The videos aren't consistent, I don't think. The far shots show a flash that's missing from the close-in shot. I guess those might be from outside of the frame of the close shot, but it should change the illumination somewhat. Plus the "hick American tourist" voices on the close video don't register any surprise there, and the flash should be quite nearby for them.

The blob in the close-in shot looks incredibly two-dimensional. It's what I would get if I drew a fuzzy circle in Apple Motion, dragged it up, and used motion interpolation to have it fly. It never goes behind anything or does anything other than randomly grow and shrink.

Of course, we have videos from three supposedly independent sources. Have the people who took the videos come forward to be identified? Are there any on-scene eyewitnesses?

Apparently a fourth video has emerged, with some slightly better rendering on the blob. However, the shape of the blob in the fourth video doesn't match the ones in any other shot!

One or two videos might just be a random prank. Four videos, ramping up in quality? I suspect a media campaign.

Arguing for a JJ Abrams connection: the object in the fourth video looks like lens flare, Abrams' favorite video effect!

As for Rev's point on the background voices, it's hard for me to judge the non-English ones, but in Video 3, the Deep South accents seem slightly fake. More to the point, the dialogue saying that they see UFOs all the time back home sounds like a joke about UFOs being seen by backwoods hicks in the middle of nowhere.

Putting the American tourists in means that whatever they're marketing has some kind of American audience. So I think Patrick has a good idea on this one.

If anyone is interested in doing a recreation of this video, let me know. Basically, I'd need two similar views of a recognizable landmark from about a mile away, ideally from above. Best if they were shot using a tripod or something else to steady the camera so that I could add camera motion artificially. I'd also want a shot from the same location with the camera handheld and shaking a bit for comparison. Then, finally, I'd want a close-in still shot of the same landmark under similar lighting conditions.

I can add a very basic UFO. It wouldn't look as good as the fourth video, but I think I can probably more-or-less duplicate the first two. It would be an amusing exercise, if nothing else.

Hey thetalkingmongoose/Gef, your wish is my command.

Nosfer: Hmm, good questions. I'd want to duplicate the backgrounds from the videos as much as possible. I'd say 3 minutes of steady from Point A. (If you feel like acting, give me an additional shot where you pretend to see something amazing and I'll see if it works.) About a minute of shaky-cam from A should make the point. I'm trying to create a visual test of the idea that the video that Rev pointed out made– that since there was no parallax shift of the remote object, then the shakiness was added artificially.

A zoomed-in still shot from Point B (closer to the landmark) is fine. If it's a recognizable landmark, I could probably pull stock shots from the web like they did, but if you can get a good still from a different angle, that would be even better.

I can't promise too much. I'm a fair hand with Motion, but haven't actually tried to fake a UFO with it before.

I'd prefer HD (but not full HD)– always easier to downsample than up. We can use DropBox to transfer the files. Unfortunately I'm going to be busy most of the weekend, or I'd pop up and film the Golden Gate Bridge.

Anything high-contrast is good, since their UFO is essentially a white blob.