In 2003 I made a video of me equaling a current world record, 12 catches with 12 balls. Here is the video:
Awesome, right? Well, it was actually a fake, made for an April Fools Day prank on the world. Here is the post I made about it on rec.juggling, and the fun comments afterward.
In a following post I wrote up how I made the video. Like any successful project, it takes a lot of planning, knowledge, skill and hard work. A bit like juggling itself! In November of 2003 I flashed 12 balls for real, which sort of proves that point.
Luke Burrage’s 10 Step Guide to Juggling Video Forgery.
1. Think of a trick that people may believe you can do, has to be plausible. For me a 12 ball flash was near but the chances of me catching on video slim.
2. Drop a hint you are going to attempt it. The wimpy discussion was perfect for my requirements.
3. Buy a new tape for your camera if you have run out. Monday dinner time was good for me.
4. Remember, when filming anything, “Location, location, location.” Reasons why I chose my back yard and that camera angle:
-likely place for me to juggle in
-the sky behind is high contrast so you can see the balls above my hands
-the wall behind is low contrast so it is difficult to see the balls below my hands
-knowing that any ball on the floor would be stationary and easy to spot, the low angle and the raised edge of the gravel patch where I am standing would hide any dropped balls5. Practice your reaction. This is very important. I chose that one because:
-throwing the balls to the ground is an accepted celebration but it also makes sure all the balls end up in a roughly the same place, right beside the dropped balls
-running past the camera and out of the shot means that I can get my acting out of the way quickly, leaving an empty screen, not me looking down at the balls that I dropped (for a closer examination see http://lukeburrages.thingonthe.net/juggling/videoreview.html )6. Shoot yourself attempting the trick until you have a good selection of near misses with suitable celebrations. I was happy at 10 near attempts (8 catches or more with celebration, best was 10 catches but forgot to play the part) which took about 45 minutes.
7. Capture these attempts into your computer and review them until you find the one most suitable for the next stages.
8. Grab the frames in which the balls are dropping past your hands and before they hit fall out of site. Or in my case, the frames in which the balls bounce of my shoulder, off my arms and the one that just bounced off the ground. Frame by frame remove evidence of these balls. The best way to do this is to use the background of where the ball you want removing is from the frame before or after. Do not use smudging or cloning as this leave a visible trail where the ball is. This stage is made much easier if the balls are not easily visible in the first place.
9. Recompile the video, sans the sound. Removing the sounds of balls hitting gravel seemed to tricky to even bother. Grass would be the best surface for this, or maybe have some music playing. I never put sound on
my video clips anyway, so this wasn’t a problem for me anyway.10. Finally “optimize” for the internet. All I think I need to say here is that low quality mpg can hide a multitude of sins.
Thank you.
Luke Burrage
PS. Does all this sound plausible to you? A lot of work for just a joke?
Well, you are right. The video is real.
The video wasn’t real. I know I’ve probably still got the original files somewhere, so one day I might upload the original, unaltered video clip.