Tutorial: UFO Trolling

About three months ago, some post production guys from The Mill decided to troll the Internet with videos of fake UFO sightings over London. I decided to join in on the fun and released a short YouTube video under a fake persona, “documenting” another sighting in Istanbul. Within several weeks, the video climbed up to 10,000 views – by far surpassing any view count I had on any other clips and tutorials uploaded to YouTube. It has also been “verified” by several “UFO authorities” and featured in magazines and UFO sighting websites around the world.

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create your own UFO troll video using After Effects and Mocha – a process that should take you no longer than 30 minutes from the moment you grab a camera, to the time you are ready for upload.

Running time: 31min
Difficulty: Extremely Easy
Required tools: After Effects, Mocha

Original troll video:

Tutorial:

I would like to encourage everyone watching this tutorial to make their own UFO sighting clip and publish it on YouTube. Let’s see if you can beat my 10,5K record, and how long will it take :) Post the links to your UFOs in the comments below – let’s freak out some of “the believers” with a global UFO invasion!

You may download the tutorial video as MPEG-4 from its Vimeo page. The tutorial can also be watched at YouTube.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.