The Case of the Disappearing Cameraman

Hammering the final nail into the coffin of the Oliver's Castle video

A First-Hand Report
by Peter R. Sørensen

May 22, 1997

© 1997 Peter R. Sørensen

(The first-hand bit will begin shortly, but first, a fantasy prologue in the style of a detective novel, for the purpose of speculating on the motives of the perpetrators. Any similarity to persons living or dead is in the eye of the beholder.)

Prologue:

Who'd-A-Thought It

Through the dark, rain splattered windscreen, the young man cautiously piloted his small car furtively along the unfamiliar little Wiltshire roads, until just as the carefully penciled map portrayed it the obscure country pub emerged from the miserable night. Way off the beaten track, it was almost never visited by anyone except locals and occasional small groups of shady characters wearing dark clothing.

The warm interior of the old pub was a welcome change from the storm, but the young man was even more relieved to find that there was only one customer in the taproom at this late hour. With the sound of the opening door, a thin man in a black jacket and black denim trousers looked up from his Guinness, and immediately identified the young man by his apprehensive manner. With a crooked smile his most sincere effort he gestured to the newcomer to join him, and asked what he'd have to drink.

Just a shandy, please, the young man replied, warily eyeing the black magic brew his host savoured. Then he brightened, Your map was perfect, I hadn't a single problem getting here from Bristol.

Care in planning the details is the key to my survival, the thin man said, matter-of-factly. I know a lot more about you than you think I do, for instance. And in response to the surprised expression on the others face, he hastily added, All of which I approve. You're perfect for the job.

With the momentary tension relieved, he leaned closer. You have the skills, but above all, the anonymity, that our project requires. As I said on the phone, anybody could take shots we need, but we must have a cameraman with your acting ability, and who can utterly disappear after the seeds been planted. Our targets are going to be after you like angry bees when the shit hits the fan!

Yes, I uh I thought I would grow a beard...

Whatever. Your real protection is you've never been in the area before, and you never will again. Ill give you a mobile phone that you'll use exclusively to contact them. When its over, the phone will be cancelled, and never traceable to you.

I should hire a car, so no one can track the license number.

If you like. But the cost comes out of your cut. He lit a Camel, and added, Look, the circle lovers often have patrols hunting for night artists, so I sometimes doctor my cars license number when Im in the fields with my team. Its easy. Just drive flawlessly, so the coppers wont take any interest in you.

The young man took several deep swallows of his drink. This was getting more dangerous than he expected. Um, this seems like a lot of trouble for a joke. Why does your organisation want to...

Its not an organisation, the thin man cut in, were just a few blokes out to have a little fun, as we say.

But, why go out on cold nights and fake corn circles?

For several moments the thin man pondered the serpentine coils of smoke that slowly arose from his cigarette. Its something I cant ever explain to people who don't already know. He took a puff. I consider myself an artist, and a pretty good one. People expect an artists ego to demand recognition, yet, outside a very small circle of friends, my art is anonymous. How can this be its not because Im so bleeding modest! Its Cause I like to think of myself like the architect of the Great Pyramid. Who made that? What were his motives? Was it aliens made it? People have been bewildered by that giant stone diamond for thousands of years. That architect is the most successful man of mystery that ever was. And I like being a man of mystery.

And, Ill let you in on a little secret. Lets say someone's studying the symbolism in the corn circles, and discovers something very powerful about the designs. Maybe it suits his private agenda to misdirect others whore trying to decode them. So he hires a few night artists, see, gives  some diagrams and a few quid, and everybody's happy, yeah? Its a treat getting paid for playing pranks wed pull anyway.

But you take serious risks trespassing, and all the Croppies hate you you told me so.

Ha. The risks are trivial. In fact, there's a thrill and satisfaction in eluding detection not unlike a successful murder. He inspected the glowing ember. I suppose. I mean, I have never murdered anyone. But, we love a murder, don't we?

As for the circle lovers; on the one hand, I don't care. They are only a small fraction of my audience. There are thousands more who, while they assume circles are man made, appreciate my art for its own sake when they drive past the fields going to work every day. They say, Corr! That's a bloody goodun! Maybe I even make them think about things they wouldn't have otherwise.

On the other hand, I enjoy watching the little Croppies squirm. I love spending an evening in my easy chair reading the latest corny circle magazine with a few beers. And you should see them on the internet! They squabble amongst themselves like undisciplined children. The real phenomenon has all but disappeared from their radar because of their jealous egos! My friend likes it that way, too, you can be sure.

Smiling cruelly, he adds, We've got them all battered and bruised by their infighting, and their credibility with the rest of the world is hanging on a thread, so our little video could finish them off, completely. He flicked a bit of ash off his black shirt sleeve, as if ridding himself of a bothersome insect.

Now, memorise part of this Ordnance map. Here's Oliver's Castle, and here's the pub where the circle-lovers go....

