Staged videos of people 'vanishing' misleadingly shared without context
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on October 22, 2023 at 05:28
- 4 min read
- By Kate TAN, AFP Australia
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"More people vanishing out of thin air. This happened in NYC. Surveillance footage," reads text on a video shared on Facebook on October 3, 2023.
The video appears to show two people sitting on a bench outside a restaurant window who suddenly vanish. Passers-by appear shocked and confused by the couple's sudden disappearance.
Similar footage was shared by Facebook users in the United States and the UK, and also circulated on YouTube.
Other videos purportedly showing people vanishing from different locations -- including at a hospital and on a bus -- were shared thousands of times on Facebook and Instagram.
Comments on the posts suggest some users believed these people had genuinely disappeared.
"I hope they reappear in a peaceful world," one comment reads.
Another says: "God took them."
The videos, however, have been staged.
'Perhaps Today' campaign
A keyword search on Google led to a website set up by a US-based Christian group called Turning Point, as part of a campaign to educate and raise awareness about the Rapture -- the belief that good Christians will be beamed up to heaven (archived link).
The videos, described as "pre-enactments", depict several scenarios of how the organisation thinks the Rapture will supposedly be caught on film.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video appearing to show the couple "disappearing" from outside a New York City restaurant that was used in one misleading post (left) and the same footage from the "Perhaps Today" campaign (right):
Below is a screenshot comparison of a misleadingly shared video appearing to show people "vanishing" at a hospital (left) and the same footage used in the campaign (right):
A spokesperson from Turning Point told AFP the videos were staged.
"We employed 434 actors across Southern California to film these scenarios. The disappearances were created using a combination of camera angle shots and post-production CGI," they said on October 14, warning social media users to be aware of videos shared without any context.
Studio sets
An analysis of the campaign videos showed they were filmed at studios in Los Angeles.
The full video of a couple disappearing from outside a restaurant uses several shots that show a clearer view of the street and shop signs.
A keyword search of these shop names led to a photo showing the same shops and buildings that was included in a Los Angeles Times article from February 2023. The article identified the location as being part of Radford Studio Center (archived links here and here).
Street features seen in the clip that was also used in the misleading post match with features as seen in a photo on the studio's website.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the clip (left) and the set photo (right), with the matching features highlighted by AFP:
The "pre-enactment" video set in a hospital was also filmed at a studio.
A keyword search led to an Instagram post by a producer Paul Joiner about filming a "Perhaps Today" Video at SirReel Studios in Los Angeles (archived link).
Features seen in the video match photos of a hospital set on the studio's website (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the clip (left) and the set photo (right), with the matching features highlighted by AFP:
AFP was unable to definitively locate the filming locations of the other "pre-enactment" videos, but screenshots of many of the videos were shared on Turning Point's official Facebook page in a post that states they were "created to show how the Rapture will be caught in real time" (archived link).
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