FACT CHECK: This video depicting a man falling into a pit during the rain is digitally altered!

Natural disasters and accidents related to nature are becoming increasingly common nowadays. Creative social media publishers, at times use these accidents, sometimes in an exaggerated manner, to convey a positive message. Here is our fact check into one such video which has gone viral, during the current rainy season in Sri Lanka

Social Media Posts

A 16-second video depicting a man accidentally falling into a purportedly deep pit which was filled and covered with water, was uploaded by a Facebook user. The video clip had been watched more than 1,500 times, and many others expressed their comments and reactions.

The video caption read as “Please be careful when it rains.” Below is the capture of the video from the Facebook post.

Facebook

Here are a few other instances of both local as well as foreign Facebook users sharing the above video with the same narrative.

Fact Check

First, we watched the video (15 seconds time duration) with a slow motion and identified special characteristics of that video which indicated that the video was not real.

⮚ The face of the man seems blurred.

⮚ It is clear that this video was not recorded using a CCTV camera and it seems like the video is a staged one.

⮚ The cameraman did not react as in the case it would be an emergency when a person falls into a bit and rather the camera didn’t move here and there.

⮚ The body movements of the man who was falling didn’t change and he didn’t try to make an attempt to rescue himself.

⮚ There was no splash in the water and the steadiness of water indicates that the video is digitally manipulated.

⮚ And we also noticed that the person falling down abandons the umbrella from his hand even before he falls into the water puddle.

In order to monitor the body movements of the person we slowed down the video speed. It clearly shows that the hand angles and the body positioning are the same in the frames when the person is going down the drain, which again indicated it to be an altered scene. And it also shows that person dropping the umbrella even before he set a foot on the puddle.

We noticed that there are few videos in YouTube which give knowledge to the users to create videos with similar effects using several technical methods/tools. Two of such videos are mentioned below.

This video has gone viral before a few times in different parts of the world here is another fact check on the same.

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Conclusion:

According to our investigation, we found out that the viral video which depicting a man, falling into a deep pit which was filled and covered with water was not genuine and it was digitally altered using video manipulating techniques.