Turns out that amazing YouTube video of a ball girl kung-fu climbing the outfield wall to catch a high-flying foul was staged as a marketing gimmick for Gatorade. Is anyone surprised? The spot was conceived by Chicago ad agency Element 79 and directed by Baker Smith. "It's certainly an amazing fabrication of an amazing play," writes Bob Garfield of Advertising Age. "The ball girl is a stuntwoman who was lifted by cables as she planted her feet against the wall, a sequence cut into actual game footage and enhanced with a bit of CGI and a perfectly natural-sounding announcer track."
Read more about it:
• Amazing Ball Girl Catch - YouTube Video
• Element 79's Swan Song for Gatorade - Advertising Age
• Fresno Grizzlies Gatorade Ad on YouTube - ABC News
Comments
Proves an old saying from my father. “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see”. sw
DAMN! Had me fooled! Was imagining that ballplayer out there trying that move after the game. LOL
Looked real to me, but the announcer did go the replay pretty darn fast, much faster than you would expect for a minor league broadcast.
Hoodwinked again. Really disappointed it was not real. I saved it, but glad I didn’t circulate it. Disappointed.
Which is real, supergirl’s play or Dave’s comments?
It was such an obvious fake from the beginning, I’m amazed anyone was taken in. The girl would need to have been bitten by a radioactive spider to do that.
Seriously … how F’ing _stupid_ would you have to be to honestly believe that video was real in the first place ?!!?
Calm down love
p.s get a life x
Can you prove that it is not the real thing??? Where are the cables?
perfectly natural-sounding announcer track? yeah, for AM radio maybe
Anyone who can’t believe that the footage might have been real is simply not an athlete. An athlete knows that play is possible, and given the perfect circumstances, it definitely could happen, even by a young girl. I’ll end with my favorite quote – Luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity.
agreed – It way more unlikely that it was done with cables
I knew it was fake from the first time l saw it.That girl does not have the face,confidence or stamina to perform such as act.But who would believe me anyway?
how could you possibly tell her athleticism from her face? how can you judge her “stamina”? Stamina/endurance is not especially involved in this type of feat anyway. What made it believable was that one COULD do that move – but timing it to catch the ball was the un-believable part. A well-trained man or woman could get that high. Oh, and yeah, a stuntwoman, I am sure that you could tell from her FACE, CONFIDENCE and STAMINA she is capable of STUNTS but just not this stunt…. geez, the comments get be riled up.
Even in an article that quotes the maker of the ad and an ad magazine confirming it as an ad AND describing how they did it…. you STILL have 20% of the posters here insisting/arguing that it was real… I guess that’s why aliens and bigfoot will always exist.
You can tell the ball girl’s coloring in the wide and medium shots is more faint than the outfielder. It’s quite easy to see but executed very well. Great idea for a Gatoraid Aid.
Right on! They did the one of the kid on a BMX bike passing the peloton in the Tour de France – complete with French commentators. Also looked great, but also clearly a modern smoke & mirrors production.
Not real because it’s too hard? Bull! Ever seen Parkour? This wouldn’t even be a hard move for a good freerunner.
Yeah I was taken in. But I had my suspicions when that girl didn’t show up on every talk show from Letterman to Good morning America.
It was the most obvious fake in history. There is zero percent chance that your first instinct would be to bounce off both walls (with your back turned) at precisely the time the ball was coming in when you turned around. Zero percent. Zero. If you for even one second thought this was real, you need to question your perception of reality. What would really happen? She would back-peddle to the wall and make a feeble jump attempt and probably miss the ball completely as it was too high up the wall for a standing vertical leap. That would have been a funny “fail” video, and also been real.
what game was that ?, when was it? anyone..
as a chinese, i think it coule be real, so damn easy for some kung-fu people. look at Jackie Chen, this is a piece of cake for him.