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Monday, February 11, 2013

Animator Comes Clean on 'UFO' Video Prank Posted on YouTube | UFO NEWS | VIDEO

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Animator Comes Clean on 'UFO' Video Prank Posted on YouTube - February 2013

By Lewis Wallace
www.wired.com
2-7-13

     The UFO video starts like so many others on YouTube: An unimpressive feed from a handheld camera, jostled around within a moving car. There’s random background noise, then an expression of disbelief as the amateur filmmaker spots a spacecraft and tracks its path across the evening sky.

Suddenly, another ship appears as if out of the ether: a gigantic mothership that vanishes a few seconds later in a wisp of clouds.

YouTube viewers called BS almost immediately on the clip, which was titled “UFO Over Santa Clarita” and uploaded late last year. Many complimented the filmmakers’ digital craftsmanship and suggested they should head to Hollywood, where their CGI work could be put to good use creating alien ships. . . .

. . . In reality, “UFO Over Santa Clarita” was a painstakingly crafted joke played by Aristomenis “Meni” Tsirbas, the director of the 2007 computer-animated film Battle for Terra who has also contributed visual effects and animation work to movies like Titanic and Hellboy and several Star Trek television series. A long-time champion of “photorealistic” CGI, Tsirbas and his team spent about four months mimicking the look of an accidental extraterrestrial encounter captured on a smartphone.

And until now, Tsirbas hadn’t revealed the truth to anyone outside a handful of friends.

“The point of the video was to prove that CGI can look natural and convincing,” Tsirbas told Wired. ”Everybody assumes the background and car are real, and that the UFOs are probably fake, especially the over-the-top mothership at the end. The general reaction is disbelief, so I usually have to prove it by showing a wireframe of the entire shot to prove that nothing is real.” . . .
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