How did they achieve this practical effect

December 20, 2024 6:01 AM

The video shows a situation from a German “friendly” prank TV show - how did they achieve this effect with different people being swallowed by the puddle.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGoE_nA2oA

sorry for the link I didn’t get it to work on my phone..

posted by mathiu to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

I'm going to go with "actors": the whole thing is scripted, including the prank victims.

There are multiple angle shots of the first man disappearing into the puddle around 1:15, including one around 1:23 that is clearly a different take (in previous shots his hands are both above his head when he disappears, but in that one, one hand is down). I could be wrong, but reality shows are notorious for presenting scripted events as real.
posted by justkevin at 6:34 AM on December 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: They actually do have a reputation for not acting the parts of the prank victims, so I would operate under the assumption that the taxi drivers are not actors.. The whole thing is certainly cut together from many different angles and timelines - but I’m wondering about the mechanism of opening and closing the puddle and where to keep everybody when they’re down there..
posted by mathiu at 6:50 AM on December 20, 2024

Simplest explanation is that they dug a hole, filled it with water, and shot a few takes of people jumping in / getting out. Those were then edited together with the "reactions".
posted by steveminutillo at 7:30 AM on December 20, 2024

There's no one in the puddle. They stopped the camera to let the guy climb out before shooting the reaction. The multiple angles and rapid camera cuts are there to misdirect the viewer.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:32 AM on December 20, 2024

Yes, surely, the answer is "editing." There are so many (too many) cuts here that there's no way be sure of any temporal continuity.

Also, because someone has to say it: That one guy's flanged mullet is a thing of true glory.
posted by Dr. Wu at 7:44 AM on December 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

At 5:10 there are bubbles coming up at the surface of the puddle. So they might have had soemone with a breathing apparatu down there at someo point.
posted by bluefrog at 8:13 AM on December 20, 2024

It does seem very much as though everyone is acting. Surely your first move on seeing someone disappear under water would be to lay down over the edge of the hole and try to fish them out? At which point it would become clear that it is a tank with hard edges (clearly visible in the video) that you're not going to be able to dig them out of with a shovel. And one might expect a taxi driver to become suspicious about the cameras at that point if he weren't already.

On the other hand I don't think this is impossible to do as a practical effect, though I don't know the details. It seems like you could have a person jump into the tank, he breathes underwater for a bit, then while you distract the taxi driver with the whole "we have to dig him out" bit, tank guy gets out and goes over to the building where a clean and dry identical set of clothes and a hairdryer are waiting. Probably the tank is shallow at the edges and only deep in the middle for the "it's only a shallow puddle" demonstration, or possibly there's a movable grate or something six inches or so under the surface.
posted by mskyle at 9:05 AM on December 20, 2024

One of the things the edits are likely hiding is the extent to which the pranksters are using distraction and misdirection to get the prank victims to not see what they don't want them to see. This is pretty basic magic stuff, and I bet if you were to look at the raw footage in chronological order each separate taxi driver segment would be much longer.

So, there's not really any mechanism, it's like there's the guy getting "swallowed" by the puddle, then the taxi driver freaks out for 10 seconds, then the guy with the shovel takes the driver's shoulder and turns him away from the puddle and walks him towards the taxi for a minute so the puddle guy can sneak out behind the taxi driver's back, and most of that minute is edited out, and then the taxi driver freaks out for another 10 seconds, and then gets walked away by shovel guy for another 2 minutes so the pranksters can stick some kind of plate just under the surface of the puddle, then the taxi driver is guided back to the puddle so he can touch it and think it's just a shallow puddle and there's no way the original guy should have disappeared, and then he gets walked away again, and then the fake emergency services guys distract him while the girl sneaks into the puddle, and so on and so forth and then it all gets edited together in a very fast and confusing way with all the other prank victims so you as the viewer assume that each prank happens just as fast as you watched it. Boom the guy goes in the puddle, boom the taxi driver grabs shovel guy, boom the taxi driver touches the shallow puddle, boom the puddle guy appears safe and dry next to the taxi.

But really what happened is that there are long stretches that are edited out where the prank victims get intentionally guided and distracted and manipulated so they don't see the pranksters doing some pretty basic sneaking around, no mechanisms required.
posted by soundguy99 at 9:08 AM on December 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

Can't say much about this particular video, but I was the 'victim' on a German prank show a long time ago, and the cameras and mics all around the place were explained to me by a friend (who owned the place and was in on it with the producers) as "they're filming a movie here in a little while."
posted by bashos_frog at 9:18 AM on December 20, 2024 [4 favorites]

My assumption at the outset is that there are two guys with identical plaid shirts, and the drivers are pranked one at a time. Several prank targets over several takes. If you build a trap door hole with drainage once the top closes, it would hardly be worth the effort for one prankee.
posted by droomoord at 10:38 AM on December 20, 2024

Genuine prank? You've seen the beginning... It's two guys dressed similarly and looking nearly identical coordinating the prank. The pool part was good acting, a scuba tank, and the guy above ground carefully walking on the solid part of the hole covered by water made opaque.
posted by kschang at 1:12 PM on December 20, 2024 [1 favorite]