Background

Is there anyone in the crop circle universe who doesn't know about the chap who mysteriously appeared and then disappeared after circulating a videotape which purports to show a crop circle materialising beneath flying balls of light at a place called Olivers Castle, in England, last August? Thought not. The brouhaha in the wake of this video has nearly eclipsed the circles themselves unbelievable, considering the unprecedented formations we received last summer.

Well, its possible I have been closer to the intrigue than anyone else, though I have not publicly expressed my opinion until now. That's because I became convinced early on that the video was a fabrication, and I didn't want to give any energy to the bloody thing! However, such a hodgepodge of conflicting reports and opinions has poured from this bottomless Pandora's box in the past ten months, that it is my duty as a journalist to report the story as I experienced it.

The last straw was the phrases shite and unverified dirt in a recent letter to the editor of an otherwise excellent circle magazine phrases that were used to describe a sincere researchers findings of fraud in the video affair. That wont do! In the CircleMakers name, I must stand up and be counted and tell the saga as I experienced it in the waning heat of that amazing summer.

The Message

It began on the foggy morning of August 11th, 1996, when tantalising phone messages were left for me at The Barge Inn, a pub in Wiltshire which is a popular meeting place for crop circle researchers. (I wasn't told at that time that similar messages had been left for others, too.)

The caller, who gave his name as one Jonathan Wheyleigh, briefly described to Lee Winterston (a dark and enigmatic videographer) and pub manager June Potts, how he had been camping at the ancient hill fort known as Olivers Castle, some 10 miles away and had seen and video's balls of light flying around over the field below, after which he realised there was a crop circle in the field which had not been there before! Presumably because I am an American maker of crop circle documentaries, he wanted to show me the video in the pub that evening.

When I arrived at the pub for lunch as is my habit I got the messages, and immediately went to see the actual crop formation with Nick Nicholson, the good nature, cigar wielding, editor of Circular Review. A six-armed snowflake design could clearly be seen from atop the steep hill where the hill fort is located. And, while the formation may indeed be genuine, I wasn't especially impressed with its design. (Some people will tell you it was only a sloppy hoax; others say it was among the best formed and most beautiful in history.) Be that as it may, its the video, not the circle, that concerns us here.

By the time we returned to the smoke filled pub that evening, rumour and speculation were flying thick and fast. But as the evening wore on, and Wheyleigh hadn't arrived, it seemed like the phone messages had been just a joke.

The Jokes on Me

A film showing a crop circle forming would be nothing less than a dream come true for us Croppies. There have been anecdotal reports of the circle phenomenon in action, but it has never been clearly captured on camera. Not only would we all love to see such a thing, but if it were irrefutably genuine, it would be the proof needed to demonstrate that crop circles aren't just a hoax.

That's exactly why someone with nothing better to do would consider it a good prank to leave such a message at The Barge, and get everybody all excited. So, as 10:00 PM came and went, I felt that this was indeed the situation, and looked around the crowd, wondering if some shady character in the far corners of the pub was having a laugh at our expense. I decided to call it a night, downed my fourth Scrumpy Jack cider, and departed with a few other disappointed Croppies.

Unfortunately, I was wrong about the nature of the joke, since Wheyleigh did indeed show up about an hour later, after last bell (pubs ring a bell to let the customers know when the last orders for drinks can be placed). The young man passed his camera around to the people who were still there, and they viewed the exciting shot played back through the cameras B&W viewfinder. Some of those people say that what they saw then was different from the video footage which was subsequently given to me and Colin Andrews. (Colin is the best known crop circle researcher. His report about the video in his CPR Newsletter, Volume 5 Number 2, covers additional tantalising angles of the intrigue.)

You can imagine how I wanted to kick myself in the behind when I learned that I missed that first opportunity to see such an historic video! Not only that, but, Freddy Silva, a friend of Colin's, who was present, arranged for Wheyleigh to make a copy of the tape for Colin. Boy, had I missed the boat!

Im the man who shot the lights...

Three days later, I was having lunch with a friend at The Barge, when a bashful young man of about 22 years sat down at the table with us. He spoke very little for about half an hour, and then he leaned over close to me and said in a hushed voice, I'm Jonathan Wheyleigh, the man who shot the lights making the crop circle. Wow! My pulse raced! Maybe Id get to see the miraculous video after all!

He confided that, in addition to the tape he was giving to Colin, he wanted me to have one for analysis also a job I was delighted to take on. (I wouldn't have been so eager if I had known how the fiasco would monopolise my last three weeks in England before I returned to the States and how it would plague me to this very day!) Since he hadn't brought the tape with him, he suggested we meet at a secret location before long, where he promised to provide me with my copy.

Continuing to speak quietly so as not to catch anyone else's ear, John told us what supposedly had happened at Olivers Castle. He said he had left the pub and gone to spend the night at the hill fort, despite the fact that it had been raining, and he didn't have a tent only a big piece of plastic to cover his sleeping bag. Early in the morning he heard a strange noise, like the classical electronic cricket (a sound frequently reported in association with crop circles). The rain had already stopped, so he crawled out of his bag to see what was happening.

