Skinwalker Ranch - Laser Beam Stops and Starts in Mid Air

[FatPhil]

I imagine they'd go the FOX news route, "This program is for entertainment purposes only, and not meant to be factual".

I know I recommended the Francis Wheen book /How Mumbo Conquered the World/ many months ago, but it's my toilet reading, and progress is slow. However, in Chapter 5: The Catastrophists (Chapter 4 was a real slog - it was about postmodernism and the rot in academia that it kicked off), I've just come across this quote, and it seemed relevant, context should be derivable before you're too far in:

"I don't know that it's my responsibility to say that I've just created a fiction that is a fiction," Chris Carter told the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a sceptical pressure-group which had proposed that each episode should be prefaced by such a disclaimer. But he acknowledged that his fiction invariably preferred supernatural explanations.

My intention, when I first set out to do the show, was to do a more balanced kind of storytelling. I wanted to expose hoaxes. I wanted Agent Scully to be right as much as Agent Mulder. Lo and behold, those stories were really boring. The suggestion that there was a rather plausible and rational and ultimately mundane answer for those things turned out to be a disappointing kind of storytelling, to be honest. And I think that's maybe where people have the most problems with my show ... But it's just the kind of storytelling we do, and because we have to entertain ... That's really the job they pay me for, and that's the thing I'm supposed to do.

Content from External Source

 

[Mendel]

the Francis Wheen book /How Mumbo Conquered the World/

My intention, when I first set out to do the show, was to do a more balanced kind of storytelling. I wanted to expose hoaxes. I wanted Agent Scully to be right as much as Agent Mulder.

Content from External Source

This is, of course, not "balanced" at all. You can't balance "the paranormal exists" with "the paranormal does not exist". If it exists half the time, it exists.
You can kinda teach skepticism by demonstrating that not all claims are true, but unless you allow for the position that none of the claims are true, you're not balanced.

Scooby Doo did pull this off (afaik), to the entertainment of many.
Skinwalker Ranch does not.

 

[jarlrmai]

Scooby Doo has had a few iterations since the original cartoon and in some of them the (ggg..) ghosts are real, which I feel is a betrayal of the ethos of the original.

 

[FatPhil]

My intention, when I first set out to do the show, was to do a more balanced kind of storytelling. I wanted to expose hoaxes. I wanted Agent Scully to be right as much as Agent Mulder.

Content from External Source

This is, of course, not "balanced" at all. You can't balance "the paranormal exists" with "the paranormal does not exist". If it exists half the time, it exists.

You don't seem to be quite grasping the concept of "fiction".

 

[jhenshaw]

It's a portrait shot, so that suggests a photo taken with a phone.

More likely suggests they were trying to fill the frame with the lasers pointed vertically.

 

[jhenshaw]

True, but given the history of dubious and manipulated evidence presented by the "experts" at Skinwalker Ranch, I don't discount the possibility that what we are looking at is a landscape image cropped to look like a portrait image. I fully expect the first thing to come out of Travis Taylor's mouth will be "well it's not rolling shutter because it's in portrait mode" as per FatPhil's Fake Beard.

Without access to the raw photo's metadata to determine camera model, can't rule out rolling shutter.

 

[jhenshaw]

There's some stuff going on here that strongly suggests, to me, that the image has been altered::

The rounded ends of the green beam and the two nearly identical features in the blue beam in the gap of the green beam, and the slight wave in the left edge of the blue beam look to me like somebody erased that area, decided it would look spookier if the blue beam was not broken, and so painted in the missing blue beam. Oh, and how the darker blue part of the blue beam intrudes into the lighter blue part to a very similar extent to which part of the unbroken green beam is clipped on the other side of the image.



In addition to the further beam (on the left) being accidentally partially erased(See @jimmyslippin post HERE), adjusting levels a bit confirms what can be seen slightly in the un-fiddled-with-by-be image: the glare of the missing laser is still there.



I also have about convinced myself that I see very slight evidence of the central blue beam having been restored, with a slight line barely visible at the same level as the lower occluded bit of the green beams -- but that one may just be me falling for confirmation bias and anomaly hunting. IF that is correct, though, it suggest something occluded the view of the beams, possibly intruding from our right) which blocked all but the leftmost beams, and somebody decided it would be cooler looking if some beams were blocked and some weren't.

If the third example is me seeing things, the other two still strongly suggest the picture has been manipulated.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, "reality TV" shows are entertainment. If what actually happens is not entertaining enough, they are free to jazz it up a bit. I suspect strongly that they have done so here. (Captain Disillusion catching "America's Got Talent," a "reality show" in the form of a competition, helping a magic act look better by messing with the video is HERE, cued up to the most relevant bit, for another example.)

