On July 25, 2021, NFL quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady posted a video on social media that supposedly showed him playing catch with a throwing machine. In the video, Brady appears to throw the ball so accurately that it squeezes perfectly in between the two spinning wheels of the throwing machine that the machine spits the ball out in a perfect spiral.
This would be quite an amazing feat if this video was real, but this video is not real. This is a computer-generated video that was created by a digital artist.
This video is just the latest in a long line of dubious videos supposedly showing superhuman athletic abilities, such as the video of Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchaku, the video of a woman playing ping pong with her forehead, or the video of NBA star Lebron James hitting increasingly long shots.
The above-displayed video was created by Ari Fararooy, a director who describes his style as "juxtaposing reality with visual effects, so that the surrealism can really pop and feel out of place." Fararooy's original post to Instagram included credits for a VFX person (himself) and CGI (@warmnfuzzy.tv). The original video was captioned "haters will say it's fake."
Not to be a hater ... but this is fake.
In addition to the fact that this video was created by an artist known for "juxtaposing reality with visual effects," and the fact that a CGI artist was credited for their work on the video, there are also a few visual clues to indicate that this footage if fake. Captain Disillusion, an online personality known for his analysis of CGI videos, pointed to the blurry background just above the machine and the cord (which appears to slide across the grass after the machine falls) as two indications that this video is the work of digital artistry: