Old Somerset UK, UFO Footage

This is arguably one of the best; if not the best and clearest footage of a UFO or flying disk captured on video. It's a pretty old video, sorry if this has been discussed already;



Couldn't find the video by itself, the footage was extracted from the UFO documentary 'Out Of The Blue'.

Any thoughts?..Old question all over again.. Can it be debunked?

I have to agree it is very convincing. I'm not familiar with this one, and will certainly research it.

I also have to agree with the video analyst who mentioned how difficult it would be to superimpose images into a video that is wildly shaking around because there wasn't a tripod handy, and his autofocus comments were dead on. The camera is trying to focus on the clouds, and will sometimes catch the object, which is why it will sometimes be in focus.

You can clearly see that this is probably one of the best footages yet. I don't see this one being debunked...



[edit on 10-3-2009 by SlinkyDFW]

Originally posted by SlinkyDFW
the video analyst who mentioned how difficult it would be to superimpose images into a video that is wildly shaking around because there wasn't a tripod handy,

I'd just like to add, that the video analyst isn't your typical "UFO-promoter", that was Mr. Bill George of Industrial Light and Magic (E.G; Stars Wars Episode 1, etc..). He doesn't believe that the object has been put there after the recording like CGI, he says that the object is actually there.

Sure looks like a solar balloon. A little more successful than this one.



www.metacafe.com...
[edit on 3/10/2009 by Phage]

[edit on 3/10/2009 by Phage]

I think it would be hard for anything solar on that day , pretty CLOUDed over, and where did it go after 12 minutes? You could be sure it was followed if it was a balloon. Dont buy that theory at all.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by branty]

Sorry Phage, you're gonna have to try better than that. I've looked at the Somerset video about a hundred times, and it aint no solar balloon like the one you showed.

But thanks for the input though, much appreciated.

If you have any more possible conventional explanations..

Edit; Also, if this was something as simple as a solar balloon, wouldn't Mr. Bill George have even brought up the possibility?..He even called it a flying saucer.

[edit on 10/3/09 by Majorion]

reply to post by branty


It doesn't take much sunlight to get one up and there is blue sky in the video.

I don't know where it went. The guy says "it lasted about 12 minutes", whatever that means. Did it zoom upward? Did it vanish in a puff of smoke? Did the wind blow it across the fields (which have fences)?

Isn't this the hoax? im sure some scientists/engineers built a remote controlled inflatable ufo,flew it about england and lots of people spotted it...not sure if this is it though.There was a documentary about it after they staged the event.

Scrap that actually it was in 2003 not 1998..but it looks identical,i agree with phage on this one.




[edit on 10-3-2009 by Solomons]

reply to post by Majorion


It's a good one - I don't think it is a fake, but I do know how to fake it. I don't think this method could have been used when that shot was filmed (1998), so this is thoroughness - not an attempt to debunk. The way I would do it is to film the area with an HD camera (not readily available in 1998) and a tripod. So I've got a nice stable highres image of the antenna and the surrounding area. Then I'd add in the UFO either as a model filmed against a green screen or using a insert from a 3D graphics program. Then what I'd do is crop the resulting scene in SDTV, which would be a smaller area of the original picture, because of that I could add quite natural shake, defocusing and static time/date, and, better, I wouldn't have to resample the image (because the SDTV frame as a proportion of an HDTV frame is much smaller). I suspect many hoaxers haven't thought of doing this yet, because they're mostly stupid.

I don't know what it is in this case. It's very difficult to see whether it is actually disc shaped or some other geometry viewed from the side. Many delta wing aircraft appear disc shaped when viewed from below right until they're over you. One hopes the internet and sites like this will facilitate the release of high quality source footage so we don't have to argue it out over images that have been reencoded two or more times.

reply to post by Phage


I was inferring that if there was a balloon and it drifted away as balloons do, a normal assumption would be that the filmer would follow it , he states it was gone after 12 minutes , so no drifting away.

reply to post by Phage


I have to agree with you.

If you watch the video slowly (and you don't need uber-software, just click on the bar of the video), you can notice that the UFO has that triangular hole behind it in the clouds...

You can see that the UFO climbs in altitude at a very slowly and steady pace, like a balloon would do.....untill it disappeared.

