(drum roll)
Greetings, children. Captain Disillusion here.
Now that I've correctly explained
every single video mystery on the internet,
we can finally dedicate this channel to more…
grown-up topics.
I'll start off easy by discussing…
religious appropriation of gendered race politics.
Now, my opinion on the subject is rather controversial
and it is as follows. Anyone who--
(fast beeping)
I'm sorry… (beeping louder)
Apparently there is one more viral video left to debunk.
And it comes as a special request
from an ambitious little boy named Jason Rodgers--
J-Jackson Roberts,
who's made a grassroots hoax-busting effort of his own!
JACKSON: You've all seen this video before, right?
I mean, five million of us have.
It's in the "important videos" playlist, so it's gotta be popular.
I think a lot of people have realized it's fake.
I mean, they must have by now, right?
I mean, I can't be the first one to realize this, right?
Right?
CAPTAIN D: Yeah, yeah. You're totally not.
Now, get to the point, please.
JACKSON: I think a variety of techniques were used,
and that's why I am calling out
(dubstep music) to Captain Disillusion
to come help me out with this
because this video was really hard to make
for just this one shot.
So, um, I'm calling out to my-- to my savior, my idol, my strength
Captain Disillusion
to come and help me with this project.
CAPTAIN D: Why, Jensen, that's so sweet!
Of course I'll help!
What have you been able to figure out so far?
JACKSON: I've figured out that this is an ad
for glass.
If you see, in the background of all these shots,
the stickers on the glass say "Integrity," and that's the brand
that produced this video.
And I have no idea how they're selling it.
I just don't understand advertising nowadays.
You're a glass company, let's make a video about a f*****g tape measure--
(record scratch) CAPTAIN D: Whoa, okay.
No need for foul language, Jamie.
You're right!
It is a f*****g viral ad.
Those are usually produced by ad agencies,
and if we knew which agency created this video,
it could lead us to more information.
So, let me show you this one weird trick
to quickly and easily identify the agency
behind any successful viral ad campaign.
All we have to do is search the name of the brand,
followed by "viral ad," and "award."
Advertising firms crave validation
and constantly submit everything in their portfolio for awards,
so this works every time. See?
The "Superhuman tape measure skills" video
was one of five spots that Martin Williams Advertising,
an agency that describes itself as "Charming and relentless,"
produced for Integrity Windows & Doors by Marvin.
The others weren't as successful, but with the tape measure spot
they struck a perfect balance of virality
because precision tape-measure tossing
seems a little more plausible than reproducing the Mona Lisa with a nail gun,
but not as simple to fake as throwing a single nail.
Now, the whole campaign is from 2010 and has long ago served its purpose,
so maybe if we just ask Martin Williams politely,
they'll tell us all about the visual effects in the ad.
(dramatic sting)
(ping)
(Robotic, female voice reads text on-screen)
CAPTAIN D: Well, that doesn't help us very much.
Looks like I'm going to have to teach you some of my world-famous
debunking skills after all, Jeremy.
(clears throat)
First,
a lot of these viral hoax videos do a trick
where they film everything on a tripod to make the visual effects easier,
and then they add the fake camera shake later.
You might want to--
(bang) JACKSON: A lot of these viral hoax videos do a trick where they
film everything on a tripod to make the visual effects easier,
and then they add the fake camera shake later.
And that was actually done on a few of these shots.
Here, you can see. I've stabilized a couple of these shots--
(bang) CAPTAIN D: Oh. I'm…
glad you know that already.
Well, one thing I like to do is study shots frame-by-frame
to catch any weird anomalies that might give away the--
(bang) JACKSON: Right as the keys get grabbed,
they actually start moving before the tape measure touches them,
which is just a complete giveaway.
And then there's one frame, while they're being lifted up, that
they sort of stick.
They're on top of each other.
(bang)
CAPTAIN D: That's great.
You're very clever, Jasper.
But you should also consider that sometimes one shot
might be made up of several split-screen elements
where different--
(bang) JACKSON: So there's a plate with these three guys on the left,
and the one guy throws the tape measure
and then there's another shot on top of that
of the tape measure going through the air
starting after the point where it changes direction.
(bang) CAPTAIN D: You think you're so cool, don't you, Jacob Ronalds.
Like a young Captain D who doesn't have to dye his hair
or frame himself above the waist.
Well let me tell you something.
You don't even know half
of what you think you've figured out about these effects.
Now watch and learn as a professional breaks down
every single shot in the video.
There are six scenes in all, and, yes, four of them were filmed
statically with fake camera motion added in post.
But the other two really were shot hand-held,
as we can see from the parallax in the deeper parts of the background.
(mechanism shifts)
In the window scene, the throw seems simple enough to be done for real,
but stabilizing the shot in a more thorough way
that counteracts lens distortion
reveals some odd things happening with this guy's lower half.
It's an attempt to clean up a cut hidden in the camera move.
When filming, the main actor launched the tape measure,
then everyone froze.
An assistant came in,
hooked the end of the tape measure where it's supposed to land,
left the scene, and then action was resumed.
The missing motion of the tape hitting the target
was added later by warping still images of the real tape.
This could've been done completely seamlessly,
but without taking lens distortion into account,
or working out the exact timing of the cut,
it ended up being a sloppy patch job.
Maybe the assistant was even visible too early
in the corner of the shot,
and that's what this little artifact is covering up.
