Let's look at the boogie man more closely, shall we?
We'll take a nice cross section of videos and have a good hard look, and wouldn't you know it, this is the one place on ATS where I know what I'm
talking about.
Watch out, this first one has some graphic shots of sick babies in the beginning. Still, it's a good video because of it's age.
This, is absolutely real. The mics are well placed, we hear outdoors ambient noise, we hear subtle breathy notes in the voice that we'd want to stop
with some panty hose if we were recording an album. In fact, let's remember this point. Osama's a breathy character. Very breathy in fact. More
on that later.
Anyway, here we can both see and hear every nuance, annunciation, and breath. Hell, we even hear and see some rolled Rs. Osama also has a personal
flourish of a sing songy delivery.
I'd like to point out the mic again, because mic placement becomes a concern of mine later
Once again, we have no question as to whether or not this has been doctored. Sam's holding a mic. We hear outdoors ambient noise. Plenty of
subtle, perfectly synced nuances in his speech that we both see and hear. Sing songy delivery. And let's not forget the breathiness.
Okay, someone posted this before, but I found a version without that goofy "Arabian nights" crap playing in the backround.
Anyway, this time around we once again hear some good-ass outdoors ambient noise, yet see no mic. This tells me that the mic is on the camera, and
not pinned on his shirt alla The Tonight Show. All of his speech nuances are both seen and heard. And once again we have breathiness.
Here's a video that has problems.
I went full screen for a close examination, and I found a little bit out.
First of all, there is no mic in sight.
However the sound quality is HOT. Redlining all over the place. And the "breaths" are such that the mic would have to be right in front of Sam's
mouth. There is a very small room reverb in the audio. Also, much of the audio isn't in sync with the video. There are a few extra mouth movements
where there shouldn't be. And the annunciation cannot be cannot be confirmed audio-visually.
My conclusion about this vid.
It's stock footage with an overdubb. The overdubb used someone speaking too closely to the mic, hence the redlining for the voice and breaths.
Also, redlining the voice distorts it to the point where it's hard to determine if it is that of the original speaker, and it's also hard to
determine vocal nuances.
The small room reverb tells me this was done in a little booth without the proper soundproofing.
This has all of the aforementioned problems in addition to the mysterious frozen moments. At 1:38 the footage is clearly spliced because it totally
skips. (did you see the movie Speed?)
This also contains a noise gate that cuts the sound input off as it degrades below a certain intensity, or amplitude.
Also, there is NO BREATHINESS. Someone forgot about it.
Altogether the sound is a bit different. Sam's "voice" is different. The "reverb" is different (bigger recording room) but seems to last for a
shorter duration due to a noise gate. It's also not quite as "HOT"
The last two videos here would be considered unacceptable in any audio-video class.
"You folks fell on your face, you get an f minus in my book."
Seriously, these last two videos are not only hodge-podge production jobs, but there doesn't seem to be a standard for overdubbing.
I assume that somewhere there is a big mess of stock OBL footage that these fakers are using.
But who's faking it.
Is AQ faking it, knowing that OBL is a powerful psychological weapon.
Or are we faking it, because my tin foil hat is too tight?
What say you?
Time reversal.
