The Legendary “Amazing Basketball Shots”
So while there might not be anything to do during the summer in Utah, apparently there’s more than enough to do in Birmingham, Alabama. You may have seen some of these shots featured earlier this year in some national Hampton Inn commercials, but after unveilling their third installment - and a “how-to video” in an attempt to silence the skeptics - the boys will be featured on ESPN’s SportsNation either today or tomorrow at 4:00 PM EST on ESPN2.
Do you think these are real?
Source: The Birmingham News
August 25th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
S-SiN says:
Great stuff! all they need now is lebron in the picture getting horse challenged and seven nike fags in worn wrinkly suits confiscating cameras
August 25th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
jryu says:
i dont care if they’re real or not… it’s a good way to waste the last hour of the day @ work…..
August 25th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Baby Huey says:
yeah they are real, it just takes a million attempts to get one to go in
August 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
REALLY??!! says:
i wish they had better music
August 25th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
JAmes says:
terrible music and def. not real- def. not real
August 25th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
JAmes says:
mabey 5% are real- the rest no Way- LeBrons Powerade commercial with the full court shots is more believable than some of those shots
August 25th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
sweetv0mit says:
ARE YOU SERIOUS? has anybody tried hitting a basketball with a baseball bat? ball aint gonna get far!!!! and to hit it using one hand? are you serious??
August 25th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Diego says:
I think real (although one shot looked a bit bogus on the trajectory to me). Agree with Baby Huey @ 3, it just takes a hell of a lot of repetition and a camera continuously rolling on a tripod (with editing out of the misses).
And I’d love to go slamming on one of those 8 ft. rims in some of the indoor shots.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Sacto_J says:
It might be true that a basketball isn’t going to go that far hitting it with a bat, but the rubber Shrek ball they’re using in a couple of the shots certainly would, and explains some of the bounce they’re getting as well. Since when could the average white 12 year old even throw a basketball from one end of the court to the other to begin with, much less 8 to 10 feet high in the air….
August 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
username says:
some of those are potentially legit, other are made using video editing software for sure.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Mannywood29 says:
Some are real, others are fake. There’s no way a basketball can bounce just as high on a third bounce as on the first bounce like it did on some of these shots.
My favorite part was the end of part 3, when they quote Phillippians 4:13. Yeah, you can do anything through He who gives you strength….but you had to use digital editing for some of them. Faith based on lies is still faith. Like Slim Charles said on The Wire, “If it’s a lie, we fight on that lie.”
August 26th, 2009 at 5:30 am
sans says:
Mostly real. If you overinflate the balls (god that sounds gay) it makes way more sense. And why is hitting a basketball with a baseball bat so hard? That’s one of my favorite horse shots.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Simon says:
I have personally never tried hitting a basketball with a baseball bat. On some it looks like they are hitting a rubber ball which would definitely help. Either way, for a 12-13 year old kid to hit a basketball 50 feet using one hand seems pretty crazy.
What do you think is the best shot? I definitely have to go with the yellow balloon in part 2!
August 26th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Ian says:
real imo those kids had all summer to do that shit.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Kermit the Washington says:
So fake. However they did that video where dude goes of this huge jump into a tiny swimming pool, that’s how these cats are making these “trick shots” videos. Totally realistic looking, but not real.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Dave says:
I’m a visual fx designer and I can tell you that the majority (maybe 90%) of those are fake. I can even see where the cuts are made (the most obvious being at 1.40)..
But they were very entertaining to watch, and I think that’s the whole point. Good job..
