By Sandy Fitzgerald From Newsmax

Nobody is holding out hope that 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who were filmed being beheaded by what appeared to be seven-feet-tall Islamic State militants are still alive, but experts are saying that the footage that was released was most likely faked.

The video, posted online on Feb. 15, featured what appeared to be several extremely tall, black-clad ISIS assassins leading the victims to a Libyan beach for their executions, but the experts told FoxNews.com Friday that the production looked to have been done on “green screen” with some background added in at a later time.

“The Islamic State’s manipulation of their high-production videos has become commonplace,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium in Florida. She said the executions most likely were done in an studio, with the background imagine coming from the Bay in Sirte, located on the Mediterranean Sea at the northern Coast of Libya.

Several technical mistakes in the video point to it being faked, said Kahn, including the part that made the jihadists appear to be more than seven feet tall, or as much as two feet above their Christian victims.

Further, Khan said, the speaker, “Jihad Joseph” appeared much larger than the sea in his background shots, and his head was out of proportion, showing he was filmed inside with the sea background added behind him.

“The shot that seems really tampered with is the one with the really tall Jihadists and the dwarf Christians,” said Lambert, a professor at New York University’s film school. “The close-ups of jihadists on the beach are most likely green screen.”

In another effect, the sea appeared to turn red after the beheadings, but Khan said to do that, it would take much more blood than that from the 21 victims and a forensic analyst from her firm noted that turning the sea red is the “cheapest and easiest post-production tool” that could be “achieved with a cell phone.”

Lambert said that she even thinks that in an opening shot, the figures of the men might even be “animated. They never had more than six men on the beach.”

Instead, she said, the video’s directors used “rotoscoping,” in the marching and kneeling scenes. In rotoscoping, an image is manually taken from a background during a live action video and put on a different background.

“The weird jump-cut editing in the opening is a way to conceal this,” Lambert said.
There were a few scenes, including shots that panned prisoners on the beach and tilted to them kneeling that looked real to Lambert, but still, “they might have been enhanced in some way.”

Khan’s forensic analyst, who was not named, also said the perspective by the shore was wrong.

“What is supposed to be the seashore is, in reality, a bay as determined by the tide, rocks, and wave action,” the analyst said. “Looking at the two big sets of footprints in the sand shown at a 90-degree angle, neither set of footprints can be the hostages or the hostage takers. Had this been a seaside shot, the sand would have been much softer and the victims’ footprints would have sunk much deeper into the sand.”

Khan said that the beheading of the final victim also showed a technical mistake.

“Not only did it lack the correct blood pulsation for decapitation, but seems to have had the blood ‘faked’ with cornstarch,” Khan said, noting that human blood darkens after exposure.

The final victim’s blood did not darken, she said, pointing to a possibility that the beheading were not all done at once.

Khan said ISIS likely manipulate the video in hopes of hiding their operations.

“The producer probably required that only the cameraman and his assistant be present for the outdoor frames,” she said. “Later, in post production, the editors dropped in the executions.

Fox turned over the TRAC analysis to the CIA, where a spokesman said the matter was being reviewed. There has even been some speculation on “Jihad Joseph,” who some believe may be American.

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/isis-beheading-video-fake/2015/02/21/id/626141/#ixzz3SPq5RkP9