Roger Fenton took two photographs of the same Crimean valley in 1855, one with cannonballs in the ditch and one with them scattered across the road. The road version became the famous image, and historians long argued that Fenton had moved the cannonballs for effect. Errol Morris later found the answer in five small rocks on the slope, which sit lower in the road picture. They had been knocked downhill when people walked around staging the scene, which means the road image was taken second. The photo is one of the earliest examples of a staged war photograph.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.