Koi UFO Video 087: Phoenix 2005 (Brian Bessent)
[DEBUNKED] Koi UFO Video 087 appears to show a ring of lights in the night sky above some trees, with lights appearing to fly in and out the ring formation. The video has a caption indicating it was filmed in Phoenix (Arizona) on 5th June 2005.
The video was posted in 2005 and gained considerable publicity, including via the rense.com website. The publicity prompted supportive comments from various ufologists and video editing experts, including David Sereda (famous for his analysis of NASA "UFO" videos).
In fact, Brian Bessent confessed in 2006 that he had hoaxed the video. He posted a diatribe on his ufotheatre.com website about the gullibility of the UFO community. He explained that he hoaxed UFO videos to make money and that this was very easy to do. He referred, in particular, to his use of the "Bryce" animation software plus "stoner techniques", which involved him getting stoned before filming. Apart from getting stoned before making his videos, he referred to getting stoned using the money he made from his videos - commenting that he "made thousands and bought hella dank .. and bongs shit i smoked so much i think i nearly died ... all thanks to rense!".
Brian Bessent commented that "making money off UFOs requires no talent other than a slightly higher intelligence than that of your intended market".
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
Koi UFO Video 087 appears to show a ring of lights in the night sky above some trees, with lights appearing to fly in and out the ring formation. The video has a caption indicating it was filmed in Phoenix (Arizona) on 5th June 2005.
Screen shots from the video are included below for ease of identification:
2. Stories and claims relating to this video
The video was posted in 2005 and gained considerable publicity, including via the rense.com website.
Brian Bessent statements in relation to his video included the following:
"The video is jaw-dropping and the objects are clearly-taped. The camera was on the tripod during the first few seconds of taping and it caught the lights appearing and flying down perfectly.. I decided to turn on the higher zoom of the camera, so I removed it from the tripod and changed settings...and began taping again.
This time, I was zoomed in much closer to the objects. Very shortly after, they started flying back up in the night sky and disappearing...or just winking out. All of it was videotaped, and this time NOBODY can ever say that flares are all that are flying up around here in Phoenix."
Investigations in 2006 by Scott Davis (a producer for KTVK-TV) and Santiago Yturria Garza ("Free_Spirit" on the AboveTopSecret.com discussion forum) resulted in them suggesting the video was a hoax.
The publicity prompted supportive comments from various ufologists and video editing experts, including David Sereda (famous for his analysis of NASA "UFO" videos).
David Sereda posted various reasons for considering the video "extremely difficult to hoax" and concluded that those "many factors" caused him to "think we are looking at an object (UFO) that was actually there, up in the sky, when the video was shot".
Australian ufo researcher Barry Taylor claimed that he had found two "crucial details that further prove this footage genuine and not animated", one of which was the presence motion blur.
Relevant posts on the rense.com website include the following
(1) "New Phoenix UFO Video Attacks Criticized"
(2) "Amazing Phoenix UFO Footage"
3. The real background to this video
Brian Bessent confessed in 2006 that he had hoaxed the video.
He posted a diatribe on his ufotheatre.com website about the gullibility of the UFO community. He explained that he hoaxed UFO videos to make money and that this was very easy to do.
He referred, in particular, to his use of the "Bryce" animation software plus "stoner techniques", which involved him getting stoned before filming.
Apart from getting stoned before making his videos, he referred to getting stoned using the money he made from his videos - commenting that he "made thousands and bought hella dank .. and bongs shit i smoked so much i think i nearly died ... all thanks to rense!".
Brian Bessent commented that "making money off UFOs requires no talent other than a slightly higher intelligence than that of your intended market".
The ufotheatre.com website on which Brian Bessent posted his confession in 2006 is now defunct and no archive is available on the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive. Fortunately, the text of that confession was reported on another website (eyepod.org) which is also defunct, but an archive of that page IS preserved in the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive.
That confession included the following:
"We have decided to share the results of a grheat test in human stupidity and ignorance with those who seek to truly understand that which has fooled them all either knowingly or unknowingly into supporting and believing (or not) in a complete and total joke on the people of the world. The world revolves on profits and lies and UFOism and the entire fake society created in the world of supposed UFO research was created by companies and individuals who have learned much like we did in our little experiments that people don't really give a damn about the truth and the only thing they are interested in is entertainment and products to buy.
While it may seem silly the truth is actually pretty simple, In the UFO society you have 2 groups
Group 1 - The people behind the scenes (Product makers or ufo product sellers or news services) This group involves merchants,companies, individuals, producers and anyone else who has managed to make or sell ufo material or stories to the public or through private sales or just from reporting (Site or tv advertisement.. This group is responsible for all stories released to the public and for 90% of all ufo video footage released to the public and absolutely nobody in group 1 CARES if the ufo stories are REAL OR FAKE... They only want either something to sell or something to report and if they can not make money or a story off of it you will never hear about it or see it.
