Huffington Post UK  |  By Michael Rundle   

A special effects expert has explained how he faked footage of a UFO which has fooled alien hunters on YouTube since last year.

While the clip itself didn't actually win that many people over - most users recognised that the ship was a fake - they praised the graphics and attention to detail of the hoax.

But what they didn't know is that every pixel in "UFO Over Santa Clarita" - from the sky to the car and the driver's hands - was fake as well.

Filmmaker Aristomenis Tsirbas made the entire 39-second film from scratch, with a computer.

Wired explains that the intention of the clip was to prove that CGI could be photorealistic.

"Everybody assumes the background and car are real, and that the UFOs are probably fake, especially the over-the-top mothership at the end," Tsirbas told Wired. The general reaction is disbelief, so I usually have to prove it by showing a wireframe of the entire shot to prove that nothing is real."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/11/ufo-santa-clara-cgi-fake_n_2660577.html