UFOs over London, UK, 2011

ebx

New Member
The following video was reportedly recorded in London, UK, close to the BBC Radio Building.
It depicts some bright, circular objects performing odd movements in the sky. They do not seem to be lens flares, due to their uniform shape. The event seems to be witnessed by several people in the video. I would assume that these are independent witnesses and that it is not staged due to the diversity of people watching. This includes the waiter at the restaurant and people on the opposite sides of the road. Hence I would discard the CGI option. This does not mean that the event wasn't staged, but it would reduce its probability of being a hoax. I would also discard the drone and bird possibilities, due to their reflectiveness and shape of the objects.

What could it be?

 
I think what gives it away as staged to me, is the pan over to the right, to look at the people on the other side of the road. These people would most likely have been pretty much out of sight to someone recording the "events" in the sky. Even when they pan down to look at the two people roughly in front of them, those on the other side of the road, would have only been in peripheral vision. Given the environment two people standing on a pavement, on the other side of the road, wouldn't have stood out to someone recording what the video is purported to show.

Near the beginning, the cameraman zooms in on someone ahead of them, on the other side of the junction, at a cafe entrance, looking up at the sky. This is done while seemingly ignoring the two people with phones pointed up at the sky, who are standing just a few metres away and clearly in shot. This seems a little strange to do and looks like an similar attempt to establish other witnesses (before even looking up at the sky), as the pan to the right, to those on the other side of the road.

At one point Mr Grey Hair (who seems like the center of attention at street level) stops recording what's "going on in the sky" and start snapping pics of those around him. This feels like someone strange idea of natural behaviour, rather than the real thing and seems part of a theme of establishing there being other witnesses, to the extent of recording someone else doing the same.

There's also the briefly seen person on the left of the frame at 1:35 - 1:39. They are looking up at the sky when the camera pans down, but then walk off when Mr Grey Hair tries to take a snap of them. Possibly they're a passerby who wandered into this little enactment, looked up to see what people were looking at, then left when there was nothing to see and a stranger tried to take a photo of them.

Of course this is ignoring what's "in the sky" which looks like pretty easy to make CG, of indistinct blobs moving in strange, pointless ways, as are seen in so many fakes.

A higher res version of the video can be found here.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDIF-ZwJbF0
 
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The original video was supposedly taken in 2011. The placard visible at 0:09 and 0:32 shows a number 12-06-11, which could be the date (in British style) 12 June 2011. I do wonder why these old UFO stories get endlessly recycled. Aren't there enough new ones?

The film was supposedly taken outside 'the BBC Radio Building'. The building with the sign 'RADIO' in the film doesn't looks like any of the BBC's main London buildings, such as Broadcasting House, but the BBC is a huge organisation and may well have smaller radio outposts in London. Alternatively, it may belong to another radio company, and someone has just assumed that because it is in London it must be the BBC.

As a Londoner I don't recognise the specific location, but from the general style of the streets and buildings (age, size, architecture, etc) I think it is probably somewhere in the Paddington/Marylebone/Euston area, which is full of nondescript offices and shops built mainly between 1900 and 1960: neither Victorian not offensively modern.

In London at night rapidly moving patches of light are sometimes due to spotlights or laser beams reflected off clouds, perhaps as part of some artistic or promotional activity. But this video was taken in daylight, and some of the 'UFOs' appear in the sky outside clouds.

I agree this is most likely to be just a hoax. I found this article which seems to refer to the same video or some version of it. The author compares it to other recent (at the time) hoax videos, and does not find it especially impressive.

https://www.livescience.com/33362-ufo-london-mothership.html

For me one major consideration is that if UFOs really did appear in the sky over such a densely populated area as London I would expect there to be reports in mainstream media, and I can't find any from this period, other than those following up the 'viral videos'. Of course, UFO enthusiasts may well say that all such incidents are 'hushed up' in mainstream media, even Britain's notorious tabloids.
 
For me one major consideration is that if UFOs really did appear in the sky over such a densely populated area as London I would expect there to be reports in mainstream media, and I can't find any from this period, other than those following up the 'viral videos'. Of course, UFO enthusiasts may well say that all such incidents are 'hushed up' in mainstream media, even Britain's notorious tabloids.
I'd also expect videos from other folks, in a city that is a major tourism hub, full of folks with cameras on vacation in addition to a large population. Odd they Hushed Up all the rest of them, but not this one...
 
i have no proof but it feels staged to me. the fact this guy was filming already and "just happens to run into the people looking up the sky", they way he films the other people, the way the "light" moves.. all seems pretty off to me. the cameraguy also seems to stand still at the start of the video, then starts moving towards the sky-looking crowd, surprised by them all looking up.

claim: the guy doing the video, mr grey hair and maybe two friends are "insider". they just have to stop and look up, filming the sky. this will cause others to stop and look up as well, trying to find what these other people are looking at. its normal human behavior. the lights are edited in at a later stage. the way mr grey hair films strangers instead of filming the sky is very awkward.

this would be my personal hypothesis with no proof solely based on gut feeling and how i think they have pulled it off
 
As a Londoner I don't recognise the specific location, but from the general style of the streets and buildings (age, size, architecture, etc) I think it is probably somewhere in the Paddington/Marylebone/Euston area, which is full of nondescript offices and shops built mainly between 1900 and 1960: neither Victorian not offensively modern.

I googled the Kiko's Cafe Bar across the street - now defunct - and the location is Bolsover St, facing south, at the junction of Clipstone St. The Coral bookies is still there.

The building ahead and to the right is Yalding House, which was the site of BBC Radio 1 from the mid-1990s until 2013. If you wind Street View back to 2012 the third floor has Radio 1 Extra logos in the windows.
 
I like his detail filming himself running towards crossroad. Hopefully he didn't cut that part. It makes everything so realistic.
 
VFX central.
 

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I saw a huge triangular UFO today over London, near Victoria Station, when I looked out of a train window. Then I looked again with my glasses on (which I need for distant vision, not for reading), and saw at once that it was an advertising blimp.

What makes this slightly less boring is that the triangular appearance was due to the dark marking of part of the surface of the blimp. With my out-of-focus unaided vision the shape of the whole balloon was not apparent. But the object was relatively close (just a few hundred yards), and it is easy to imagine that from a greater distance, or with an out-of-focus camera, this ordinary blimp shape would be seen as a mysterious triangle.

On checking I find that in fact the object was a Goodyear blimp which is quite well-known around the world. There is a news report here:

https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/30/londoners-can-spot-the-goodyear-blimp-in-the-sky-today-14842118/

The photo in the report was taken from about 90 degrees to the side of the blimp, whereas my view today was more frontal, and with the light upper surface seen against a largely grey sky, not a blue one, making the normal blimp shape even more difficult to identify.
 
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