UFO filmed over Jerusalem.

[MacCruiskeen]

- Too many cameras now.

Three! And the Dome of the Rock, like the WTC, must be one of the most-filmed places on earth.

If there had only been one film, you would (I guess) be complaining that it was uncorroborated and therefore suspicious.

- The responses seem too boneheaded.

Clearly we move in different circles.

- "Holy Shit!"

Call me boneheaded, but if I saw a light descend slowly onto the Dome of the Rock (or anywhere else!) and then shoot off vertically into the sky, I would have said exactly the same thing or something very similar. (What would you have said?)

- The Mississippi accent, a Hollywood cliche for the sincere rube.

Millions of people come from Mississippi, and some of them actually travel abroad. Besides, the two guys in the other two films were speaking Hebrew.

- "Ooooooo" (laughter)

The one time I saw a total eclipse of the sun, it was spoiled for me by a crowd of boneheads carrying on precisely the same way (but in German). The German language is a Hollywood cliché for several things too, but sincere rubiness is not one of them.

I don't know - it sounds very typically scripted. But I could be wrong.

See the Wittgenstein quote and brainpanhandler's remark.

[barracuda]

How come there's no flash in the third vid?

If you watch the first two videos, the flash actually seems to come from a different point some distance away from the object and the Dome.

And why does the third vid stop so abruptly?

Right, this is another conceit of viral videos (see the gnome vids from South America.)

If there had only been one film, you would (I guess) be complaining that it was uncorroborated and therefore suspicious.

I'm not complaining, just trying to make sense of what I'm looking at, which I'll fully admit may be a personal failing.

[Nordic]

The first two vids look and sound completely real. If it's fake, whoever faked it managed to use completely different types of "motion blur" for the end, when the thing takes off. In the first one it's a streak, as you'd have with a film camera, or with a video camera that's got a sorta normal shutter speed to it, and the second one shows the stuttery stop-action look of many new video cameras, where they sample at a higher rate. So if it is fake, they went to a lot of trouble to fake that.

Then there's the third one, which looks totally fake.

WTF? The third one looks fake right off the bat. It looks like someone zoomed in on a still image. There's no traffic lights moving, the light flares don't move, there's nothing twinkling through the atmosphere, all completely wrong, plus you can sorta see the grain of the video image just frozen. Also, if it's really that zoomed in, while are the moves so smooth? To have such smooth moves like that so zoomed in, one would have to have a really nice fluid tripod head. Most tourists don't even know what that is.

Then there's no flash, and the ball itself doesn't have any glow around it, which would be natural given the way the other lights flare in the lens and the atmosphere. Also, the ball itself is too small compared to the balls shown in the first two vids.

Then there's the cheesy voiceover, with people going "ooooh!" like it was a fireworks show or something. The first two responses seem much more authentic, basically stunned silence and nobody knowing quite what to say.

Why would somebody fake a third video?

[MacCruiskeen]

If there had only been one film, you would (I guess) be complaining that it was uncorroborated and therefore suspicious.

I'm not complaining, just trying to make sense of what I'm looking at, which I'll fully admit may be a personal failing.

Ooh! Now now. You are not the only one with that personal failing.

The question is serious, and still unanswered: What would a UFO film look like that wasn't fake?

[Nordic]

The question is serious, and still unanswered: What would a UFO film look like that wasn't fake?

The first two look as real as anything I've seen (not the third), but how hard would it be for someone to take this? These days, not hard at all, honestly.

But that doesn't mean anything.

[tazmic]

"Hey, is that a UFO?"

No one would script that.

http://wn.com/ball_lightning

[MacCruiskeen]

*

Note the three-flashing-lights pattern at the end: I don't know how anyone could fake and synchronise that on two separate cameras.



triangular ufos

[Nordic]

"Hey, is that a UFO?"

No one would script that.

http://wn.com/ball_lightning

Well there ya go. Ball lightning.

Looks like a lot of UFO sightings are ball lightning!

[MacCruiskeen]

"Hey, is that a UFO?"

No one would script that.

http://wn.com/ball_lightning

Well there ya go. Ball lightning.

And the three flashing lights in the sky at the end?

[tazmic]

This one has sound [edit: I mean, the sound if IT], and is rather cool:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cdd_1210940003

If it is ball lightening over Jerusalem the third has to be one of the best videos.

[Nordic]

Well if you look at that video of ball lightning, you see similar instances of such things.

And there's one with a flash, just like the one in the vids.

[justdrew]

if that's what it was, why did it leave? Too rich a diet?

[23]

The question is serious, and still unanswered: What would a UFO film look like that wasn't fake?

You ask a poignant question here, Mac. Thanks for raising it.

The standard for fakeness is very dependent on the standard for authenticity.

Absent the latter, the former becomes questionable.

[MacCruiskeen]

Well if you look at that video of ball lightning, you see similar instances of such things.

And there's one with a flash, just like the one in the vids.

OK, apologies, Nordic, I've now watched the whole thing. But are they absolutely sure that all of those films show "ball lightning"? That seems to me to be begging the question, i.e., they're assuming the truth of the proposition they purport to be proving.

"That's ball lightning!"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course! Any unexplained globular lights in the sky must be ball lightning!"

Circular reasoning.

Besides, what is ball lightning, exactly? As far as I'm aware (and I may well be underinformed) the phenomenon is as yet very far from being fully explained or understood.

[brainpanhandler]

For our convenience: