The Faking Hoaxer's YouTube videos

Someone who goes by the YouTube handle The Faking Hoaxer makes realistic videos of UFO visits, encounters with ghosts, and other phony events. Above, a video of the Space Shuttle destroyed in space.

A video I made to show how the Shuttle may look if it was destroyed in space. Filmed from the ISS or maybe another Shuttle. All made with real photos of the Shuttle then I used Photoshop to make it look damaged and in pieces. Then I put it in space using After Effects.

Don't miss his other videos, especially 2 UFO's fly under the Space Shuttle, and Green Sphere UFO.

The Faking Hoaxer's YouTube Channel (Via Forgetomori)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

SamSam…

The video was shot from the Space Station. The first few seconds were shot from the shuttle as it orbited near the Space Station.

I have a friend who works at NASA, and I can tell you that this is real. The Faking Hoaxer was hired by NASA to cover it up, to avoid widespread panic if the real story got out. My friend says that everybody at NASA is heartbroken for the lost crew, but they have been sworn to secrecy.
Anonymous

Very creative and poetic in some respect. Would love to see more, keep up the good work.
designian

Excellent work – except the music and the title cards (3 days later) suggest movie and the raw audio suggests news feed. But I do like it alot.
Anonymous

That was sadly awesome. Very nice work. However the worst part is the YouTube commenters, who make me sad for the future of the entire human race.
AirPillo

Even knowing it was fake that was really saddening to see. I really hope I don’t see another space shuttle/capsule crew lost in my lifetime.
- cinemajay
  
  Agreed. That was really depressing to watch.
pyxl8r

I was more entertained by the idiots in the YouTube comments section (especially under the “2 UFO’s fly under the Space Shuttle” one), who seem evenly divided among the ones who insist that it’s actually real, and the ones who are mad that it’s really a hoax (despite the creator’s repeated clarifications that it’s all pretend)!

Nice job, considering it’s all just Photoshop and After Effects. Can’t really get a realistic rotation on the objects with this technique tho, since the objects are just 2d silos. I guess that’s the dead giveaway (smashed stuff tends to tumble more in space), but still pretty clever, and evidently good enough to confuse the unwashed masses!
rexdude

Wow…ghoulish.
Though it looks like it was chewed up by something, with all the green bits like algae.
Any comment on what could cause it to look that way–explosive decompression?
Though if the propellant caught fire (assuming there’s liquid oxygen as well) I guess there’d be far smaller bits left, scattered over a much larger area than shown.
dbarak

Too much “Cloverfield.” I don’t think an astronaut shooting that video would zoom in and out like a tween with a camcorder.

The green areas simulate exposed structural elements painted with zinc chromate paint.
standard

I’m a little sick of the artificially manipulated handheld/slow focus look as a videographer’s shortcut to a “realistic” looking video.
- No More Mr Nice Guy
  
  That’s BSG for you.
  
  I agree, this “technique” has to go.
  - ToddBradley
    
    Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought. One of the few “tells” that make the video not look uncanny enough is the same reason Battlestar Galactica’s simulated camera work looked like such crap. Or maybe they’re both a comment that all camera operators in the future will be afflicted with severe attention deficit disorder.
HarryD

The only thing that is really wrong about this is the handheld aspect.. I guess an astronaut could film this with a handheld, but really, all video from ISS is taken by fixed cameras on the outside, that don’t wobble about or focus that much.
- coaxial
  
  I really wish people would stop saying this was filmed from ISS, the radio traffic clearly says “Houston, Atlantis.”
  
  The music definitely helps set the mood, while the lack of tumbling gives it away, what really killed my suspension of disbelief was the shot of the side of the orbiter, with a single mauled engine and the OMS pod. It looked flat, because none of those pieces are on the same plane.
  
  That and the green “internals” on the stabilizer.
  
  Cool, but definitely a work in progress.
Anonymous

Haunting.

In real life, though, I would expect some pieces to be tumbling.
gastronaut

Scary. The only part about this that feels fake is that all the fragments are calmly floating next to one another. Unless this was caused by a space termite attack, you’d expect that whatever it was that was energetic enough to do that kind of damage would have transferred a lot more kinetic energy to the pieces of the shuttle. They’d be spread over a much larger area and spinning wildly. I don’t think a fire could do this much damage because the fire would stop as soon as the fuel tanks or passenger compartment decompressed.
bellebouche

That was so disturbing I was unable to watch it to completion.
toolbag

gastronaut: I agree, the debris field was too dense. An impact to a wing could cause a spray that would pockmark the body of the shuttle as shown in the video. But the debris would be spread out over hundreds of miles in all kinds of erratic orbits. Probably. I mean, I’m not a physicist but the guy across the hall from me is.

I didn’t dig the music and the “3 days later”, I felt they detracted from the work. But don’t get me wrong, that was pretty cool. If it were released with no explanation within a month a NASA rep would be on CNN explaining that it’s not real.
dos

Dear TFH,
I’m a film director and I would like to talk to you about your work as I’m currently working on a UFO film. Please contact me at my email: danielosimpson@yahoo.co.uk

many thanks
baph

Always nice to see so much talent working so well with such limited tools. This guy could probably land a job with some in house SFX group pretty easily. :cough: SyFy :cough:

Hell, S3 of BSG didn’t look much better than this after they blew the SFX budget on the Adama Maneuver.

That said, I really, really, don’t need to see any more destroyed space shuttles. Ever.
SamSam

The angle didn’t make any sense to me. Why were we looking down on this from a hand-held camera? Who was supposed to be doing the filming?

The one about the two UFOs under the shuttle made a lot more sense, because it was clearly supposed to be filmed using a hand-held camera from inside the shuttle.
Hawley

hahahahhha the comments on youtube are priceless.
Anonymous

Definitely neat looking (certainly better than I can do), but having looked at many pixels in my day, I’m inclined to say:

A) As someone else pointed out, there’s no tumbling – all objects either have their axis of rotation perfectly in line with the camera or aren’t even rotating at all. This is of course a trademark of the fact that he used 2D images.

B) The ambient lighting is way too high. In space there tends to be a huge contrast between areas in light versus shadow. The only things brightening the shadows would be Earthshine and scattered light from other parts of the debris.