(mechanism shifts)
The porta-potty scene is also made of two pieces,
but not in the way you might expect.
The tape throw is real!
Assisted by a wire run through the door handle
and pulled from the inside.
But when the door opens,
the wire operator is masked from our view
by a different take of an actor on the toilet.
In both takes, the door was opened at about the same speed,
and any slight discrepancy was easy enough to adjust on the tape measure.
But it wasn't so easy once the toilet guy
starts to close the door in his take.
In the thrower's take, the door stayed open.
We see the real tape measure suddenly replaced
with a stretchy, animated mess that follows the door back.
It wrongly connects to the door at the edge instead of the handle,
and peeking above it, we can see the wire
that actually pulled the door open in the toilet guy's take.
The ladder scene is one of the genuinely hand-held ones,
and stabilizing it reveals something obvious.
Before the tape measure is launched,
the entire path where it's going to travel
boils and glitches with messy cloning patchwork.
Once again, the tape was being pulled by a wire toward its target.
The cup starts to get tipped by the wire
before the tape measure even reaches it.
But the filmmakers couldn't pull the tape fast enough over this distance.
So at the start of the shot, the tape measure is already partially extended
and hidden by the clone patchwork.
It's rapidly wiped away
until it catches up to the real end of the tape
just as it bumps the cup.
After that, no visual effects are happening,
but we can see the tape bowing
as the end continues to hang from the wire
instead of diving straight down.
The boombox scene is simple.
First, a blank plate was shot
with the guy in the background reacting.
Then, the tape measure was pulled into place
and dropped to capture the action of it being reeled back in.
The quick throw was easy to simulate later
by once again warping a still frame of the tape
as well as wiping on its shadow and reflection.
Except, they forgot this second reflection,
so it just suddenly pops into existence
on the frame where the tape becomes real.
And the boombox getting bumped
is probably the result of an on-set mistake.
It must have been moved slightly between takes,
and this inspired them to animate it from one position to the other.
But it's done so crudely.
Even down on the boombox's shadow.
They should've just left it still.
The same "top-notch" compositing skills
were applied to the only scene in the video
where the effects had to look perfect because the camera doesn't move.
You're right, Jefferson, the keys shift
a couple of frames before the tape measure reaches them.
It's because the shot cuts to a version where they are connected
to a clearly-visible filament that really pulls them off the shelf.
This motion probably wasn't fast enough,
so it was sped up by showing only a few handpicked frames,
one of which was accidentally left visible for an extra frame.
But this is not as weird as what's happening
on the other side of the composition.
See, the filming process was similar to the window scene.
After launching the tape measure, the actors froze in place,
and an assistant pulled the tape all the way to the target.
Only this time it was captured as a visual reference
and then attached to the keys below the shelf.
The assistant hid, and the actors resumed their actions.
But the compositor was left with the task
of seamlessly blending a glaring jump cut from this
to this.
And they achieved it with the most obvious morph
in the history of visual effects.
The background guys were easy,
but the main guy's hand needed to move in front of his body.
But the morph was done without it,
and a still frame of the hand was animated across
until it reached the position of the real hand in the second shot.
The tape measure itself was again an artificial element
built and animated using the reference footage captured earlier.
In fact, there seems to be an additional morph
on the actor's face at the beginning of the throw
probably to remove the real tape measure,
which went up and in front of it.
Also, it's hard to make out,
but at the very end, the keys slide and stop abruptly at his feet.
This also seems to have been added in
because the real keys stated attached to the end of the tape measure,
which didn't make sense.
And, finally, the light switch scene.
Here, the ladder and the keys methods are combined.
The actors freeze after the throw,
someone pulls the tape close to the target,
and attaches it to a wire,
which is threaded through a hole in the stud.
Action is resumed, and the wire pulls the tape measure across the switch.
Of course, the light switch doesn't actually control the light.
It's in the down position the entire time,
and the light is turned off from elsewhere at the right moment.
For the first frame of the tape measure entering the area,
It's superimposed on top of a separate shot with the light switch up.
On the next frame, it's the real shot, and we can even see the wire.
After the hit, the wire operator once again took too long
to release it back, so the tape measure lingers there.
The compositor was forced to wait out
the few frames it takes for the incandescent light to dim
before the background could be switched to a plate captured later,
and a still image of the measuring tape
could finally be animated to go down.
Here, it connects to the real tape,
which is masked away by a pretty clunky matte,
and can be seen still curving up toward the wire.
Also, this happens.
Was that detailed enough for you, Jethro?
I own this gig! Do you understand me!?
I own it!
(sighs)
But don't feel bad.
When you step back and look at the video as a whole,
a picture starts to form.
A picture of a commercial director just winging it on set
and passing the buck of making things look real
to some woefully under-qualified effects artists.
All of it produced by an agency with a lobby like this
for a high-profile company
on a budget of probably hundreds of thousands.
Meanwhile, you're a film student with 29 subscribers, Jackson,
and I can honestly say that the quality of work on your YouTube channel
is better than the quality of work in this whole campaign.
So, yeah.
I don't understand advertising nowadays, either.
(mysterious sting)
But now I'm afraid it's time for me to go, kids.
A newborn baby in Tulsa is being taken to her chiropractor appointment.
Remember, love with your heart. Use your head for everything else.
Captain Disillusion!
(tape measure whizzes)
♪ ♪