There, way down in the valley below the steep slope of the hill, were balls of light flying around over the crop. He watched dumbfounded for a few moments, and then got his video camera out from inside the sleeping bag where he had stashed it to be safe from the rain. At first it wouldn't work because of moisture condensation (most video cameras have a dew sensor and they wont function if moisture has condensed inside the mechanism). Normally a camera must be put in a warm, dry room for an hour or more to evaporate the moisture, but, he said, after a few moments his camera began to function properly. By that time the lights had disappeared. But they soon reappeared, and he started shooting. He said I would definitely be able to see the crop circle forming while the lights fly around above it.

After the lights finished their job they flew away, leaving him breathless. Some minutes went by, and then along came a squad of army men on a morning exercise run. As they ran by, the Sergeant cryptically asked him, Did you get what you came for? Who knows what the Sergeant meant by that, but John said he thought it implied that the Army knew what had just happened, and he was frightened. So he hurriedly packed his gear in his car and drove out of the area.

The whole time we talked he seemed nervous, his hands visibly shaking at times. He confided that he was afraid that reporters would hound him, and asked me to keep his name secret. (By now, everybody knows it!) He would only give me a number for a mobile phone that belonged to a friend, but promised to return my calls (which he did up to a point). He anxiously asked me if I thought that the CIA or MI-5 might break into his home to try to steal the video. Since this tape would be the most important evidence for non-human involvement in the circles, I replied that his fears might not be totally unfounded, and advised him to keep the original hidden at another location. (Many people gave him the same advice, and yet, weeks later he was still showing the original tape in his camera a camera which he said sometimes chewed tapes up!)

Over all, I must say that John came across as very convincing, and on this emotional basis I tended to believe he was for real, and thus the video was probably all we hoped for.

After he left, my friend, Ulrich, a crop circle investigator from Germany, who had been there all during this discussion, said that he remembered seeing Wheyleigh, a complete stranger to the crop circle community, in the pub the night before the Snowflake formation arrived. And Ulrich observed that Wheyleigh had announced, conspicuously, that he was going to camp out at Oliver Castle in hopes of seeing something, despite the wretched weather.

A few days later John called to let me know that he was going on a trip to France for a couple of weeks, and he would give me a copy of the tape when he got back. I would have to endure the suspense a while longer! Meanwhile, everyone was engaging in telephone whispers about the mysterious video some said it showed a crop circle being born beneath a complicated structure of lights like a Christmas tree; others said it showed nothing that could be seen clearly at all.

Viewing IT at last!

Three weeks later I was starting to worry that John had forgotten about me, but then he called and he suggested we have a secret meeting at The Wagon and Horses. The Wagon is a beautiful thatched roof pub near Avebury, which used to be the favourite croppie haunt until the more secluded Barge became the, er, inn hang out. But researchers still go to the Wagon occasionally, so it wouldn't seem the very best choice for a clandestine meeting yet, earlier, he secretly met Colin there, too.

Ulrich and I arrived at the colourful old pub 15 minutes early, and before we had time to order drinks, Wheyleigh walked in. From a battered attaché case he withdrew a VHS copy of the coveted video and gave it to me. There was no videotape player available at the pub, but John had brought his camera along with the original 8mm tape still in it.

Like most people viewing it in the cameras eyepiece, all I saw the first time was little balls of light zipping around over the field and then flying off. Then, lo! I realised there was the formation in the field afterward. I rewound the tape and watched again, ignoring the lights, and this time I could see the design materialise. It was beautiful and magical to behold!

Then Ulrich watched it twice, and since I now had the VHS copy that I could watch to my hearts content when I got back to the house, I resisted the urge to play the original yet again.

I dearly wanted to be able to use the video in a TV program that I would be making about the years crop circles, but I also knew the footage would be much too important to the world for me to just keep it to myself, and I told John so. He said he was glad I felt that way, and suggested that I try to get it distributed as widely as possible, both in England and around the world, as soon as the tests had been performed. We ultimately agreed that I would be his exclusive agent. (He didn't say that he had made that same arrangement with Colin already.)

Then, into our supposedly secret meeting walked Lee Winterston, who somehow knew we would be there. Lee had also been shooting a crop circle program that summer. He was one of the people who had stayed at The Barge after the last bell that night when the camera had been passed around, and he wanted very much to get his hands on the astonishing footage, also. (An American circle investigator, Marge Krstien, recalls talking to Winterston a few days before the infamous event, and gazing into the distance, he told her he wished he could film a crop circle forming, as a grand finale to his show.)

When Lee learned John had the original video with him, he suggested we should all go to a video facility that Lee used in Swindon, and view the footage on a good system with slow motion and enlargement capability. It was only half an hour away, and Lee offered to make a high quality copy of the tape for John so the original wouldn't have to be used any more. John asked me if he should, and I advised him that this was an excellent idea. Before long we were caravanning North in three cars.

Along the way I shot some video of our cars driving to this historic first analysis of the mysterious footage. The shots of Johns car would later prove to have captured a fascinating clue about the nature of the man.

On the Slo-Mo

The reader needs to know that I have been involved in computer animation since the pioneering days, more than 25 years ago. I have watched the technology evolve from its crude beginnings into the photo-realistic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. A lot of people around The Barge know this I wonder if John Wheyleigh was aware, too.

Once we arrived at the video facility, Lee quickly got one of the technicians to set up the slo-motion and enlarging equipment. As soon as I started to document the studio with my video camera, John asked me not to get him in the picture, reminding me he wanted to be anonymous. I said this was an historic moment and I wouldn't use shots of him without his permission but he insisted I shouldn't film him at all. He also asked me not to use the shots of his car.

Then a telling little thing happened in this room full of equipment. John took the 8mm cassette out of his camera, went over to one of the racks full of many different kinds of professional video machines, popped his tape right into the only 8mm machine there, and immediately punched the play button just like he was familiar with industrial equipment. Now, I have worked around this stuff for years, but in a strange facility with so much equipment, it would have taken me a while to locate the 8mm player. Industrial equipment is quite intimidating to the uninitiated. Id bet dollars to donuts that he had prior experience with that particular brand of professional machine, in order to recognise and use it so effortlessly.

Meanwhile, the tape was copied over to the slo-mo system, and our inspection of the footage began. It certainly made a difference to see it in colour and on a big screen. The brief drama looked like something out of Disney's Fantasia, the sprightly little lights glowing a bright, bluish white. We watched them fast and slow, forward and backwards, and at times under high magnification, for over an hour.

The crucial shot begins with two balls of light, which appear to be about three feet in diameter, already in the lower middle of the screen ( A in diagram), skimming clockwise over the field of wheat at something like a hundred miles an hour.

Lee quickly discovered a third light in the scene on only the first frame of the shot. Trivia fans, take note! It is near the bottom of the frame (X on diagram), to the right of CENTER, next to the trees. It is gone in the second frame, never to be seen again.

About two seconds into the shot the crop formation starts to appear, and in the extreme upper part of the picture another light (B) flies behind a tree, reappears, crosses the distant hedge, and flies towards the middle hedge. This light is visible only on good copies of the video up to this point. In fact it may be difficult to spot until it reaches point C. By then it has spawned a smaller partner.

Meanwhile, some five seconds into the scene, the first pair of lights has swerved away from the crop formation, one goes through the middle hedge, and they fly away into the distance. While its difficult to see the effect of the light going through the hedge, we looked carefully at this under digital magnification in the studio, and there is no doubt that, as often as not, the lights go through not over the shrubbery. (Its not an electric power wire that some researchers have said obscures the lights, it is strung at an angle to the hedge, and is much too thin to cover them.) This is important, because it indicates how low the lights would be flying.

So, the lights are only a few feet above the wheat, yet they throw no light on the crop, even though they are several orders of magnitude brighter than the ambient illumination.

As the second (B) set of lights flies around over the crop formation they zip out of the picture twice (D and G). The camera makes no attempt to follow them as they glide near the edge of the frame and then leave our view. Everyone who sees the tape remarks that this seems very odd hardly human! I know I would have kept the lights in the viewfinder! Defenders reply that Wheyleigh must have been guided by the circle-making intelligence to point and hold the camera there in order to catch the formation of the crop circle in centre frame. Later, Ill tell you what I think.

One thing that troubled me greatly the whole time I watched the slo-mo and enlargement analysis, was the fact that the lights were not blurred in the direction of their motion. They should have been elongated into fuzzy ovals, but they were quite round. Only a high speed shutter could have that result, yet the predawn light would have required a slow shutter speed especially with video. (Its been reported that the lights are appropriately distorted. Well, look at still frames and decide for yourself. With a slow shutter speed each light should have been elongated to the point where it nearly touches its own position in the frames before and afterward. And, although soft-edged, the lights are not blurred in the direction of travel.)

I admit I deviously kept these first problems to myself for the moment, because, if the tape was real, these were technical matters that video technicians would be better equipped to address than John (whose feelings might be hurt in the process). And if it was a fake, I didn't want to let on that I smelled a rat.

As soon as I got back to Alton Barnes I made calls to invite everyone who would be interested, to view the famous tape at The Barge the next two evenings. Countless people came to see it we practically wore out the rewind button playing the scene over and over. And, inevitably, the pro-and-con debate began. At that point, the fact that the lights were not blurred in the direction of motion seemed the strongest argument against it, while apparent hand-held wiggling of the camera suggested it was probably real. (If it were a fake, we thought it would have been extremely difficult to match layers of animation of the lights and materialising crop formation with the shaky camera more on this shortly.)

The Smoking Gun

But, the more I thought about it, the more the prognosis didn't look good at all. Then, a few days later I got a call from John Huckvale, who owns the Swindon video studio, and he had discovered what I refer to as the smoking gun. His discovery makes it very, very, nearly impossible for the video to be real. ALL other arguments are moot and meaningless unless his point can be adequately addressed. I shall explain:

We all know how movie film is a long strip of tiny pictures called frames. Video frames, on the other hand, are recorded on tape electromagnetically, and you cant hold the tape up to the light and see the pictures. But the frames are there, stored as a sequence of lines (which can be seen if you look closely at your TV screen).

Now, here's the crucial technical quirk of video that you need to understand to realise why the Olivers Castle tape is a fraud: Each video frame is composed of two fields (not to be confused with crop fields), which are the odd numbered lines and the even numbered lines that comprise every TV picture. All the odds (first field) are scanned initially, and then the evens (second field) are scanned. These fields are recorded and displayed sequentially, one after the other, 1/50 the of a second apart on the British P.A.L. system (which displays 25 frames per second). Each field shows the whole scene at a slightly different moment in time. They are effectively TWO SEPARATE FRAMES in their own right, except that they cant be viewed separately when you pause your VCR.

When you stop a movie projector you get a single still picture, but a frame of video is composed of two pictures the fields captured a moment apart. If there's significant motion during that moment, you'll see a flickering effect caused by the two alternating fields. Try pausing a shot of a football in flight, or anything moving fast, and you'll see what I mean.

The balls of light on the original video show no such flickering when the tape is paused, despite their apparent hundred-mile-per-hour speed! This could NOT be if they were captured with a normal video camera, any more than a normal cinema camera would take identical pairs of film frames without motion between them. This isn't a matter of personal opinion, this is a matter of fact. Video frames have two fields. The lights should move between each of the fields. They dont!

But computer animation systems can produce exactly that result. In fact, the best computer systems have the option to render with or without motion between fields. But it takes considerably longer for the computer to render with the field motion. It also takes longer to render the object blurred and elongated. And time was a very important factor, because Wheyleigh had to show the tape at the Barge that night.

At the risk of beating a dead horse long into its next incarnation, consider, if instead of a video, we were dealing with a motion picture film in which the lights didn't move for two frames, then jumped to another position where they held still for two frames before jumping again, and so on. Everyone would immediately see that something was very seriously wrong. The exact same thing is afoul with the Olivers Castle tape, except the abnormality is hidden within the two fields of each video frame. If only I could hold it up to the light and show you the pairs of motionless fields!

(Yankees take note: Transfer of the video from the British PAL system to the American NTSC system caused pseudo field motion in every third frame because of the difference in number of frames per second between the two countries television standards. Seeing this you might easily be confused, but you'll find that there still are plenty of motionless fields/frames to prove my case. British copies made from Wheyleighs original tape do not have any frames showing motion of the lights between the fields. And, just to totally confuse the issue: when an American TV show about the mystery was re-broadcast in Britain, the pseudo motion could still be seen, even though it had been transferred back into the PAL system!)

The Last Nail in the Coffin

As a way out of the motionless fields dilemma, The Believers propose that, since we don't know what brand & model of camera he used, perhaps Wheyleigh had some unusual kind that doesn't work like a normal one. Actually, there are special digital cameras that capture both fields simultaneously, and would produce video like this (!), but they are made for industrial computer vision systems, and they are big and very expensive. I saw Wheyleighs camera, and it was an ordinary consumer model, yet the defenders still hope that his camera somehow worked that way perhaps its actually cheaper to make a camera that doesn't have to capture the two fields at separate moments in time. Possibly. Truth be told, the very first, primitive home recorders simply made two identical fields out of one, actually, but the loss in quality would make that unacceptable by today's standards.

Then, a few weeks ago, I discovered proof that Wheyleighs camera works normally. In the shot just before the flying lights appear a zoom to a wide angle of the valley below there is a blade of tall grass blowing in the wind at the bottom centre of the frame. If you pause frames of that grass when the wind is moving it fast, you'll see it flickers, properly! His video frames show movement between the two fields, like any ordinary camera. (Note that there is no hand-shake in this shot! It indicates that Wheyleigh had a tripod with him.)

I repeat: The lights were animated with a computer and added to the scene, like Forrest Gump, as was the appearance of the crop formation itself. I realise that some animation experts have said that it would take days or weeks to fake the video. I don't know how to respond, politely! (I reach for my gun when people say they are experts!) They're just plain, flat wrong. You don't have to be an expert to know that there's supposed to be motion in the fields of a video frame.

Unless the motionless fields problem can be answered and no one has done so all pontifications that a fake couldn't be produced in seventeen hours, are moot.

