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You’re going to watch this video and your jaw will drop. In fact, you’ll probably think it’s fake. Or CGI, at least. But nope, it’s completely real. A group of guys went fishing and dropped a GoPro Hero 2 camera inside a custom-made torpedo to record the ocean underneath them. What the camera recorded was the most amazing footage of dolphins you’ll ever see.
The underwater footage is just unbelievably beautiful, a pod of Pacific White-Sided dolphins—so many I couldn’t even count them—started swimming with the boat, looking happy and excited and just freaking awesome, like they knew the camera was there. The guys were near Santa Cruz, California when this happened and it just shows how the ocean is a beautiful place. [Vimeo via Kottke]
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It’s amazing for sure, but the most amazing video of dolphins? Now that’s a big exaggeration.
Btw, is anyone else disappointed that the video didn’t include any dolphin “clicking” sound. I love the sound that dolphin makes underwater.
I agree, a complete exaggeration. The most I can say to describe this video is that it was an unexpected encounter with dolphins.
Sensationalist headlines are what Giz are good at.
That’s not *all* we’re good for, I hope! *sobs*
Looks like CG to me
The guy who shot it has said “If it was CGI I would be working for Lucas Films by now”. That’s good enough for me..
Yeah. “If it was CGI I would be working for Lucas Films by now” Wink wink nudge nudge.
I’m really not sure. Does look like CGI though…
looks cg to me too, the dolphins movments seem jarred to the flow of water, there also seems to be a lack of shadows from one to the other, however when paused it does seem legit, so i am sitting on the fence with this one, and for the record, the start of episode 3 had amazing cgi!
I don’t think it is cg, I reckon it looks a bit weird because of the Go Pro image stabilisation. I have noticed quite a lot of go pro footage looks a bit unnatural because of it.
I was gonna say the same thing. I really can’t tell if it was CG or not, there was something a little unnatural about it. maybe it was just the camera angle but the dolphins colours look like CG textures sometimes but I can’t put my finger on it.
Definitely 100% CGI. The guy is clearly a gifted natural that can model, animate, composite and render photorealistic images normally reserved for the elite Hollywood render farms. He is obviously much happier as an amateur film maker and occasional tuna fisherman and so doesn’t want the world to know that he is actually one of the best 3D modellers and compositors in the world. .
Give him his due, he has covered his tracks excellently, a more digital artist prodigy would’ve made something slightly outrageous happen, but not this guy. He knows that if he keeps things fairly pedestrian then people will watch it, be fooled into thinking it’s real and forget all about him and he can continue subversively animating things that are so believable nobody will question whether they are real.
Yeah, I think you’re right. He’s clever too because he’s minimizing the CGI so that it looks more real, like the bubbles, they are real but added over the top of the dolphin CGI.
The movement and textures of the dolphins give it away, they didn’t move 100% naturally and each one didn’t seem unique enough. But, hes pretty damn good.
I forgot to add, at 02:42 you can see some pixelation on the edges of the dolphins, but not on the background of the sea/waves at the surface.
While I was watching the video I was thinking to myself “It could almost be CGI, and looks a bit like CGI… if it wasn’t real of course.”
After reading opinions on Giz I’m now leaning towards it definitely being fake, mainly to the lack of shadows, potential edge pixelation, animation being ever so slightly autonomous-looking in parts and textures looking a bit “off” close up. Of course, if it’s real some of this could be down to the video quality, so I’m really not sure on any of these points.
It’s great footage though, fake or not.
What an exaggeration.
Awww.
It’s a very nice video. Can’t help but be somewhat deflated that the “truly astonishing” thing that happened is that the guy filmed some dolphins swimming. It is great footage no doubt. Pretty sure it’s captured before though.
I was waiting for a shark to jump into the boat!
The BBC probably have hundreds of hours of that kind of thing knocking about in their archives.
Just laughing at the cheesy generic music they put on this so-so vids.
The music is all kinds of bad on this.
I’m guessing Casey hasn’t seen many dolphin videos if this is “the most amazing footage of dolphins you’ll ever see.” I’ve seen far more amazing footage on the BBC and Nat Geo Channel