Group 2 - Experiencers and believers - These are the group of people who have either experienced what they believe to be UFO experiences or people who have just watched too much X files... Either way this is the group targeted by group 1 without group 2... group 1 would not exist! However group 2 would exist just fine without group 1 so what you have is a kind of vampire consumerism... People feeding off those who truly believe in or have interest in the UFO phenomenon.
Now people may believe that individuals can fit into both groups but it is just not true, Once you are a member of group one you are enlightened to the possibilities of how money you can make off group 1 and surprisingly you can make a lot of money without any work or effort... I should know i have more than i ever wanted to from selling the rights to video footage and selling video footage period... and it all started from an accident. In the beginning i never really set out to make money off UFOS.. However thanks to rense.com and them posting my first ever shot of a "rod" of which took absolutely no effort besides getting stoned and playing with the camera... when looking back at the footage i noticed what appeared to be a jose escamilla ROD... Of which i have personally proven without a doubt to be BUGS elongated onto camera frames without any doubt... However back when i first shot the original rod i was interested in the phenomenon and sent the image to rense.com webmaster from rense.com and sure enough they posted the entire story online and within 2 days i had offers from around the world for the photo of the rods from around $1000 to $3000 for a 3 second piece of footage i had accidentally captured while stoned off my ass shooting video of nothing! So i did what any faithful weedsmokin loser would have done.. i sold the shit! made thousands and bought hella dank... and bongs shit i smoked so much i think i nearly died.. all thanks to rense!
Thank james!
After that i had a taste of what it was like for the members of group 1 and after i spent all the money i made off the bugs flying too close to the lenses... I thought to myself.. This is amazing.. I wonder what i could make if i actually tried to make some money off ufos... Hell i didn't even mean to make a penny off this silly fake bug shit and i was thinking on the possibilities on what i could make if i actually set out to do so... and at that moment i became a member of group 1.
My first idea was to make a movie.. about ufos... I didn't care if the video was real or fake i just wanted to see what i could make out of it... So i began work on what became the "Signs from the sky" series... I started by just carrying around a camcorder when i would go out and smoke weed and road trip here and there... within 6 months i had enough to begin work on the movie, i had enough drunken stoner shot video to fill up hours of stuff... and most of it would be better and cooler than what the other members of group 1 were doing... Considering group 1 has a really bad habit of passing around old footage... You will end up with 100 ufo movies with different covers and names all with the same basic ufo footage... This is a curse of everyone trying to make a buck off someone else's video.... and i had brand new shit... never seen anywhere LOL... No that it mattered.. people will buy ANYTHING UFO related.... and i had at this point collaborated with other people around the world and obtained permission to use their footage as well so hell it was a win win situation.
First thing i did considering i knew nothing about video editing and video production... was to buy a phat sack of dank... this would prepare me mentally for the entire thing.. Since making money off UFOS requires no talent other than a slightly higher intelligence than that of your intended market i was set! I began by capturing all the videos i had and then i began taking frames out and doing basic graphic enhancements of it all.. i was so stoned really i don't remember making the actual movie but i know i did because i sold it for years and made a lotta dough... Mainly because i knew rense.com would advertise the movie for a small fee and the customers would buy shit... as long as the box was pretty! and that they did.
Signs from the sky was born!! WOO HOO $$$$$
When i realized how much money i made off the silly ass movie i did something i never planned to do... but did anyway's because i didn't really give a shit about UFOS once i realized nobody else did either.. In order to properly expose my new dvd i had to break some stories out... so i decided to get stoned and rense.com webmaster was making ufo prints and selling them so i emailed him and asked him what program he made the graphics with and he told me bryce so i obtained bryce and in about a week i made my first fake ufo video.... i pioneered my own stoner techniques... some that would later be used in the phoenix video "years later".. and with bryce i had managed to create not only a super silly looking fake video with black orbs flying around... but the orbs themselves were so cool that skeptics who knew the video was fake called the video "birds in reverse"... i laughed my ass off because there were no birds involved... just a few rendered black orbs in a bryce scene with the "depth of 3d" option enabled... this made the orbs seem to be real and birdy.. HEHE.. I did this entire bryce scene on a bluescreen background and imported it into a video program and did the same thing they do in hollywood... Put the stuff from the bluescreen on top of the real video and walla! Cheap ass hoax...
Brian Bessent is pictured below.
4. Relevant online discussions
Relevant discussions on the AboveTopSecret.com forum include the following:
2005 (June) discussion entitled "Amazing new UFO Footage, June 8 Phoenix"
2005 (June) discussion entitled "The Truth about the June 8 Phoenix Video"
2006 (February) discussion entitled "Brian Bessent (Phoenix UFO) confess hoax"
2007 (March) discussion entitled "a UFO formation over PHOENIX 06.05.05, VERY similar to D4rk Kn1ghts "anticipations""
2007 (October) discussion entitled "BIZARRE UFO FOOTAGE - June 5th 2005 Phoenix, Arizona"
2010 (December) discussion entitled "Ufo mothership in arizona"
2013 (December) discussion entitled "The most convincing UFO video footage we have"
