A special effects expert has poured cold water on any suggestion that a gymnast is able to catch a laptop between his buttocks after the circulation of a bizarre online video.
The YouTube footage, titled "Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt", features three lycra-clad athletes performing the wacky party trick in a range of locations.
One gymnast repeatedly launches the MSI notebooks like a Frisbee at his shaggy-haired teammate, who appears to catch the spinning computer by clenching his cheeks with split-second precision.
A third gymnast is even brought in to help them pull off increasingly difficult stunts, including catching the computer while performing a backflip on a trampoline and hanging from a chin-up bar.
The video has proven extremely popular, receiving over 760,000 views since it was posted on Monday, with some people believing the exercise to be a legitimate feat.
But an animation expert says the video is laden with special effects and most likely created by a professional team.
"There are different ways to create that illusion, but the easiest way would have been to animate the laptop itself and insert it into the footage," University of Technology Sydney Associate Professor Markus Fischmann said.
"Because it's just a black box with little detail on the outside casing it wouldn't be as complicated as other items to animate.
"If anyone believes it might be real, I'm sorry, but I can guarantee it's a trick."
Associate Professor Fischmann, the director of the school's Master of Animation course, estimated the filming, animating and editing would have taken a professional team about six weeks to complete.
While most online commentators agree that the video probably features heavy use of special effects, some also believe it is a viral marketing campaign created by electronics company MSI itself.
MSI, a Taiwan-based manufacturer, launched an online competition last month to create an "extreme crazy" video to promote their new super-slim MSI XSeries, leading some to believe "Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt" was a legitimate entry.
The 15 best entries each win a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and also a new laptop, which weighs less than 1.3kg and is about 2.5cm thick.
But even if the video was in fact submitted by a member of the public, it remains ineligible for the competition because it runs more than a minute longer than the 10-20 second guideline.
Entries for the worldwide contest close on September 30.
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