Videogame footage used in real war documentary

[J T]

Man, you just have to keep an eye out for things sometimes.

A documentary aired in the UK recently discussing links between Muammar Gadaffi and the IRA. They aired some supposedly secret footage of a helicopter being gunned down from 1988. The only problem was, astute gamers watching the program recognized the footage as coming from 2009's ARMA II, one of the most realistic military games on the market.

http://kotaku.com/5844214/idiot-documen ... -from-2009

I find this story interesting in part because it's like "haha, how could you not tell that was a videogame", but also because "wow, ARMA II is pretty realistic." And it worries me that as games and graphics become increasingly realistic, they could be incorporated into documentaries and political propoganda to prove a point about things, while completely lying through imagery. I don't know if this documentary was simply a mistake or an intentionally misleading use of footage, but it's a little scary just how vigilant you have to be to distinguish the fact from the fiction these days.

[jay_red]

Thats crazy that they blatantly labeled that as real footage, especially since that game doesnt look all that realistic. I had never heard of it until this thread and looked it up, and it in no way is so real looking that it could have been mistaken for actual footage. And the clip that they stole obviously looks like a game.

[AppleQueso]

I find this story interesting in part because it's like "haha, how could you not tell that was a videogame", but also because "wow, ARMA II is pretty realistic." And it worries me that as games and graphics become increasingly realistic, they could be incorporated into documentaries and political propoganda to prove a point about things, while completely lying through imagery. I don't know if this documentary was simply a mistake or an intentionally misleading use footage, but it's a little scary just how vigilant you have to be to distinguish the fact from the fiction these days.

Well, it's not like it doesn't already happen with movies.

[KillerJuan77]

Thats crazy that they blatantly labeled that as real footage, especially since that game doesnt look all that realistic. I had never heard of it until this thread and looked it up, and it in no way is so real looking that it could have been mistaken for actual footage. And the clip that they stole obviously looks like a game.

Actually, ArmA II is a very ugly looking game, between the eye bleeding implementations of bloom and motion blur and the horrendous performance (It runs worse than Metro 2033 or Crysis 2) you get a very dissapointing looking game.

[J T]

I find this story interesting in part because it's like "haha, how could you not tell that was a videogame", but also because "wow, ARMA II is pretty realistic." And it worries me that as games and graphics become increasingly realistic, they could be incorporated into documentaries and political propoganda to prove a point about things, while completely lying through imagery. I don't know if this documentary was simply a mistake or an intentionally misleading use footage, but it's a little scary just how vigilant you have to be to distinguish the fact from the fiction these days.

Well, it's not like it doesn't already happen with movies.

This is sort of true, in that documentaries often selectively show footage to make a point, but I've never seen a completely fabricated scenario like this (to my knowledge) that was trying to pass for real photographic evidence. It would actually be easier to do this with CGI than it would a video game. It's sort of alarming that people could be led to think this is real. If I was watching a documentary and wasn't primed to 'look for the game footage', then I might have been fooled too. It's really shady film making. I think they must have known too because they increased the blur of the imagery beyond the source material.

[Hobie-wan]

That was just dumb. If intentionally trying to pass it off as real, that's shitty 'documentary' making. If using it because they have 'nothing better' then they aren't trying hard enough or at least need to ask permission to use it and label it as an 'artists's rendition at the very least. And man, using someone's shitty shaky cam video pointed at their screen while their Tandy CoCo struggles to render the frames and some random radio is playing in the background?

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Maybe its just because I'm a gamer, but it was pretty easy to spot all the flaws with that footage. I'm not sure if my grandpa would notice all the issues though.

[fastbilly1]

Link to the footage for those outside of the UK:

[Hobie-wan]

Link to the footage for those outside of the UK:

The video on the Kotaku page worked ok for me FWIW.

[NintendoLegend]

*facepalm*/fail/SMH. Oy. What happened to research and sources cited and all that jazz and opera?