I've moved now from the "rolling shutter" camp to the "pure photoshop bs" camp. The image at the top of your post is undeniable evidence of the clone stamp tool in photoshop. The reason the cut off green beams on the right have rounded edges is because that's the shape of the clone stamp tool (it's a circle). So you cut the thing off square to start with, then you want it to go back down a little bit so you clone-stamp extend it down or up. The reason it's more square on the left beam is because it's more natural to use a square selection to perform that manipulation.

The fact that in the episode they were so friggin easy to write this off as supernatural when they have all that talent in knowledge in that room is extremely unnerving and dismantles any ounce of faith I have in their intellectual honesty. You don't just jump to aliens. It's a weird artifact. You exhaust all options to explain it naturally before jumping to aliens. There are a lot of options.

 

[JMartJr]

More likely suggests they were trying to fill the frame with the lasers pointed vertically.

I think it is likely a phone, but either way I wonder if the goal of a portrait orientation was not to fill the frame, but to get both the equipment and the "gaps" in frame. (This only works if the gaps were, to at least some extent, actually visible at the time. Though it looks very much to me as if the gaps, however caused, have been improved by some sloppy editing, as discussed passim in this thread.)

A landscape shot without the gear on the ground is not as impressive, as it's not as clear what you're looking at:

 

[jhenshaw]

I think it is likely a phone, but either way I wonder if the goal of a portrait orientation was not to fill the frame, but to get both the equipment and the "gaps" in frame. (This only works if the gaps were, to at least some extent, actually visible at the time. Though it looks very much to me as if the gaps, however caused, have been improved by some sloppy editing, as discussed passim in this thread.)

A landscape shot without the gear on the ground is not as impressive, as it's not as clear what you're looking at:

I'm not sure why this claim about it being shot on a phone came into the picture. The context of the photo is a film set with a full-blow film crew and and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear. Half my own tripod-mounted DLSR shots are in portrait mode. You shoot portrait mode any time you're shooting something much taller than it is wide. The fact that it's in portrait mode is not interesting. You choose between portrait and landscape mode based on which best fills the frame.

 

[Mendel]

I'm not sure why this claim about it being shot on a phone came into the picture. The context of the photo is a film set with a full-blow film crew and and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear. Half my own tripod-mounted DLSR shots are in portrait mode. You shoot portrait mode any time you're shooting something much taller than it is wide. The fact that it's in portrait mode is not interesting. You choose between portrait and landscape mode based on which best fills the frame.

Have you ever seen a Cinemascope aspect ratio in a portrait orientation from a professional crew? Because that's what this would have to be (or a crop).

 

[Mendel]

New hypothesis: smartphone in landscape taking a "panorama" picture, i.e. a series of pictures stitched together by an algorithm. This could arguably produce the same type of rolling shutter effect, and might explain the rounded ends (but I have not checked)?

 

[jhenshaw]

Have you ever seen a Cinemascope aspect ratio in a portrait orientation from a professional crew? Because that's what this would have to be (or a crop).

I'm really not sure why you're talking about cinema aspect ratios like anamorphic. This is (reportedly) a photo. This still-photography. Yes, you don't shoot video in portrait mode in video/cinema. But this is photography. It's extremely common to shoot still-photography in portrait mode.

 

[jhenshaw]

New hypothesis: smartphone in landscape taking a "panorama" picture, i.e. a series of pictures stitched together by an algorithm. This could arguably produce the same type of rolling shutter effect, and might explain the rounded ends (but I have not checked)?

Highly unlikely, from my experience doing panos both on my phone and in Lightroom and in Photoshop. You would expect to see a plethora of other stitching artifacts if this were the case. I currently hypothesize that the rounded edges are round because that's the shape of the clone stamp tool in Photoshop/Lightroom.

 

[Mendel]

I'm really not sure why you're talking about cinema aspect ratios like anamorphic. This is (reportedly) a photo. This still-photography. Yes, you don't shoot video in portrait mode in video/cinema. But this is photography. It's extremely common to shoot still-photography in portrait mode.

I'm talking about Cinemascope because that's the only standard aspect ratio I know where the long side is more than twice the length of the short side, as in the picture under discussion.

 

[Mendel]

Highly unlikely, from my experience doing panos both on my phone and in Lightroom and in Photoshop. You would expect to see a plethora of other stitching artifacts if this were the case.

How would you recognize stitching artefacts in a mostly indistinct background?
These do not look like stars:

I currently hypothesize that the rounded edges are round because that's the shape of the clone stamp tool in Photoshop/Lightroom.

Yes, but the glow/glare has been cloned along with the beam? So why is the radius so small?

 

[Eburacum]

The fact that the ends of the green beam are rounded is not necessarily proof that this is not a rolling shutter effect. In the Tom Scott video upthread the ends of the beam he is using are definitely tapered, rather than cutting off at right angles; it seems that the beam still continues to be visible for a very short period after the power is cut off.


This aspect of the phenomenon convinces me even more strongly that this is a rolling shutter effect, which may or may not be intentional.