About the shape of the UFO, although most of the time it slightly looks like a curved disc (curved on top, flat at the base), in some *GOOD* frames you can see that its very linear.



...but, for more detail, we need a better video.


EDIT: By the way, can someone get the weather log of that day (seen in video detail) on that region? If you can, we have more data to say this is *possibly* a balloon or something else, since the balloon would not have been so steady if the wind was too strong that day...

[edit on 10/3/09 by Tifozi]

The video, according to the YouTube excerpt, was provided by "Rod Dickinson" - doing a Google Archives search turns up some interesting news stories, assuming it's the same Rod Dickinson:

"Shocking to say the least

May 1, 2004

Rod Dickinson made a name for himself when he faked crop circles. But now the British performance artist has something more electrifying in mind, reports Peter Barrett. ..."

/b4bzcq

Among others:

news.google.com...

If it's the same Rod Dickinson he sounds like quite a character. With a track record of hoaxing crop circles.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by jackphotohobby]

Originally posted by jackphotohobby
The video, according to the YouTube excerpt, was provided by "Rod Dickinson" - doing a Google Archives search turns up some interesting news stories, assuming it's the same Rod Dickinson

I don't think it is the same Rod Dickinson. If it were the same guy, then surely the story would have come out by now linking the hoaxer to the guy whom actually captured this video in 1998. No relation other than the name apparently, check out Wikipedia for example;

Rod Dickinson is a UK Artist specialising in recreations of historical incidents or events. He first gained noteriety in the 1990's for his pranks involving the creation of crop circles in the UK. He was born in 1965 in the UK and is currently living in Bristol in the UK.

Rod Dickinson

No mention of any UFO video in there. Now surely, they would have mentioned this rather popular video, assuming that it would had to have been his big masterful hoax!

Also, there is only one thread on ATS similar to this one (started by Dr Love), and they never got the definitive answer to this same question..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

But mikesingh grabbed an excellent frame and enlarged the object, credit to him for this;

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3f0371a5c29b.gif[/atsimg]

Now Phage, you can't be serious when you say that this object in any way resembles that solar balloon you showed.

reply to post by Majorion


The enlarged photo , is that from the Somerset vid, If it is , ty , and Mikesingh.

Originally posted by Majorion
I don't think it is the same Rod Dickinson. If it were the same guy, then surely the story would have come out by now linking the hoaxer to the guy whom actually captured this video in 1998. (snip) surely, they would have mentioned this rather popular video, assuming that it would had to have been his big masterful hoax!

Hi Majorion,

Sorry, it IS the same Rod Dickinson.

I looked into this video a year or two ago and Rod kindly confirmed this for me.

While Rod Dickinson's crop circle artworks/hoaxes are well known, I'm not sure any of the discussions of this video on ATS have mentioned Rod's expertise in multimedia and video artwork (or various other relevant factors to be taken into consideration in relation to this video).

This video features as Video 63 in my database of infamous UFO videos, which includes some further details.

I really must get around to putting my databases of infamous alien photos and infamous ufo videos online (along with some other material), but due to work and family commitments I don't really have the time to sort out some minor technical issues relating to html/Joomla. I was able to find a bit of time to get to grips with Joomla and start work on a website in December 2008, but am not sure whether the next period during which I can focus on transferring my records onto that website will be before December 2009 or even December 2010...

All the best,

Isaac

[edit on 10-3-2009 by IsaacKoi]

reply to post by Majorion


He's on email, apparently:

www.uwe.ac.uk...

Whether you'd get a straight answer is another question, given he may have set out to create myth and folklore via performance art.

There's a 1995 Flying Saucer Review article (here), which includes:

...
Although Lundberg and Dickinson described themselves as circlemakers or "crop artists", their circlefaking activities were none the less illegal and involved considerable deception. Their compulsion to fake circles and UFOs was best illustrated in an exhibition which they put on with some help from Jim Schnabel at the Independent Art Space in London in February- March 1994. This included pictures of many of their crop circle formations and also faked UFOs - "four anomalous photographs of disk like objects" produced by Rod Dickinson. But their theme of 'the paranormal as art', and their unspoken ideal of creating icons for the true believer, ran even to the inclusion in the exhibition catalogue of two brief items on cattle mutilations. One, by John Lundberg and Bill Ellis, was entitled "Altered Steaks" and the other was an extract from Linda Howe's "An Alien Harvest", reproduced as a project for IAS by John Lundberg. (I do not suggest in any way that either has ever hoaxed cattle mutilations!) Also in the exhibition were 7ft by 7ft oil paintings of the alien head from the cover of Whitley Strieber's book "Communion".
...