Special effects experts and amateurs alike realise that the one really big hurdle the hoaxers apparently faced was the shaky hand-held camera effect. Its true that its formidably difficult and very time consuming to combine animated effects with a live action shot that wiggles. I don't deny that high tech motion tracking is expensive and might take days, while frame-by-frame hand rotoscope animation would take longer and would never look quite right. But experienced efx (effects) technicians get a kick out of coming up with end runs around such problems and there is a nifty solution to this puppy:

Don't shoot the live action hand held, stupid, use a tripod! Rock steady footage was put into the computer animation system, so the animated lights and materialising crop formation could be easily superimposed. When all the effects were finished, the multi-layered scene was digitally enlarged so about 10% of the picture expanded out of frame. Finally, the remaining visible area of the picture was programmed to wiggle around within that expanded area and, presto, everything looks like it was shot with a shaky hand. It would not, even remotely, require the skill or resources of a Steven Spielberg, as some crusaders confidently proclaim.

The rushed implementation of this trick would explain why the camera doesn't follow the flying lights, as human nature would practically demand. My hunch is that the animator didn't realise the lights would fly out of frame until the later enlargement step was done, and by then it was too late to go back and reanimate the lights to keep them inside the shaking frame. (Am I right, John?)

Ill very briefly describe some of the other efx techniques that were probably employed: The balls of light and their graceful flight paths were easy as pie to create, using computer animation. Perfectly smooth curves, acceleration, deceleration, and gradual changes in luminosity are trivial to control within the digital 3-D environment. Creating flight paths which have only to approach from the distance, then curve approximately around the place where the formation appears, and finally fly away, would take an experienced computer operator less than an hour. If the lights were animated to precisely trace out the shape of the formation while each circle appeared, then it would take much longer to do. (Who among us wasn't surprised that the lights didn't actually define the design?)

Superimposing the lights onto the camera shot is a non-issue. Making the lights look like they fly though the hedges was a nice touch. The easiest way to achieve that effect would be to utilise a program like PhotoShop. A little dab of colour that matches the hedge would be painted over the layer with the lights. The digital paint can have adjustable transparency, so the lights can appear to shine through the leaves as some of them do rather than totally disappear.

Viewers frequently point to the lights going through the hedges as an indication that the video might be real, because they think it unlikely that an animator would take the time to include such small details or to even think of them. On the contrary! Animators take pride in coming up with subtleties just like this. Going beyond the obvious lends authenticity to their artwork. Many viewers don't consciously notice the lights going through the hedges until its pointed out to them, but subliminally, the effect adds greatly to the realism of the shot the first time they see it. The best effects are the effects you don't see, as we say in showbiz.

A similar subliminal trick that should have been included, had there been time, is interactive lighting. Light sources illuminate things nearby, and Im sure our efx artist would have liked to put a glow on the crop below the balls of light. In the predawn illumination there should have been at least a hint of this. It would have given the lights a much more tangible sense of presence. But, it interactive lighting requires many more variables and would have taken far longer to create than the lights themselves time the mischief makers didn't have..

The appearance of the crop formation is quite another matter from the lights, and there are two quite different ways it might have been done, depending on whether the formation itself was genuine or hoaxed by accomplices. If there was a conspiracy involving circle fakers co-ordinate with a cameraman and animator, then before and after shots of the field of crop would be taken without moving the camera. The before shot would be layered on top of the after shot, and portions of the top layer dissolved away to reveal the various parts of the crop formation underneath.

Alternatively, in the event that the crop formation is genuine (in which case Wheyleigh was astoundingly lucky flimflam man with access to an animation system, all he would need is a tripod shot of the finished circle. Using a digital technique called cut and paste, areas of the picture that contain standing crop are electronically copied and moved to cover the various parts of the formation. Unlike paper cut-outs, these patches have their edges instantly blended and are virtually undetectable. Then they would be dissolved away to reveal the circles, one at a time.

In both scenarios, a soft edged oval wipe would be used to make the big circle appear to expand from the middle. The swirling effect some people report they see, would require an additional animated layer partly dissolved in under the oval wipe. The fact that the edge of the expanding circles aren't seen until they reach full size is a consequence of the dissolve-reveal technique. Animating expanding edges for all the circles would have been prohibitive, time-wise.

Jim Dilettoso

The most impressive technical analysis on the video has been done by Jim Dilettoso, a well known American specialist who has studied hundreds of UFO tapes and films in recent years. On a Sightings TV show where I gave the video thumbs down, he gave it thumbs up.

Jim concentrated on the non-image portions of the video signal (the vertical interval, blanking pulse, sub carrier, back porch, and pedestal ), and he reported no evidence of it having ever been in the digital realm. If the video had been manipulated by a computer there should be a digital fingerprint there, but there was none. When I discussed this with him on the phone, he allowed that it would be possible to eliminate such tell-tail digital traces, but said it would take sophisticated equipment that wouldn't be found in a normal animation studio. Although this suggests a deeper conspiracy (the CIA out to get us?), I recently thought of a low-tech solution to the problem (which I wont reveal, lest other mischief makers give it a go). Im still certain the whole job could be pulled off in a modest digital facility.

