Viral video of shark ‘filmed’ in Manly is a fake
A hoax video which went viral showing a man frantically swimming away from a shark in Manly, helped secure $100,000 of public funds for the company that made it.
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A VIDEO showing a man desperately swimming away from a great white shark in Manly is a fake, it has been revealed.
The clip received worldwide media coverage and has had more than 40 million views since it was posted on YouTube in June 2014.
It’s success led to a further seven fake videos made by the same Melbourne company, six of which were funded with $100,000 of public money from Screen Australia.
The shark video shows a man leaping off Jump Rock at Collins Beach, a notorious jumping spot in Manly, with a GoPro camera strapped to his head.
As he comes to the surface he hears his friends shouting ‘shark’, before coming face-to-face with a great white.
At the time the Manly Daily reported the video had gone viral and in a follow-up story suggested it was fake.
Caspar Mazzotti, aka Terry Tufferson, who starred in the clip and filmed the Manly scenes, defended his actions saying the video was entertaining, “with no harm done”.
“I was working as a documentary editor at the time and had learnt a few editing tricks along the way,” he told the Many Daily.
“I obtained stock footage of the shark and then jumped off the rocks a few times to get the motion that matched the footage and then composited the shark into my video.
“It took a long time and it wasn’t perfect but it was close, there was just enough in there to make it believable, but I left a few imperfections in there for people to pick up on.
“I chose the jump rock in Manly because it was the best place to jump into Sydney harbour and it felt like it would be something that a normal person might film.”
Dave Christison, from the Woolshed Co behind all the videos, said the Terry Tufferson project was part of a two-year social experiment exploring the phenomenon of ‘viral’ videos and shareable content.
In total, the videos which included a girl narrowly avoiding a lightning strike on a Sydney beach and a man outrunning a tornado in the outback were viewed more than 205 million times in 180 countries.
Mike Cowap from Screen Australia justified funding fake videos with public money, saying the videos “met our expectations” and the creatives behind them showed promise.
Fake videos in numbers:
Shark in Manly, June 2014, 40.6 million views
Outback tornado, August 2014, 15.2 million views
Selfie stick fight, July 2015, 21 million views
Stormtrooper falls down stairs, August 2015, 6.8 million views
GoPro falls off drone onto dance floor, September 2015, 3.8 million views
Girl narrowly avoids lightning strike, February 2016, 58.9 million views
Snowboarder chased by bear, April 2016, 34 million views
Lion chases trophy hunter, June 2016, 11.6 million views
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