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Blender Video Mistaken for UFO Sighting
47 Comments Published by Tim Formica [Room335] on May 8th, 2008 in 3D News
John Merrill reports to us that about two weeks ago "I was made aware that a video from my Blender portfolio has been mistaken for evidence of the paranormal. The video in question depicts a UFO sighting followed by an appearance of the cryptozoological monster El Chupacabras. Apparently someone found this video on my youtube page and sent it to journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan claiming it was filmed outside of London, England in late 2007. Maussan has been airing this video on his own television show, and on others, as well as screening it at private lectures for several months."
Here's the original youtube video (contains swearing in english):
Here's one of Maussan's broadcasts where he shows my video
"I really don't understand how this happened. When I made this video, Iintentionally left several errors un-corrected, so that it would be in no danger of being taken seriously, even by a novice video analyst.
-First, it was filmed during the day and then color-corrected to appear asnight. You can see the sun's lens flare several times during the video. -Second, I made sure that the night-vision was of much higher quality, and a far deeper green that I have seen on any camcorder. Judging by some of the other youtube videos I've found, I suspect that someone altered the color to make the night vision look more genuine. -Finally, everyone I have spoken to about the video points out that for them, the jump at the end was a dead giveaway. "
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47 Responses to “Blender Video Mistaken for UFO Sighting”
- 1 Trackback on May 12th, 2008 at 4:25 am
oh yeah, I laughed very hard when I visited the youtube page a few weeks ago (it was posted on BA)
and found a lot of comments of people who took it as real… dumbasses, haha
Lol, I saw the vid before, and really liked it ( plus the comments)
But this Really makes me laugh again :)
Dude why did you left that bugs??
You could release some time after it with a wireframe render in blender?
Then you would have made a great hoaxs and proofing blender can make lifelike movie renders :)
and by the way: they are not allowed to use this video from your portfolio, they are making money with it
That was a very sweet composite, even with the "errrors" left in. Nicely done!
Hope you get some compensation from the fools that stole your work though.
yeah, people don't really care if it's real or not as long as everybody else does. nicely done video, though! really awesome! you should start a site of a bunch of sightings just to see what happens. =P maybe you'll get on some major news stations!
LOL!!! Ha ha ha!!!!
Serves those paranormal exploiters a lesson!
Hahaha!
Hey! Did they use that vid without permission?
Blender rocks.That 's all i know!
How did you do the Lipsync for the grey-bearded alien in the tv-show video. Any blend files around? lol
this is hilarious. Has anyone informed Mr Maussan of his stupidity or is he going to continue showing this in lectures and on tv?
Jaime Maussan is a very respected journalist in Mexico (and Latin America) specially in the UFO space. He gathers the videos that people send him from all over the world. This is clearly a prank pulled by some smart guy that wanted to have a laugh. But not all the blame goes to this guy, Maussan is also responsible for not doing research on it and for not taking the time to analyze the video with objective eyes.
On the other hand, great work John!
Shows how desperate people are to prove ET. How sad
I think this should be taken as pretty much a Compliment for blender. I mean If Something Made with Blender is realistic enough to actually be confused for irrefutable evidence of UFOs and Visitors from other planets, Well Then It must speak volumes of just how far Blender has come as a program.
Plus On another note, You can now say You are on TV…(Or something you made anyways)
The video was great, but I can't understand how anyone though it was real. People sure are gullible!
NathanKP – Inkweaver Review
Great video. It was also very useful to show how easily some people can be fooled. Imagine if the creator took care of every detail and said that it was real. He would now have a legion of followers. xD Congrats. Great job.
Blender X-Files.
@RNS B-Files? ;)
Nice compositing by the way.
I Want To Believe.
But seriously, people will always see what they want to believe.
haha! Wow. That's amazing someone would do something so lame
and air it on TV. Nice work on the video though.
Even on the original video's site, some comments keep proudly saying "I think this is fake"… D'Oh! It even says it in the title that it's made with blender.