At the time that Jim and I talked, I hadn't discovered the rapidly moving blade of grass that proves Wheyleighs camera captured frames/fields in the normal manner, so Jim conjectured that a camera capable of taking simultaneous fields might have been used. He didn't hide the fact that this was a serious question. He also admitted he was suspicious of the fact that the cameraman doesn't follow the lights, but is pointed exactly where the crop formation will appear.

Timeline to Deception

Having worked with accomplished computer animators on hundreds of TV commercials and some movies, I submit, with confidence, the following conservative timeline for creating the Olivers Castle Lights video:

5:00 AM - Shot of the crop formation taken

8:00 - Arrive at studio (perhaps as far away as Bristol)

9:00 - Video footage digitised and edited

10:00 - Colour and shape of lights experimented with

10:30 - Light paths created

11:00 - Crop circle materialisation effects

3:00 PM - Digital paint box work for lights going through hedges

4:00 - Camera-shake effect added

5:00 - Removal of digital evidence from video signal

6:00 - Job done

The finished tape could have been at The Barge by 9:00 PM (allowing three hours travel again). Since Wheyleigh didn't actually get there until after 11:00, that gives the animator two additional hours to polish his/her handiwork (I don't think Wheyleigh himself was the animator he would have been exhausted from his rainy night on the hill and all the driving).

Photographer Busty Taylor has pointed out that the shadow angle in the scene implies the shot was taken in the afternoon, rather than the morning. He may well be right. If so, then the shot would have had to be darkened and colorized to make it look like the morning. This would only add about fifteen minutes to the efx job. But the loss of seven or so hours working time due to the late acquisition of the footage would require the animation studio to be nearby.

I know there have been time estimates by the Oscar-winning Jim Henson Company and other special effects experts that would rule out creating a fraud in one day, but I'm afraid they didn't think it out long and carefully enough especially the solution to the shaky camera. Reverse engineering the whole video took me a fortnight. It isn't fair to give a computer animation specialist the tape and expect him/her to unravel the tricks in a matter of hours. But, I hear someone say, expert X had the tape for so-many days, and said it would be impossible to make it quickly enough. Yes, but were the experts as obsessed with our conundrum as we are, or were they perhaps busy with their own work most of the time? Ill bet that none spent six total hours on the problem.

And, unless the person is very well versed in computer animation, it doesn't matter how long they puzzle over it. For example, a rather well known motion picture director, who is familiar with UFOs (who'll remain nameless to spare embarrassment), stated that, after several viewings s/he thought the video had to be real because, to make it, the video would first have to be transferred to film, and the efx done in that medium, before transferring back to tape again and the developing time alone would preclude a hoax being done in one day. This accomplished Hollywood professional went on to talk about rear-screen projection and other film efx techniques, and obviously hadn't a clue about the recent advances of digital technology.

Well, Hollywood is where I worked for nearly 20 years with the very best computer animators. I was on a first name basis with several of the guys who would later go on to form the digital efx division of George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic, back in the days when they were struggling to survive. And, while I haven't bothered them with the video, I have shown the tape to other friends in the business who are also keen on crop circles and they agree with my analysis. They saw the shot a few times; I told them how I thought it was done; they watched it again, and they said, Right. (That's not cheating we aren't testing them to see if they can figure the thing out for themselves, like a quiz show. We want to resolve the issue of the reality of the lights making the crop formation at Olivers Castle.) And these are people who would not have been afraid to say if they thought I was wrong.

Why Don't You Prove You Could Do It, Peter?

I have been challenged to exactly duplicate the video in the required timeframe using my own shot of the Olivers Castle formation. That is an innocent, but impossible demand. The tricksters had no restrictions on them except that the finished shot look believable. Just consider the flight paths of the lights: Within very wide aesthetic limits, the lights they created could go anywhere, at any speed no problems, mate! To precisely match those particular flight paths would require many more hours of work. The dissolves revealing the crop formation would take several times longer to duplicate precisely. In fact, just matching the colour scheme of the landscape would be a real pain.

A realistic looking approximation could definitely be done in the timeframe, but not a strict replica. Nevertheless, my challenger insisted that would not be satisfactory.

Although studio time with all the proper equipment costs hundreds of dollars an hour, I might have gotten the time donated to create an approximation of the video, if I asked for it. But I wont go into that kind of deep debt of obligation, just to have the Believers pointing to every little deviation in my effort as proof that Wheyleighs tape is genuine.

That's what happened to Paul Vigay, a man with limited animation experience and a home computer, when he took a stab at it one day. While his result is definitely flawed, I congratulate him on coming reasonably close to the mark, especially since he had never done anything like it before. It borders on immoral to compare his experiment to The Video without pointing this out, as some have done.

Even duplicating the original exactly would only prove that it could be done, not that the Wheyleigh tape itself was necessarily faked.

In the case of the Olivers Castle tape, the proof of forgery is the incontestable lack of motion by the lights between the video fields. Period. All the other oddities are gravy.

