ITV documentary mistakes Arma 2 for real IRA film

[MightyJordan]

An ITV documentary screened last night presented footage from Arma 2 as a secret IRA film from 1988.

The clip, which you can see below (via PC Gamer), allegedly showed a helicopter being shot down by the IRA using weapons supplied by Colonel Gaddafi.

Speaking over the footage, the narrator says: "With Gaddafi's heavy machine guns, it was possible to shoot down a helicopter, as the terrorists' own footage of 1988 shows."

Responding to the programme, Marek Spanel, CEO of Arma developer Bohemia Interactive, told PC Gamer the company hadn't been approached by ITV about using the footage.

"We are going to try to get some explanation from ITV how this could have happened," he said.

"Sometimes creativity and realism in our games lead into crazy results and this is one of such example. I just briefly watched the entire documentary and I still can not believe it as it is overall very serious and lengthy feature.

"We are surprised our games apparently may look real enough to some users already that they can not tell it is not real life footage."

Source: CVG

[Nick H. Supervisor]

What makes this weird is that ITV must have reworked the footage to get rid of the music playing in the original edit, which surely means they were well aware that this wasn't IRA footage?

That's just really weird...

[neufuse Veteran]

wow that takes all of two seconds to realize that "film" is computer generated

grass sure was pixelated back in the 80's....

[rajputwarrior]

hahahahaha how did they not realize people would know this is a video game or computer generated footage?

[jakem1]

I wouldn't expect anything serious from ITV anyway given that the whole station seems to be devoted to Jordan and Peter Andre. It seems fitting that the footage in a pro-colonialism propaganda piece would be from a game.

[LingeringSoul]

Here's the video clip that ITV ended up using, since the video in the OP seems to be down:

Pretty funny stuff. Like others in this thread have stated, it's pretty mind-boggling that nobody caught this. What's even funnier than the video itself is the comments in the Destructoid story.

[The Teej]

I understand sometimes stuff looks realistic, and from a distance I could just about understand it, but come on, there's more jaggies then a chainsaw on those models!

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

The problem with a lot of journalism nowadays, you just cannot trust it.

Wasn't it a Sky News reporter a few years ago committed suicide because he was found out to be running [old] video of missiles being launched from US ships against Iraq and claiming it to have happened that day?

If you're going to make documentaries or news, report the truth and not fantasy.

[Daedroth]

Good old ITV. Crap as ever.

[ThisSiteHasLostItsCharm]

hahah...