Fire Angel Debunk

The first appearance of Mr. Flare! He looks and sounds so young. I’m also told that this particular video was the one that was show to Mr. James Randi and prompted him to contact me.

Pretty cool!

‘Catching Glasses’ Explanation

This was the first in a series of episodes that aren’t debunkings, but rather explanations of visual effects techniques. Always fun.

Full disclosure: at the time of making this, I hadn’t yet caught on to the fact that “Never Hide Films” was merely a marketing invention of the Ray-Ban brand. I thought they are a plucky crew of indie web filmmakers. But my trademark vagueness hides this misconception nicely.

UFO Haiti, The Epic

One of my favorite cases and probably the first fully-developed one. The UFO Haiti video really was an internet phenomenon it came on the scene at that magic hour web video history when viral sharing had already become very efficient, but the compression quality of videos themselves was still low enough to add extra realism to clips like this.

Some viewers have correctly pointed out that I mispronounced the name of the “Eon Software” as “ion”. My mistake! The primitive languages of Earth are still new to me.

For the exit gag, I got to use a 3D model of Max, the spaceship from “Flight of the Navigator” which I crafted in Lightwave 3D long ago. I love all things chrome!

Ghost Caught by Dog Debunk

Here, I start out a ‘lil angry. I can’t help it! The subject video is just so damn silly.

On the bright side, the visual complexity of the debunking on this case is taken a step forward which is why it took longer to do than the first two.

Hmm, I’m starting to detect a pattern…

Mirror Ghost Girl Debunk

For the second video, a paranormal clip seemed like the right way to go. There are SO many “ghost” videos all over the internet, but this one, with its strong visual impact and very clearly observable effects technique was a perfect candidate.

This case took slightly longer than the Penguin Slap Debunk, but I wasn’t too worried…

Some viewers have raised the point that the frozen “ghost” blinks and that this contradicts my explanation that the image is frozen. I find that the video quality is too poor to say for sure whether the girl blinks or whether it’s just an analog video artifact. But if she does blink, nothing much changes: instead of totally freezing the image, they simply looped the part where she blinked back and forth, kind of like when they loop a video of a chewing cow to make it look like it’s talking in a commercial.

Penguin Slap Debunk

The very first, “pilot” episode that started it all. I was young (comparatively speaking) and picked my battles. This one might not be very impressive, but hey, gotta start somewhere.

Hilarious, outraged viewer comments about how “NOBODY THOUGHT IT WAS REAL!” persist to this day.