Is it fake? I don't know. or, The Video of that Skier Falling Down a Cliff

BLOT: (06 Mar 2011 - 02:40:33 PM)

Is it fake? I don't know. or, The Video of that Skier Falling Down a Cliff

When I first watched the video embedded in Helmetcam captures skier's plunge from a cliff-face (from BoingBoing) I didn't think that it was fake. I noticed the editing, and figured it had been tweaked a little, but that it was generally real. Doctorow had this to say:

Many of the early comments came out on the side of fake, by my glance, but later ones pretty much all said non-fake. Let me embed the video here so you can watch it yourself. After you hit play, before you get to the end, click the little up arrow on the embedded player and turn off annotations unless you want to watch an advert at the end.

I mean, it seems a little set-uppish. That doesn't mean anything, though. Presumably the men were up there to film themselves skiing. They were going to stage some early shots no matter what happened next. The fall/slide starts about 1:00 in. Guy puts on his skis really close to the edge and then starts sliding bag. Takes a tumble. Gets himself semi-upright so that his skies absorb a lot of the damage. Reaches the snow at the bottom and then tumbles sideways into it. Most of that footage looks fairly undeniable.

Had that advert not popped up at the end, and had someone not said "is it faked?" I would have been all "Thank God he is ok, right?" and showed it to people as awesome. But since my mind is the sort of mind that doubts most things, once you get the idea in my head there is something to doubt, that sticks. Which kind of sucks. In this case, the only things I really notice that might suggest issues are:

• The shadows seen at the beginning are different than what is seen later. This does not mean much outside of they are either on a slightly different face, later, or it takes place some time later.
• Again, as he starts to flip over the edge you see the side of the mountain is in shadow, but his pan up later shows it mostly sunny. Still, 2D renderings of 3D objects are weird, and it could simply be that there is a flat stretch now blocked by the slope.
• His friend doesn't shout out. The lack of loud shouts on his behalf was frequently pointed out by early commentators on BoingBoing, but later comments took the opposite stance. Still, if I was the guy on top, I would have been like "STEVE!!!!!", you know?
• Again with the shadows, but something weird seems to be going on with his own shadow at the end [as well as his urge to look right back up the cliff before looking down at his own body]. Likewise, the trail in the snow that he looks back up towards seems oddish, but I've never tumbled like that in the snow, I have no idea.

So, I have four potential issues but none of them are definite. If it was just those four, I would say that it was probably not faked in anyway. But in the end, there was one bit that got to me...

• Around 1:10 or so, his skies hit a rock and it bounces him up, and a second or so later his skies hit a second rock which seems him spinning. At this time, his cam is covered in mushy snow. Right about the 1:14 mark, the cam (and his head) come down and it goes dark (a couple of frames of black, and not the first time during the tumble this occurs), it pops back up a tenth of a second later and now it is clear and has some signs of ice crystals frozen to it.

Sure, the fall could have knocked off the snow and sure the fall could definitely have caused a frame glitch on the cam, but still, if you were going to fake footage of someone falling/sliding down a cliff, one of the best ways to do it is to take a handful of shots of him falling/sliding down in more controlled bursts, and then to have cam-glitches account for a convenient way to staple the footage together into a longer, more dangerous seeming montage.

Still, after all that, I'll buy it. I just don't...you know...buy it as openly as I did on first view. But what about you, buy it or not?

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: March 2011