Clinging to the Last Straw

Desperate to salvage the supernatural mystery of the video, some Believers have suggested that the CircleMakers somehow caused the field/frame aberration on purpose. Well (sigh), I concur that it would be trivial for an advanced technology to detect when Wheyleighs camera was about to capture each frame, then position motionless, anti-gravity balls of light, while the two video fields were recorded, and reposition them for each succeeding frame (like some extraterrestrial Wallace & Grommet clay animation). But, why? To impress us with their awesome powers by creating a mind-boggling puzzle, of course!

One of the people who has put this theory to me is a computer and video-savvy professional who concluded, We just don't know the motivations of the intelligence we are contemplating. And I must say that it isn't absolutely, utterly inconceivable that we are being tested somehow, perhaps as to our blind faith.

But I doubt it. Confronting us mere humans with a video aberration that exactly mimics the appearance of computer animation would be very unfair! The CircleMakers know us well enough to realise that such an underhanded trick would only cause confusion and acrimonious arguments among us. Their renowned sense of humour is subtle, but not sadistic. There would be much better ways for them to prove their technical superiority if they wanted to they might have levitated the camera right out of Wheyleighs hands and flown it out and around, following the lights! And, while our faith is most certainly being tested by the whole Circle phenomenon, blind faith, I feel sure, is one of the things being weeded out.

No, Im 99.99% sure the video isn't from any metaphysical source.. This tape was made by mischievous or malevolent humans, and their goal was precisely to cause confusion and acrimony! They've been laughing their asses off as they read the magazine articles and the debate on the internet. They'll be snickering for years.

Wheyleigh Mysteriously Disappears

John Wheyleigh had refused to give me, or anyone, his personal phone number or address. He did scribble the cell phone number of a friend of his for me, and insisted I give it to no one. And he did call me back on four different occasions after I left messages on the answer phone. Then, late in August, I left a message tactfully saying I thought there might be some digital artefacts on his video. He has never been heard from, by any croppie, since. To no avail, I left a few more messages, saying if his video was an animation, it still was a beautiful illustration of what a crop circle forming might look like. Ultimately, the phone number was disconnected and reassigned to another party.

As much as a shy person might have been hurt by my message, or insulted by the subsequent accusations of fraud that were published by others, that excuse doesn't feel entirely right to me. If you took such an exciting shot of unknown flying lights making a crop circle arguably the most important shot in UFO history wouldn't you do something in support of the truth?! Personally, Id rush to the most respected polygraph authority and demand a whole series of tests! (The CCCS would gladly pick up the bill, I'm sure.)

He really ought to have the courage to step forward and tell us the whole story in detail, including where he was between 5:00 AM and 11:00 PM that day. It would be reassuring to see that his school and employment records have nothing to do with high tech video or computer graphics. His phone records could easily prove that he wasn't mixed up with shady characters in the circle-faking business. These measures would certainly intrude on his privacy, but he should be able to prove he is innocent and therefore a hero!

If he wont come out of the closet, he could at least have a trusted friend take the original tape to the BBC for analysis (not letting the cassette out of sight).

Beyond Piltdown

Late last century someone put the fossil jaw of a primitive man together with the skull of an ancient ape and proclaimed to have discovered the missing link. Despite well reasoned arguments that it was hoax, the Piltdown skull held a place of honour in the British museum for several decades. Supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution wanted desperately for the skull to prove them right, and clung tenaciously to the fossil. Ultimately the skull was acknowledged a fraud, but Darwin survived the fiasco, thank you very much.

I am certain that the crop circle phenomenon is a genuine mystery, and I do not enjoy being in the position of a debunker, arguing against anything to do with the magic. But I must speak my truth, whether right or wrong. The Great Truth is not served by exaggeration, nor does it require shoring up. The veracity of the Olivers Castle video has nothing to do with the reality of Crop Circles. And, like Darwin, the CircleMakers are doing just fine, despite not because of the video.

Epilogue:

In the Web at Last

Sinuous blue smoke writhed around the thin mans tobacco-stained fingers as he waited for his computer to thread its way through the World Wide Web and hook up with the Crop circle/Connector site. Then, Ahh! He thought, At last that fat American filmmaker has posted an article about our little video.  Peter Sorensen caught onto the trick sooner than we expected after our man fed him the tape, but still, why didn't he try to make money with it? A little greed would have suited us just fine it would've tarnished the cottage industry of all the circle-happy photographers. Well, ez joined the fray now, and eel be wasting time going round and round all summer with the rest of the lot it will be good for a few more laughs.

Wrong! I will have nothing whatsoever to do with haggling on this subject. The absolute only thing I would be interested in is solid, technically accurate proof that I'm wrong about the motionless fields. Full stop. Other than that, unless a real live alien comes up to me and, shiny black eyes sparkling, says he/she/it took control of Wheyleighs camera to make it look like computer animation as some nasty, grey joke, I have got a life to live and a magical summer I'm looking forward to.

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