Go here and watch this clip.
There is NO WAY this is real! I can’t possibly imagine it being real! TELL ME it’s not real!
For those on dial-up, it’s a clip of a cheerleading squad that throws a petite cheerleader into the air, she does an impressive flip, then goes through the basketball hoop feet first and is caught by her team underneath.
This is a special effect…right?
Wether it is or not I thought the cheering and back slapping at the end was funny – the guys who did the throwing are all over each other while the girl who actually did all the work is forgotten.
I’m in no way an expert in spotting frauds but that clip looks pretty real. I paused it and slo-mo’d it at the important split seconds and it looks like she went through.
It also looks like she hit her head on the rim- she doesn’t participate in the triumphant celebration, instead she is bent over with her hand on the back of her head looking hurt.
She should definitely get some kind of Buster Keaton award or something.
No, it is not real. The clip is pretty hilarious. The fact that if you watch the girl closely at the very end, she’s doing two things that add a great deal of verisimilitude- this is irrelevant. ( She’s glancing upwards at the net, and holding the back of her head as though she hit it on the way through ).
There is an edit in the clip. The young lady appears to do a flip and start to slip into the net- a pretty nifty feat in of itself. Then, she lands in the fellows’ arms. I blew up the clip larger than the normal display, and scrolled back and forth until I could find the moment when she’s hitting the net with her feet. She seems to honestly start to get wedged in there. Then, she’s landing down into the guys’ arms.
They did the flip, she started to land into the net. They cut. They threw her up in the air just in front of the net, from our perspective it would seem as though she shot up in the air, blocked the net, then fell straight down feet first again towards the guy’s arms.
They caught her, did their backslapping, she stood there.
Two shots.
Harmless and pretty funny, IMHO.
Some added thoughts. From this N.B.A. Rules Site, we learn the following:
If you measure the average waif-like young lady, you might find that 18" is pretty darned slender across the shoulders, outside of arm-to-outside of arm. You might wiggle through a net if you were skinny enough, given time to slowly negotiate your body parts through. It’s unlikely bordering on impossible that she could have sailed through that net, especially because she was launched from the side and although she appeared to approach roughly from above, she was approaching at a slight angle. In real life, that’d mean bruised hips, bruised ribs, abraded upper arm along the shoulder line.
Cartooniverse
<-----------laughing in embarassment. Okay, when you’re totally fucking wrong, it’s best to own up immediately. I saw bienville’s post after I posted mine. ( 2 min apart.)
I played it back again, trying to still frame it this time. I was completely and utterly wrong. It sure does appear as though she snaked her way through the net and yes, hit her head on the rim on the way through.
My apologies. When I scrolled through it, it appeared to have a jump cut in it. -rueful grin- Hey, at least I made a persuasive argument.
She’s crazy, that girl is. 
I’m going to wait until a few more people weigh in. I’ve never held the correct view on a disputed point on the SDMB and I’m not about to start now.
Although if I am right I think that means I’m allowed to take up smoking.
Hey, the game is a hoot, too.
OK, I’ve watched it, but haven’t gone through it in slo-mo, since the results are apparently inconclusive.
Of course it’s fake.
No freaking way could this possibly be real. Even if it is technically possible for her to fit through the hoop, the inaccuracy inherent in four people trying to toss her that high and through it would basically ensure that something would go wrong.
Think about it; what if they had a basketball and each of them put one hand on it, and then they tried to toss it through the hoop? No chance. And it would be far more difficult with a person, being both heavier and more, uh, “wiggly” is the only word I can think of.
It’s clever, and amusing, but it has GOT to be fake.
At the risk of sounding one-tracked, those chesticles look like they’d make it near impossible to wriggle through the rim, don’t they?
Not really. For one thing, she’s a slightly bodied woman. Her…um…chesticles, is it?.. are not overly large and even if they were, a tight sports bra would likely stop them from being bruised as she fell through. Add to the fact that she tucked her arms in as she dropped through.
I’d love to see a clean full frame view of this thing.
Nice new word. Chesticles. Beats the alternatives, which is to call a man’s reproductive sacs " Toobs ".
Off-topic but “chesticles” is not that new at all. The British comedian Kenny Everett was using it back in the '80’s. Oddly enough he was gay as Christmas and yet most of his show consisted on Benny Hill like situations involving scantilly clad women. He had his moments though and he should get his due for chesticles.
Looks fake to me… I think she was tossed right in front of the net, and from our angle, it looked like she was going through. She probably hit the net with her arm on the way down to make it move as though she’d gone through. On one frame, we see her feet on the inside of the rim, but that could have been doctored somehow, no?
If we find out it’s for real, though, that’s really something.
I have no trouble believing that a slight-of-build person could fit through a basketball hoop. However, I don’t see how she could have made it through without snagging her shoes on the net. And that would mean serious, serious pain. So, count me with the “clever photography” camp.
I made a similar comment in the other thread, but follow her trajectory against the background. It’s not a natural arc.
I’m even more convinced when I look at 3 specific frames:
A) when she’s stretched almost perfectly straight as they’re throwing her, and her belly is even with the bottom of the backboard.
B) when her head is pointing straight down at the top of her arc
C) when she’s slightly curved and her legs are through the hoop but her butt is just above the rim.
Since she’s oriented pretty vertically in all three of these frames, you can draw vertical lines on her left and right and figure out a pretty narrow range for her horizontal center of gravity. For frames B and C, the lines are in almost the same place, indicating she’s falling roughly straight down, but look at the difference between frames A and B. She was thrown from the right side up to directly above the hoop, and somehow managed to fall straight down (and in fact, it looks to me like she’s even falling to the right as she comes down to the hoop).
I would expect the net to shake a little after she goes through, but once she clears it, it stays perfectly still. That’s the kicker for me…
It’s gotta be a fake. It has that telltale trying-to-look-like-an-amateur-video-while-really-being-professional look going to it. I mean, look at the beginning of the clip. There’s that funky fade in fade out simulating a video camera hunting for the right exposure. There’s no reason a video camera would do that in that lighting situation.
Yes, I suppose you could have added that on to a real video in post, but why?
There’s also something about the way her hair moves in the air that just doesn’t seem quite right to me. The quality of this video reminds me of those series of video game commercials…you know, the home movie looking ones where a group of kids create a tractor beam/magnet or where kid puts on some special shoes and goes flying up into the sky (somebody help me here.) Those look pretty realistic too, but are so impausible it’s obvious they’re fake. For some reason, the quality of this recording and effort made to make it look amateur reminds me of this series of commercials.
It looks quite obviously to me that it’s a CGI job, because as someone pointed out, as her feet start to enter the hoop her body is at an angle. It then suddenly straightens out and she’s through. Since CGI effects are all the rage these days, that’s most likely how it was done.
-smug grin- Toldya.
d&r
Is anyone playing the game? Not hugely difficult, but still fun. I’ve managed to complete all the challenges in 7 shots, and I’m wondering if it’s possible to do any better. I’ve also completed every challenge but shocker by bouncing her off the ground. Anyone discover any interesing tricks?