Description

Thought I'd share an interesting clip that has piqued my attention back from the early 2000's. If this has been posted before, apologies but I haven't seen it floating around in a while.

I'm no photography/vfx expert by any means, but here is my reasoning and some things I've found peculiar in this video :

1. The object depicted (to my untrained eye) seems to actually be in the shot and not be added afterwards. The glare seen reflecting off of its surface has a natural, smooth feel to it as it rocks to and fro, while not being identical with each rocking cycle ; the object also seems to be following the hand movement in the frame seamlessly.
2. Assuming the camera indeed captured an object in the distance, there is always the possibility of it being a model/prop suspended from above, probably using a fishing rod or something similar. At first thought one can argue that the object is zapped out of the frame, while pulling on the line holding it mid air. However, to my understanding, in order to do that the model would have to be very small and given the rather windy conditions at the time of recording, it appears remarkably steady against wind displacement.
3. The object could be suspended and right before it zaps out of frame the video has been manipulated, so as to appear to be instantly accelerating. Now this is the most juicy part to speculate about and to this I notice three things. While going through a slowed down version of the video , I noticed that the sea/wave phase below follows a natural pattern from the time the object is in frame to the time it exits rapidly. In addition to that, there is a frame where the object can be seen as a blur bolting to the right of the frame If one slows the video down enough. Lastly a kind of whooshing sound can be heard shortly after the object exits the frame, which could just as well have a prosaic explanation, such as a wave crashing on the beach in the vicinity of the recording.

Has this ever been debunked or analyzed ? What do you guys think about it ? Also, sorry for the low quality but I don't have a better resolution copy. Looking forward to your take/insight !