A shaky camera turns on, out of focus inhaste to capture something of terrible importance. The camera zooms in, and theimage emerges in awful clarity: the space shuttle, destroyed and coasting inhelpless orbit, the astronauts almost certainly dead. The impact debris coastsalongside the ruined shuttle in a funeral procession of atmospheric flotsam.
The most disturbing thing is that no story is explained. We see the destruction like a live news feed, without context,without explanation, and our imaginations paint the back story with our deepest fears: collision, terrorism, tragic accident.
With no commentary except the occasional audio interruption of the NASA controllers, the video feels like the pause in a historical retrospective, the quiet stillness between scripted voice-overs that lets the audience reflect on the tragedy. A moment of silence for the dead.
In an age where special effects are getting cleaner and more elaborate, this one steals their thunder by slipping past our increasing skepticism with decidedly low-tech methods.
The man who created this video is known online as The Faking Hoaxer (TFH for short), and he has a talent for creating footage that earns the rarest of compliments: It feels real.
You can see the video here.
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