August 26th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Jwill says:
It’s pretty obvious to me that those are NOT 10 foot hoops…look at the kids standing by the baskets….still probably takes a lot of time and repetition so they a nice trick shots. But I really don’t think they are full size baskets which makes it easier to get a ball in on the bounce
August 26th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Carson says:
Hi, I am the guy who started the amazing basketball shots. We started making shots back in 2006, and we kept making them better and better. I don’t know how many people will read this, but I can tell that they are all 100% real, I have been there for each and everyone of them. I own the camera, and alot are made at my house. It really gets old when people say that the shots are fake. It took us a total of four (4!!!)years to make these three videos, and for the non believers, we have made plenty of videos proving how we make the shots. Do you think we would be on national commercials, and ESPN if these shots were fake. If the ad agency was looking for fake shots, they would have faked them themselves. And for the people who say some are real, and some are fake, we have Windows Movie Maker, there isnt any way to fake shots there. Check out these videos to see how we do it, and why they arent fake…(and we do use real basketballs, except for like 5 times when we used a kickball, and it is easier to hit a ball with a bat one handed, than it is two handed)
Here is the making of ONE shot, and how long it takes…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvvNgKD48xU
Here are some bloopers that we have encountered over the years…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H39lWynzWEo
And, if you only watch one, this proves it all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HXU07vh7jw
I hope you watch, and I’m glad alot of you enjoy our hard work!
August 26th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
baron von faulk says:
Dude, the ‘Making of ONE shot’ video was totally fake. haha
Naw but I don’t know why these are hard to believe, none were just unbelievable to me, just impressive and lucky at the same time.
This thread looks like the damn Youtube posts. fake! nu-uh!
August 26th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Jill says:
I am the mom of the boy who does all these videos. I can tell you none are fake. We do not have good enough software to make fake shots look real. If any of you were to go outside and have the determination to try to make one shot over and over…eventually it goes in! Since some shots have taken days to make…no wonder the kids get excited when they go in. When the ad agency asked us for the raw footage for quality purposed when making the Hampton Inn commercials…they said they would be able to tell if they were edited. They were not. Sometime due to poor camera quality or in the transfer to YouTube…some shots lag a bit and may look edited…they are not. They are good kids who have fun and it paid off.
August 26th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Bryan says:
I’m another member of the group that does these shots. I understand that there’s a lot of fake crap on the internet today, but I’m getting pretty tired of how people just go “FAKE” without ever trying these things themselves. I challenge you all to go try it. Will you make the shots quickly? No. Neither did we most of the time. A few of these shots took several days to master. But I guarantee you that if you do it right and try for a while, you’ll at least get close. If the ball isn’t flat, it goes pretty far when you hit it with a baseball bat. Go try it. A well-inflated ball can bounce ridiculously high (the ones from Six Flags are the best). Go try it. Get off the couch and go try it. You don’t have to be some kind of basketball master to do it, you just have to have an attention span. Most people don’t have one these days, so they just assume that the rest of us don’t either. Sorry, but even a few of us teenagers still have attention spans. We’ve been doing this stuff off and on for four years. We started out with terrible shots that we thought were amazing, and we just got better and better. One day we posted a (terrible) collection of the shots on YouTube. Then as we got better, so did the videos. Eventually we came out with the Legendary Shots.
There’s no faking at all. Come on, do we look like Hollywood producers? We would have to be insanely skilled at editing to fake this. If we were that good, the ad agency would have contacted us about getting a job, not about being in a commercial. Besides, we would have to have professional editing software to fake this stuff realistically. We would have to have Hollywood equipment. Sorry, but we can’t afford that. We’ve got a $100 Flip Ultra camera and Windows Movie Maker. If you can figure out a way to fake basketball shots with that equipment, you could probably find a well-paying job with a movie studio or ad agency.
And besides, even if we were undercover Hollywood editors, faking this stuff would probably take even longer than making it. That’s why the ad agency went to YouTube to find shots for the Hampton Inn commercial rather than making or faking their own… It would take a lot of time and money, even for a huge multinational ad agency. Even with the premade shots, they still had to spend hours upon hours upon hours doing touch-ups such as recoloring, lighting, and removing the word “GATORS” from one guy’s shirt. They had a big team working long hours on the commercials, as Carson saw when they invited him to Chicago to tour their operation. Imagine how many people would have had to work on it if they were faking the shots entirely. Imagine how much money it would have cost, and how much time it would have taken. Now… Imagine a bunch of high schoolers in Hoover, Alabama doing that. It would be impossible.
Thank you very much to those of you who don’t go out of your way to see the negative side of everything.