The Making of the Ultimate Fake UFO Video (Where Absolutely Everything Is Fake)

[octoberlib]

Last month, filmmaker Aristomenis “Meni” Tsirbas revealed to Wired that an elaborate UFO prank video he had created was far more than what it seemed: Not only was the UFO fake, but so was everything else in the video, from the vivid blue sky to the car the “cameraman” was supposedly driving. In a new “making of” video titled “UFO Over Santa Clarita VFX Breakdown,” the director of the computer-generated UFO clip shows how he and his crew of students from the Gnomon School of Visual Effects crafted the amazingly photorealistic visuals where they dropped their obviously bogus alien craft.

“The video is 100 percent CGI through and through,” Tsirbas told Wired. “The electric towers [seen alongside the road] are 3-D geometry and the sky is a 3-D dome that has a texture map on it that’s a combination of painting, volumetric clouds and photogrammetry.”

For Tsirbas, a longtime champion of photorealistic CGI, the prank proved his point: That computer-generated imagery can look totally real if used wisely. Reaction to the revelation has been “very positive overall and at times oddly controversial,” Tsirbas said, with most people expressing surprise that the everyday elements are completely fake.
But some people missed the point entirely.

“Some comments express what I can only describe as schadenfreude from people making sure ‘believers’ were fully aware that the video is in fact a hoax,” said Tsirbas, who has done visual effects and animation work on movies including Titanic and Hellboy. “But the most unusual comments come from a growing chorus of people who insist that the announcement of the hoax is actually part of an elaborate government plan to cover up the fact that the video is real. I even received a mildly threatening personal e-mail from one of these people.”

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/fake-ufo-video/