(June 17) — A shaky camera turns on, out of focus in haste to capture something of terrible importance. The camera zooms in, and the image emerges in awful clarity: the space shuttle, destroyed and coasting in helpless orbit, the astronauts almost certainly dead. The impact debris coasts alongside the ruined shuttle in a funeral procession of atmospheric flotsam.
The most disturbing thing is that no story is explained. We see the destruction like a live news feed, without context, without explanation, and our imaginations paint the back story with our deepest fears: collision, terrorism, tragic accident.
With no commentary except the occasional audio interruption of the NASA controllers, the video feels like the pause in a historical retrospective, the quiet stillness between scripted voice-overs that lets the audience reflect on the tragedy. A moment of silence for the dead.
The man who created the videos is known online as The Faking Hoaxer (TFH for short), and he has a talent for creating footage that earns the rarest of compliments: It feels real.
In an age where special effects are getting cleaner and more elaborate, this one steals their thunder by slipping past our increasing skepticism with decidedly low-tech methods.
Full story: UFO Hoaxer ‘TFH’ Creates Shockingly Realistic CGI Videos of UFOs and Disasters