This Movie Was Very Helpful

A number of years ago, this film was the source of inspiration for a practical joke I played once. I remember it fondly.

Now, if you know it's fake, it's actually pretty obvious that it's fake all the way through.

But see, this one has special meaning for me. Years ago, before DVD, my dad and I were experimenting with the idea of converting all our VHS to movie files we could keep on a computer. So we had a VCR hooked up to our computer, and a pretty decent Video Editor. I took the movie off Free To Air, put it as a video file and started playing around with it a bit.

And then I had some fun with my two best friends! #Evil Grin!#

I eliminated all the Interviews, and the credits, and the commercials. And then, since it was off the TV, I had a little channel logo in the corner all the time, so I told my friends that it was a camera belonging to an Intern at a TV studio, who was studying video-journalism (Or something to that effect). I told my friend that the Intern had 'borrowed' a camera and taken it home to film thanksgiving with his family.

I told them I was on a mailing list for sci-fi stuff and that this film had been making it's way around the world, leaving the experts scratching their heads. (I am a geek, and I live for this 'Found Footage' style, so they bought that.)

And then I played the edited edition for them one dark and stormy night and proceeded to flip them the hell right out of their skins!

See, thanks to the controversy as to whether it was real or not, they damn near pranked themselves.

For the record, and all those who wonder if this is real or not, the movie is based on a home movie faked for a Japanese 'Unsolved Mysteries' show, and somebody took the idea and ran with it, making it a proper movie.

Somebody apparently didn't notice the credits on the end and started squealing on all the message boards. This is The Internet after all.

As such, when my friends went looking up the 'McPherson Family' there was just enough out there saying they were abducted by aliens, never to be found, that it seemed like I wasn't doing it all myself. (It was on TV here at two in the morning, which is why neither of them noticed it in the TV Guide.)

I played the prank out for three days watching them go diving into their research, studying the footage, before I took pity on them and showed them the imdb link.

Ahh, I'm a bad, bad, man.