They’re certainly not candid shots, they’re quite staged, but I really don’t see any reason they weren’t in the room itself. I don’t see any physical impossibilities other than perhaps the impossibility of enthusiastically dancing within such a small space, but again we come back to ‘it’s staged, not candid’.
The way I look at it is, what takes more expertise and effort: setting up a reasonably good picture with a reasonably good camera, or compositing images in Photoshop that are so well constructed that the only reason people are saying they’re Photoshopped is because they’re too good?
The former just requires an amateur with decent equipment. The latter pretty much requires a professional. Even if it doesn’t require significant skills, it most certainly would require more time and effort than just staging the shots. It also wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.
As for the neatness of the kid’s room, he did just leave the house for 4 weeks. It’s not at all uncommon for parents to insist that a room be completely clean if it’s going to be unused for a significant length of time.
OK, if you think they’re shopped, take another look at the one with the Christmas tree. It’d take freakishly good masking to get all those needles right, and they couldn’t have even greenscreened that one (bluescreened, maybe, but I understand that doesn’t work as well).
And yeah, why couldn’t all the polka dancers have been in there? They had to have been somewhere.
I think you guys are overestimating the skill levels involved in cutting one figure out of a picture and putting it in another; that’s not professional-level photoshopping. The professional bit comes in making it look like there was never any shopping done, matching the sizes, lighting, shadows etc. They haven’t really tried to do that, because this was just a bit of fun to tease their son.
The other problem is that the room is clearly not that big, not big enough to fit four polka-dancers and have space for a cameraperson far enough away to fit them all in.
However, if the mum’s online saying that some of it was done in real life, then presumably some of it was. Saying ‘photoshop’ doesn’t mean ‘fake and unworthy of consideration’ - they’re still funny.
I just noticed the Lucy from Peanuts-style counselling stand.
See, I don’t get this. The lighting looks fine to me. If it were done as you say, it would be apparent that they were cut-and-pasted from one photo into another. But it’s not.
Look at the dog-washing one. Neither the dog nor the towels is evidently wet. The hose spray is carefully aimed into the bucket. It looks exactly as you’d expect it to look as a staged gag, conducted in the room, that was taking care to not hurt anything.
They’re not trying to fool the kid into thinking they were actually having pie-eating contests and polka-dancing (notice the in his room. It’s just a joke.
The idea that there is no kid and the story is just an excuse for the pictures is just weird. To what end? That’s a less funny prank.
Sure. Look at how the polka one has both shadows away from the window and reflections in the polished wood floor.
Boy, interwebs are making some people suspicious of everything…
I don’t get why they would photoshop this scene in the first place. They have to take the picture of themselves somewhere - why not do it in the bedroom? Why take the picture somewhere else, and then photoshop themselves into it?
That aside, if this picture is photoshopped, they clearly have done all those things you mentioned - and fairly well, too. The figures are reflecting in the floor. The shadows cast by the light coming in from the window radiate away from the window - the dancers, who are to the side, cast their shadows back and to the right. Grandpa, sitting directly in front of the window, is casting a much more diffuse shadow to the lower right. The characters all seem in scale to each other, and to their surroundings. The perspective is a little flat, but that’s easily a function of the lens settings as anything else.
I don’t understand this at all. In what way is the room to small to encompass the characters we see in the room? And how do we know how much space the cameraman has, if we can’t see the fourth wall of the room?
They hired the backstage crew from their local theater group and had them reconstruct an exact likeness of the son’s bedroom. They just left the fourth wall out so the cameraman could get good pictures.
ALL comic brilliance like this needs to be completely over analysed. Tenacious debate and conclusive evidence are required in all aspects, including (though not limited to) concept, execution, delivery, family dynamics, ethics, and the risk of long term psychological damage.
It’s a cute idea and well-executed, but I would bet both my plums that it’s fake.
Aside from the clues already put forth, the lighting is a dead giveaway (unless there is a photographer in the family who is skilled at lighting and has the necessary equipment).
Setting aside the idea that even professional photographers have families, what about the lighting, in particular, do you think precludes these from having been done by an amateur with a decent camera?
It’s fake because there’s two Froggy 101 stickers prominently placed in the room. Not in every picture, but in enough of them. One’s on the corkboard and the other is stuck to the front of the desk. Really? This kid’s room is so meticulously clean that I’m guessing he hangs his posters with a level in hand. And yet he just slapped a radio station sticker on his furniture? I’m not buying it.
I’ll accept that a) this is really some kid’s room, and b) this is really that kid’s family. But I’m betting he’s a summer intern at Froggy 101 and this is a nice bit of viral marketing that he cooked up.
As further proof of this theory, I’d like to point out that Froggy 101 is based out of Scranton, home of The Office, and I’d like to enter into evidence this blog post from a Froggy 101 staffer showing them doing the same bumper-sticker viral marketing trick on The Office.
