Flipping the shot

One of the tricks used to save money in the old movies and TV shows was flipping shots, apparently to get what looked like different footage but was in fact just the same footage mounted in reverse. In other words, left is right and right is left, like a mirror image. Here's an example from the TV show "Adventures of Kit Carson."


This shot is from about five minutes into the episode "Border Corsairs." Kit, played by Bill Williams, is on the left and his sidekick El Toro, played by Don Diamond, is on the right. This shot is in fact flipped.


Around the 10-minute mark of the same episode, this shot appears. The riders are now on opposite sides of each other. But if you look closely, you'll see that it's not just the riders who have switched sides — everything is reversed from the earlier shot. In the second shot, everything is correctly oriented. One of the better giveaways is that the curved white marking along the nose of Kit Carson's horse curves to the left in the first shot and to the right in the second.

The main feature in the background is Oat Mountain, the light-colored series of hills along the top of the shot. Another way to tell the shots are reversed is by looking at the dark triangle shape in Oat Mountain, just above the riders.

Here's another example of flipping the shot, from "The Roy Rogers Show."

Featured Iverson rock: GTR

Viewed from its most commonly seen front side (above), GTR is a subtle creature. Even so, it found its way into hundreds of movies simply because of its prominent perch atop a rock wall known as Hole in the Wall, in the Lone Ranger Rock/Nyoka Cliff area, or the the Upper Gorge. Here's one example:

The screen shot above is from the 1944 Roy Rogers/Dale Evans movie "The Yellow Rose of Texas." GTR can be seen in the top right corner.

For a look at GTR's charismatic alter ego (its back side), see the Jaunty Sailor.

Featured Iverson rock: Jaws

Jaws, also known as Laughing Boy, is a cool rock, even if it is rarely seen up close in the movies. It has also been called T-Rex based on its appearance from a different angle. It's a close neighbor of GTR, or Jaunty Sailor.