This aside, there are a lot of false evidences circulating, and I'd really love more people creating them and blender is a great way to do them. Make them as real as possible and don't make it obvious that it's a fake, at least not until the end, where you could add a line like "Don't believe everything people say". I'm not trying to say that that stuff couldn't ever be real, I'm not commenting on that. I'm just saying that people are way too gullible.
great exposure for blender.
these people believe all this shit because they are on coke! stop snoring.
There is a similar situation involving computer animated UFO drones, however the culprit has yet to be discovered and many people still think it's real.
So real, that it got on History Channel's 'UFO Hunters'.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YXSFUUcSvuo&feature=related
Well done! I got a good laugh out of all the comments and other reaction to this.
Well, what can I say, I´m from México, and I´ve known this crappy TV show since a long time, and that liar for so much time, that I cannot longer believe a single word from him, good for John Merril and Blender, bad for Maussan´s reputation, good for me, because it made me laugh to death…
E.T. blog home.
Hah, that's awesome!!
May I quote able from able and baker: "I see it when I believe it."
http://jimburgessdesign.com/comics/
ByronK: That's exactly what this is!
hahaha. This video is great, and the creature in the end is a "cream on a coffee". You really made me laugh.
Hahaha!!! That's so hilarious! This Maussan guy thinks so much of himself, and was fooled by people who stole a >>YouTube quality<< video from an amateur film-maker. This just cracks me up to no end, especially considering the hop at the end was so obviously fake (no offense).
I think the tracking was very good and if you don't know how aliens control their moves/ flight I can understand why people who are not familiar with animation can be fooled.
I didn't even recognize the lens flare you spoke about, but what gave it away to me way the edgy color correction.
@NeonU: ROFL
I saw a UFO show on History channel a couple of weeks ago that seemed to be a 3d model composited into 'live' footage. LOL probably in a year or two some of these paranormal people will think that we have flying cars and dinosaurs roaming around now.
LOL here's one of the comments on the youtube page
"For those that keep saying it jumped far to high to be real and all, if you watch all of the shows and read everythings about chupacabras, you would no, they can jump very far and high in on leap."
Sorry, I can't resist!
I had same idea, some time ago…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjXBaMD9W2k
Well, technically speaking, John's video is far better than mine. Night vision is an elegant "realism" trick.
If you're asking, yes, the alien has my face. Clonation experiment?
Blender ROCKS!! LOL… :lol:
This sould be published on digg (: guess people would love this sort of thing.
@ByronK: I second that! And "howdy!" to ya!
I would have heard the 'swearing in English' even if you hadn't mentioned that it exists ;)
This is an example of enjoying the story even when you can see the strings. An authentic reaction to the unknown goes a long way to selling this illusion, even when you point out the flaws.
Next time you make a chupacabras, here is your reference:
http://navegaciones.blogspot.com/#7525186059109860370
:-) gave me a real good laugh.
Why not make your own site of alien sitings where people could leave comments?
you could come up with so much better looking vids than any of the real crooks out there!
The movements of the animated Chupacabra were just hilariouse
That's funny. I even wouldn't left errors uncorrected. I'd try to make it as realistic as possible just to see what will happen. :)
"John" as he calls himself is real agent John Merrill and he works for an international secrety society called the twilight 13 which is a branch of the illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt. His purpose and the purpose of the twilight 13 is occult research into the ufo phenomena, Their leader one Chris Johnson is in contact with an entity from the planet sirius named LAM. Oddly enough LAM was first contacted by one Aleister Crowley and was considered to be his "holy guardian angel" a type of occult guide that the hermetic order of the golden dawn had trained crowley to come into contact with thru the use of the abramelin operation. Make no mistake this video is real John Merrill is seeking to delude all of you!!!
thom jackson…what in the world are you talking about?
Ok, let's get things straight:
This dumbass is not, by any means, a serious investigator, nor is he taking serious or respected as one in Mexico. He is one of two jokes that we are tired to live with here (the other one is a so call "paranormal investigator" named Carlos Trejo). This guy is constantly humiliated because of things like this: He takes whatever he can puts his hands on, and shows it like if it's a certified fact and then, a couple of weeks later, there's always someone that expose his stupidity with real facts (just like it's happening here).
So, if you really thought that he is for real (sorry Jos), well…
HE IS NOT!