Industrial Light & Magic (ILM for short) was a famous film visual-effects company. Since George Lucas founded it in 1975 and worked on the visual effects for the first Star Wars film, Industrial Light & Magic had provided visual-effects services for more than 300 movies.
These included, but were not limited to, Harry Potter, numerous Marvel films, Terminator, Transformers, Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurassic Park, and many others.
Even today, Industrial Light & Magic still represented the highest level of film visual-effects production in the world, and its technical achievements had no equal.
Since they specialized in visual effects, they had also studied the authenticity of films in considerable depth. People trusted the results of their assessments.
That was why Bales had specifically sent the video to them for examination.
Then Bales connected with a chubby white man. "Hello, Sam Denver. Tell us a little about yourself."
In the video, the chubby white man introduced himself:
"Hello, everyone. I'm Sam, a visual-effects planner at Industrial Light & Magic. I've worked there for fifteen years, from coloring footage in post-production at the beginning, to rendering, and then planning. I've done every step. Now I'm a visual-effects planner, so I'm very familiar with how every film is made and how its effects are created. I can usually tell whether a lot of films are real just by taking a quick look."
The footage then showed Wang Yi's free throw on the left side of the screen, while Sam continued speaking on the right.
"I watched the video of Wang Yi's free throw at least fifty times. With the naked eye, I couldn't find any signs of fakery."
At Sam's words, the smile on Bales's face stiffened slightly.
Sam continued:
"However, that doesn't mean what happened in the video was real.