The "UFO Haiti" and "UFO Dominican Republic" Videos (Barzolff Hoax)

August 2007. A YouTube account called barzolff814 posted a clip titled "UFO Haiti." A second one followed, "UFO Dominican Republic." A repost description claimed the footage was filmed on August 6.

The camera is handheld and jerky. It stands under palm trees near a beach. Wind whips through the fronds. Dogs bark. A woman gasps in disbelief. Two large craft pass low overhead. Seen from the ground, they are shaped like flowers. They make a faint roaring noise. The camera follows one in a perfect tracking shot as it flies directly over her head. Then they head toward a mountain range. There, about 12 more wait in formation. The clip ends. It lasts about 22 seconds.

On August 10, a user called "Perky" reposted it to LiveLeak. The next day it was news. The Los Angeles Times would later describe "close-up sightings of Area 51-type craft hovering above the island's beaches."

No government looked into it. The internet did. On AboveTopSecret.com, a forum that had already argued over the CARET drone images that same summer, members noticed that the palm trees "are multiple copies of a single template." The UFOs, they said, were "pasted in over the video." Kentaro Mori of forgetomori.com credited a user named Jskun with the bigger realisation. The whole scene was computer-made. Sky, sun and trees.

Researcher Isaac Koi later matched the palms to the demo reel of Vue 6, a piece of commercial 3-D software. Blogger Paolo Attivissimo noticed a voice off camera shouting at an oddly delayed moment. He also pointed out that Haitian newspapers and bloggers had never mentioned any such event.

Then David Sarno of the Los Angeles Times tracked down barzolff814. Behind the account was David Nicolas, a French animator known as Barzolff, originally from Paris and once a graffiti artist under the name "Numéro 6." He had made both videos in 17 hours on a MacBook Pro. "The videos are 100% computer-generated," the paper reported. As proof, he released a new clip. Two elderly women at a Paris café fly a small craft over the street with a remote control. Producer Georges Bermann of Partizan vouched for him, calling Barzolff "an absolute genius" who could "make anything look entirely real."

The motive was research for a Partizan feature film "about two guys who create a UFO hoax so realistic that it spirals out of their control." Nicolas called the videos a "sociological experiment," not viral marketing. He had expected about 2,000 views. The ride, he said, was "entertaining, thrilling, completely addictive and a little scary." The scary part was that "many people refuse to believe it's a hoax."

The numbers kept climbing. Reported views range from 2.5 million for one version in 2007 to 20 million later on. In 2011 Openminds.tv called it the most popular YouTube UFO video. It went on to appear on lists of the most famous UFO hoaxes.

Nicolas moved on to music videos and advertising, then to painting in Los Angeles. No sign has surfaced that the Partizan film was ever made. Yet in 2013 HuffPost wrote that "even today, there are people who refuse to believe it was a put-on." A columnist at the Flathead Beacon had said it best back in 2007. "The truth is out there. It might just not be on YouTube."