felt actors needed to be free to make mistakes without expecting that they would be shown to the public, and wrote a letter to Roddenberry asking him to stop. Roddenberry's answer was to send Nimoy a blooper reel of his own should he have wished to show it at conventions.
Conversely, actors and crew on many productions treat the creation of gag reels as part of the filmmaking process, with innumerable examples of commercially released outtakes in which an actor can be heard remarking that a failed take was likely destined for a gag or blooper reel. Film producer Sam Raimi went so far as to commission veteran composer Vic Mizzy to create unique scores for the gag/blooper reel special features for the DVD releases of the films Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3.[11]
Comedian Greg Giraldo flubbed a joke about sex with koalas during a performance of his Comedy Central special Midlife Vices. Giraldo then made several self-deprecating jokes, suggesting the flub would be included with the "DVD extras", before repeating the joke correctly. The entire bit made the final cut.[12]
Alternative definitions[edit]
The term "blooper" or "flub," is often applied to describe continuity errors and other mistakes that have escaped the notice of film editors and directors and have made it into a final, televised or released product, where these errors are subsequently identified by viewers. For example, in a film taking place in the Old West, a viewer might spot a twentieth century vehicle driving in the distance of one shot, or in a film taking place in ancient Greece, an actor may have forgotten to remove his wristwatch and it was caught on film. Or it might be a piece of clothing, such as shoes, that change for one shot then change back with no explanation. Strictly speaking, however, these are film errors, and not "bloopers" since they did not occur in outtake footage or a live broadcast. The Internet Movie Database website uses the term goofs instead. In the mid-1990s, author Phil Farrand published a series of Nit-Picker's Guides books in which he collected continuity errors and other on-screen "bloopers" from various Star Trek series that had been identified by either himself or fans; the listing of such information is commonplace on wiki-style websites devoted to TV and film production.
In baseball, the term is used to describe a Texas Leaguer, or a short fly ball that lands just past the infield, eluding both infielders and outfielders alike.
The Vietnam-era M79 grenade launcher also has the nickname "Blooper" due to its distinctive firing noise. Gustav Hasford refers to this in his novel, The Phantom Blooper: A Novel of Vietnam (1990).[13]