Koi UFO Video 061: Haiti UFO with palm trees (David Nicolas)
[DEBUNKED] UFO Video 061 appears to clearly show several craft flying over palm trees.
This video was originally uploaded to Youtube by an individual with the username "Barzolff814" in August 2007. The original title referred to Haiti (although as at October 2014 the video has a title that now refers to Mexico).
The Haiti UFO video has become one of the most-watched UFO videos on Youtube, with over 19.8 million views as at October 2014.
In fact, as discussed below, this video was created by French artist/animator David Nicolas using Vue 6 and other commercially available software on a MacBook Pro.
Sections below:
2. Stories and claims relating to this video
3. The real background to this video
4. Relevant online discussions
1. The relevant video
This video appears to clearly show several craft flying over palm trees.
Screen shots from the video are included below for ease of identification:
2. Stories and claims relating to this video
When this video was originally uploaded to Youtube by an individual with the username "Barzolff814" in August 2007, the original title referred to Haiti. However, as at October 2014 the video has a title that now refers to "Aliens in Mexico!!!".
3. The real background to this video
This video was in fact created by French artist/animator David Nicolas using Vue6 (3D graphics software) and other commercially available software on a MacBook Pro.
Within a few days, several people pointed to the use of identical palm trees in the video as indicating the use of Computer Generated Imagery ("CGI"). The palm trees in the Haiti UFO video also happened to be the same as the palm trees demo reel for the Vue6 software. Debate nonetheless raged on several UFO discussions regarding the videos (with a discussion on the AboveTopSecret.com forum lasting for over 90 pages) - indicating that even clear technical flaws do not prevent some people considering a "UFO" video to be real (or at least potentially real).
Debate did, however, largely come to an end after after the L.A. Times revealed in an article dated 22 August 2007 that the person that uploaded the video had contacted the L.A. Times and admitted the hoax. That article by the L.A. Times did not name the hoaxer due to his request to remain anonymous, but it did give various details about him and his production of the video. For example, that article stated that the hoaxer was 35 years old and "a professional animator who attended one of the most prestigious art schools in France and has a decade of experience with computer graphics and commercial animation". The article stated that it took the hoaxer "a total of 17 hours to make both the Haiti and Dominican Republic videos" and that the videos "are 100% computer-generated". The videos were "intended as research for a feature film project" the hoaxer had been working on with Partizan, the France-based production company responsible for, among others, Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". The hoaxer commented that the scary part was that in spite of the evidence, "many people refuse to believe it's a hoax."
That L.A. Times article did not name the hoaxer (and his name does not appear in the 90+ page discussion on AboveTopSecret). The L.A. Times article just referred to the hoaxer as "Barzolff" (i.e. his Youtube username).
To prove that "Barzolff" was indeed the creator of the Haiti UFO video, he provided the L.A. Times with a video depicting a small version of one of the spacecraft floating above a Paris street - apparently controlled by two elderly women at a cafe holding a remote control device. That video was uploaded to the same Youtube account as the original Haiti UFO video, with the title "Naughty Grannies".
The hoaxer has subsequently become willing to indicate his identity and refers to his creation of the Haiti UFO video on a webpage relating to his art works. The name of the hoaxer was in fact David Nicolas.
A webpage on the Saatchi Art website relating to the artwork of David Nicolas includes the following:
"Born in 1973, David Nicolas started out as a graffiti artist in France in the 1980s, known then as Numéro 6. A ground breaker in the France graffiti art scene, Numéro 6 was known for his distinctive style. Nicolas went on to study visual arts and film animation in Paris and pursued a career in animation and art direction. He is also known as Barzolff814, the orchestrator of a UFO hoax video project in Mexico and Haiti that was aired on CNN and reached over 19 million views on YouTube. Since that time, Nicolas has worked under the name Barzolff. His current body of work features playful human portraits, fueled by a compulsion to capture flesh and anonymity simultaneously"
It therefore appears that the hoax was so successful that the artist changed his working name so as to maximise profit from the recognition of his CGI/artistic skills.
Articles about artwork by David Nicolas have referred to his creation of the viral video, such as a Huffington Post article entitled "French Artist Barzolff on His First US Exhibit" which notes that he "went on to much-lauded work in the music video and advertising industries (including a music video for Super Furry Animals that won multiple awards, and a more recent one for Boys Noize)":
One article notes that Nicolas says he was surprised at the scale of the reaction: "if I had known there would be so much scrutiny I would have worked harder on it" he laughs.
David "Barzolff" has various webpages devoted to his work, including a page on Facebook.
David Nicolas' Haiti UFO video was so successful that even videos which attempted to debunk that video got millions of views - such as the video below by "Neil Slade" which has over 5 million views as at October 2014.
4. Relevant online discussions
Relevant discussions on the AboveTopSecret.com forum include the following:
2007 (August) discussion entitled "(HOAX) Haiti UFO Video - YouTube – (HOAX)"
