Old Video & CGI Simulation Shared as Cyclone Nivar Visuals in TN

An old video from 2017 and a CGI simulation have been falsely shared as visuals of Cyclone Nivar in Tamil Nadu.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Since Cyclone Nivar began its landfall near Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, 25 November, social media has been flooded with visuals of the storm.

We came across two videos that have been falsely shared as scenes from different areas of Tamil Nadu during the cyclone.

However, we could trace one video back to 2017, and the other one turns out be a CGI simulation of a tornado has also been shared as visuals from Mahabalipuram.

VIDEO 1

People shared one of the viral videos with captions that read, “Chennai Rain. Marina beach road today.” Some people also used #CycloneNivar in their captions.

An archive of the post can be found here.

Prasar Bharati News Service also shared the same video on their Twitter handle.

An archive of the post can be found here.

The video was also widely shared on Facebook and YouTube with similar captions.

An archive of the post can be found here.

An archive of the post can be found here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We extracted keyframes from the video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension and conducted a reverse image of certain keyframes.

While looking through the search results, we came across a few videos that were posted in 2017. We found the same video posted on YouTube on 4 November 2017, which was titled “Chennai flood 2017 | Shocking footage from Marina beach road”.

An archive of the post can be found here.

To verify if the viral image was indeed from Chennai’s Marina beach, we looked for the images of the place on Google Street View. We found multiple similarities between the viral video and Google’s street view images.

We also found a Google street view image from 2017 that showed the plantation that can be seen in the viral video.

Google street view image from 2017.

VIDEO 2

Another video shared as visuals of the Cyclone Nivar had garnered over 37,900 views at the time of writing this article.

An archive of the post can be found here.

Several users also identified the location as Mahabalipuram.

An archive of the post can be found here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We noticed that the water in the video was still despite a storm overhead, and since there’s a funnel of clouds, which is a characteristic of tornadoes, we performed a keyword search of ‘tornado CGI’.

We came across a video on YouTube from December 2018, uploaded by user Alexandru Dineci, with the caption, “Tornado CGI simulation (Cinema 4D TurbulenceFD).”

The viral video has been cut short and starts around 00:10 seconds into the original video.

We also looked up Alexandru Dineci’s social media handles and came across his public Instagram account (@orphicframer).

He had also uploaded the viral video here in 2019, with the hashtags ‘visual effects’ and ‘CGI.’ He identifies the location as Channel Islands, Jersey.

He has also provided a breakdown of his CGI affects in his Instagram highlights.

Evidently, an old video and a CGI simulation have been falsely shared as visuals of Cyclone Nivar in Tamil Nadu.

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