Spring Break Illusion in Advertising

Bruster's real ice cream says, "treat yourself to something real"

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Technology Illusion or Incredible Feat?

I found this animation on Grow-a-brain. This is an animated gif of a girl apparently being tossed in the air and coming down through a basketball hoop. Looking at this animation it is easy to say the thing was faked and all we have here is the illusion of a girl going through the hoop.

What is not so easy though is denying this is not an illusion after watching the actual video of this feat. Click on the picture and go to a site where they play the actual video clip. Although I have heard some still say it is faked, watching the clip, it has an air of realism that would be harder to fake then the video.

Update: You can check out a debate about this video at the museum of hoaxes There seems to be a 50/50 split in those debating.

John said, "This was filmed at the University of St Thomas in Saint Paul, MN they were on the radio the other morning talking about this and claim that its legit. For whatever thats worth - the authors are claiming its real.
Posted by john on Sat Feb 19, 2005 at 09:22 AM

Even the Washington Post had some debate on this video.

Update: Open a quicktime copy of the video or download the video by clicking or right clicking here and selecting "save link as" or "save target as".

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Restroom Illusion

If you had too much time on your hands and you wanted to create an illusion what illusion would you create? Well if you were Kevin Kelm the Crown Prince of too Much Spare Time you might create the Robodump V1.0

RoboDump is a robot. Sort of. And it poops. Sort of. Forever. A horrible, never-ending bowel movement complete with straining grunts, horrific gas, splashes, and pee sounds.

The left channel speaker points up into the room (for the voice effects) and the right channel speaker points down into the toilet (for the business-end effects).

I snuck RoboDump into the men's room at the office. Unfortunately, today turned out to be the day of a board meeting. Whoops! It still went over well; the office was abuzz all morning with gossip about the guy in the bathroom. Several people theorized it was the CFO. The janitor commented to someone in the hallway that he wanted to clean the restroom but "this guy's been in there all morning."

I also decided to dress it in businessware to make coworkers less likely to try to talk to it... if it looks like a customer or visiting bigwig, they'll be less likely to offer help or ask for a courtesy flush.

If you want to listen audio portion of this illusion go to his site.

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Team Spirit Illusion

Below is what I refer to as the team spirit illusion.

Elis outsmart Harvard.

Click on picture to purchase this poster

The "Harvard Pep Squad" ran up and down the aisles of Harvard Stadium at The Game Nov. 20. They had megaphones in hand and their faces were painted as they encouraged the crowd to hold up the 1,800 red and white pieces of construction paper they had handed out. It would read "Go Harvard," they said.

But the 20 "Pep Squad" members were actually Yale students. And when the Harvard students, faculty and alumni held up their pieces of paper -- over and over again -- they spelled out "We Suck" in giant block letters the whole stadium could read. Read the rest here.

They made a mini movie of their exploit check it out @ Harvardsucks.org

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