I don't consider Flying Saucer Review to be a good source of information, given a lot of the innuendo in that article, but I believe it establishes that Dickinson and friends had an interest, prior to 1998 when the video was shot, in UFO hoaxes. I think it's the logical next-step from hoaxing crop circles.

As a result, unless it's some other Rod Dickinson, I don't trust the video at all, because I distrust its source.


[edit on 10-3-2009 by jackphotohobby]

Okay folks, I emailed Mr. Rod Dickinson a few hours ago, and amazingly, he just sent me a reply.

Here's the letter he sent in reply to me;

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rod Dickinson to [email protected]
10:39pm

hi majorion

thanks for your mail. i did take the footage some 10 years ago. for what it is worth it is not hoax - at least one other person i met saw the thing while i was filming it. i think others saw it too. obviously i don't think it's an alien spacecraft/ ufo.

isaac koi did email me about year ago. i said something similar to him. your email has reminded me again that rather annoyingly the science museum still has the original tape.

good luck.

best regards
rod dickinson

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Awesome find1 S and F, to me it almost looked unstable at first but then more clear in the second time it was shown closer, of course it could have been the older camera as well. Either way it's very cool.

reply to post by Majorion

If he doesn't think it's an alien spacecraft/ufo, I wonder what he thinks (or knows) it is.

Originally posted by Majorion
Okay folks, I emailed Mr. Rod Dickinson a few hours ago (snip)
isaac koi did email me about year ago. i said something similar to him. your email has reminded me again that rather annoyingly the science museum still has the original tape.

Just a quick post to explain Rod's brief reference to "the science museum" still having the original tape.

When I looked into this video a year or so ago, Dr Dave Clarke (one of the few academics in England with an open active interest in ufology) mentioned to me that he recalled seeing this video in the exhibition called 'Science of the Aliens' at the Science Museum at South Kensington during January 2006 featured with, he thought (it transpired not entirely correctly), notes from Rod Dickinson on how he created the video.

Following up on Dr Clarke's helpful pointer, I looked into the relevant exhibition. The video did indeed appear in it, as part of a section entitled “Alien Fiction- Watching the skies” in a sub-section entitled “Can we believe our eyes?”. A helpful individual associated with the exhibition provided me with the following text which accompanied the video in that exhibition:

UFOs over Dorchester, UK, 1998

Photographs and films of UFOs are mysteriously never clear enough to identify the craft as coming from another planet. We all love the suspense of not knowing for certain, but if this footage was clearer, would an Earth-based explanation seem obvious?
courtesy Rod Dickinson

If anything, this thread (and the other couple of threads on ATS about this video) have significantly underplayed the extent of Rod Dickinson's hoaxing/artwork activities. He is really quite well known in certain circles (no pun intended).

Several of the UFO/alien videos and photos that regularly appear on ATS can be traced back (with a bit of effort) to hoaxers/artists that are openly involved in groups that create crop circles.

Hoaxing isn't always a solitary hobby...

During the last few years I've approached a number of other artists/hoaxers behind the scenes about various other hoaxed videos/photos and been surprised at how many of them have been prepared to admit a hoax and describe how it was done. This applies even to some other English crop circle hoaxers that went on to dabble in hoaxing photos and videos - and some of their work still appear on the Internet and elsewhere with considerable frequency.

Sometimes (indeed fairly often) the hoaxer seems to be more than happy to have the truth revealed after a decent interval, so that:
(1) his work gets a second burst of publicity/appreciation, with his name attached.
(2) he gets to talk about his observations on the reaction of members of the public.

Also, even after such an admission, the work of the artist/hoaxer often continues to live on, with quite a few hoaxed videos/photos remaining on the Internet with few people remembering or mentioning the admission of the hoax.

All the best,

Isaac