Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Disappearing Vest
At the very end of the movie, during the scene at the Grey Havens, Sam's vest disappears. He was wearing a yellow vest with several buttons, but in the last two shots of Sam, he is in only the white shirt that was underneath. The vest is back in the final scene when Sam returns home.
This is actually pretty funny. That was one of the first scenes the four hobbits shot for the third movie. They were all not looking forward to it because it was emotionally draining. After a full day of shooting, Peter Jackson came back and told them that when Sean Astin left to take a phone call, he removed is costume. Apparently he forgot to put the vest back on. They had to reshoot the scene. All the hobbits were upset.
Once they had finished Peter Jackson came back and said that for some reason all the film was out of focus. The hobbits had to do it once again. After shooting the hard scene three times, it makes sense that if they needed additional shots from that scene they would use the original take, without Sam's vest, hoping no one would notice rather than shooting it again.
Peter Jackson and the hobbits all talk about this in the Special extended edition appendices under Filming the Return of the King.
I havn't checked to verify this but if you listen to the cast comentaries on the special extended edition, you'll hear Sean Astin (Sam) reveal that they had to shoot that scene twice because he didn't have his vest on the first time. Maybe they just mixed up the two shots. I'm not verifying the slipup, just noting that it would make sense
On the extended DVD, it says the scene was shot a number of times. After they realised that sam wasn't wearing his vest the second time they shot it, they shot it again, and it was all out of focus, so they shot it a fourth time. After all that trouble, i doubt that the film editors etc. would have failed to use a good copy of the scene.
On the extended DVD, the filming of thing, they talk about how Sean Astin (Sam) forgot to put his vest on after lunch break and so they had to re-shoot half of it another day with the right vest on. So I'm not sure why they would still have a shot of him without the vest. But I see it as well.. right as Frodo is getting on the boat he's wearing the white shirt.
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