Bright Lights Behind Trees, With Roiling Glare. Panama City, Florida.

it seems vaguely familiar. was it construction?

reminds me of the kangaroo hunters in Crocodile Dundee (but since its the panhandle they are probably jack-a-lope hunting :) … is that politically incorrect to say?)
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is there a reason i'm missing to think the lights are up highish in the sky?. just first place I landed... there's a road at red line there behind the tree line.
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I remember going and taking photos of a light through trees,
oh.. after they show the uncanny similarities of atv type lights or lights on a boat, they decide to watch all night since it is a "ufo hot spot". and eventually they all ooh and aaahh over some light in the trees like yours. so maybe that's what you were showing.
 
It looks to me that this show is trying to get two Demos on board. They do some debunking, then hoax something "mysterious." So you've got just enough to intrigue skeptics, then tickle the true believers.
 
Looks like a few military flares, where their brightness is lighting-up their own smoke trails...
...and if you filmed it on a crappy camera (or good camera with the wrong settings).....
(Mick, don't try this at home, to test it...;) )

 
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Looks like a few military flares, where their brightness is lighting-up their own smoke trails...
I don't think so. It seems pretty clearly to be the lights of some vehicle (or maybe fixed lights with parallax)

It's bugging me, as I know this was discussed before, somewhere.
 
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I suppose so.
If you start watching from the beginning, it looks like a vehicle and is obvious.
That should be the "teller" clue.
But farther into the vid, it eventually looks like a fireball.
This could be a combination of "bad camera" and wet tree foliage.

Floridians are known for their trucks that can make it across mud and swamp brush.
 
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So I went outside in the dark to try to duplicate it. Here's a bright light maybe 100 feet behind a pine tree, viewed from maybe 200 feet in front of it.
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You get a fairly distinctive circular pattern of reflected lights.
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Panorama from the back (makes the tree look closer)
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I think what would be needed to duplicate it better would be an out-of-focus camera and a wet tree.
 
I think what would be needed to duplicate it better would be an out-of-focus camera and a wet tree.
Sums-up a lotta UFO stuff. :rolleyes:
But for this one, you might need an assistant to run/walk the light(s) through the woods, and yes a substandard camera..
 
isn't it filmed by pointing camera at water?

like this


+shaky hands & not so calm water
 
isn't it filmed by pointing camera at water?
I don't think it's rippling enough. The movement of the sorrounding glares seems to just correlate with the movement of the light.

I think I'll go chop a branch off a pine tree and stick it in my garage for some controlled experiments.
 
I can't tell how high off the ground or far away those lights are, but the arrangement makes me think farm equipment, likely a tractor or possibly a combine. Some older/"well-used" tractors (having driven a few like this) only have lights mounted on the cab and/or rear fender(s) and not on the nose. Also, I note that one of the light sources in the video (far right) seems to actually be a pair of lights and that the video does not seem to have audio which would likely be necessary to pass a tractor as a UFO at a closer range. A lot of the light effects seem to be scintillation from pine needles in the foreground.
 
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The actual image is very dependant on the relative sizes of things. So it's hard to duplicate an exact version. But we do get the kind of swirling lights around the single larger lights. The scale here is probably way off though.
 
hang some plastic and fire up the humidifier, if you have one.


add: you also might need to use a house plant. a pine needle is pretty opaque, I think the "smoke" is the light coming through leaves, not just between leaves. this is the direction the TV show is facing to do their filming.
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In my urban area, I might be able to find an open-air parking garage with tree structure in the foreground....cars pull in and out at night, with lights on.
I see palms in the orig video.
I'm in So Cal near the coast.... with fog the last few days.
I'll arm my cellphone arm.....try to get video.

....somewhere I have a point&shoot from 2009 or so.
 
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Always like this one from an aesthetic point, I remember seeing it years ago. It started doing the rounds again recently, so I decided to stabilized it.

After putting a bit of work into it I came across the same link that’s posted here. Since this video is double the resolution I would’ve had to redo all the work, so I put it on hold until now.

Nothing too interesting to note.

Although, as it was uploading I did notice some, previously still, branches start whipping around at about the 52 second mark.

 
branches start whipping around at about the 52 second mark.
I only see one frond bit that may be moving a bit. although it could also just be how the light play is changing the scene.

I actually thought the photographer was moving to his right, but when i freeze frame a bunch of snips and look at them side by side, i think that too is just the light play mimicking movement of the photographer.
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Not quite sure what I was after here, but maybe sometimes I just need to take a longer walk around.

Probably should have taken more time to tighten things up, but in any case, the swirling effect does seem most apparent and prevalent when the lights go behind the most obviously dense foliage.

 
I'm sticking with my first guess on this one: Its a train.

A - the linear direction of movement
B - the light configuration
C - the speed
D - the fact the videographer removed the audio

So I studied footage of trains at night, and also found the same flaring, rippling light glare effect (no need for branches, suggests its a lens thing)...


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rftl6XoDq0
 
the same flaring, rippling light glare effect (no need for branches, suggests its a lens thing)..

I think a combination. If you boost the levels on the Florida video you can see the weird surrounding glares correspond with branches. But the way it kind of swirls is similar to your train video.

Knowing the camera used in either case would be useful.
 
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