There's got to be somebody at the production studio who'll spill the goods if this is fake.

It totally looks fishy. It looks like she's standing in front of a video of Norm in the kitchen.

In any event, it is a remarkably uncompelling ad, if you ask me, and the "Hey Norm, will you take out the trash?" is so fake it's almost painful to watch.

But then again, I think Norm Coleman has to be one of the dumbest Congress critters in the history of the republic, so I'm not exactly unbiased here.

This seems faked, but so what? If a Democrat were criticized for this I'd say the same thing: ads aren't real--the swishing logos, the stock-footage sleeping kids--it's all an advertisement.

The thing here is that it's so obviously bad, but I don't think this means the candidate is any less real than if his ad were slicker. Maybe this is good, because it's bad that it's obvious it's all just made up!

Why on earth would they try to deny what is so obviously -- I wouldn't say fake, because I don't think the producers thought they would fool anyone -- two people NOT in the same room?

I'm supporting Franken, but this is a fine ad, as these things go.

Haha, totally faked.

The thing is that try to show him as a family man because it is known in MN that he is anything but a family man. I wonder if his wife wants to be in the same room with him

The key- listen to the timbre of each of their voices. His is deep and resonates with the size of the kitchen. Hers is shallow and sounds like it's stright out of a tiny closet.

Who cares, you say? I think the only reason this is an issue is because a fake ad would show that this guy couldn't even get his wife to be in the same room as he is.

Okay, that is so amateurish as to be laughable. Of course it's shopped. HFS.

How could they even deny it? It's so obvious I don't think they even considered that it matter whether it was real or not. This is one of those goofs that could really hurt him though. Strange beasts grow legs.

Definitely a fake.

The Coleman's have a loveless marriage. She lives in LA, him in MN or DC.

It's well known that Coleman is a hound, hitting on younger women is a common story, here in MN and in DC as well. There are also rumors of Laurie showing up in ERs around the Twin Cities (different ones each time) with facial contusions. Why so sneaky about your face getting beat-up? I wonder......

Of course, Al and Frannie Franken have a great, loving, fun relationship with each other and their kids. I can't wait to see an Al ad with his arm firmly around Frannie.

Hilarious they tried to pull this off, of course, he was trying to show his marriage is as loving as the Franken. But just ended up displaying the opposite (they live seperate lives). Also it just shows how far he will sink to give us MN voters the old wink, wink, nod, nod.... and distort the truth.

Very relevant.

Finally, can I say how disappointed I am in Sen. Amy Klobuchar??

I was irate yesterday for her teaming up with Coleman, of all people, on this horrible bill of all things? What is she thinking?!?! I did not vote for her, for her to support this....

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00349

Write her today to express your disappointment, she backing a horrible bill and undermining Franken in the process (and yes she joined Coleman, not the other way around).

The "take out the trash" sounds really familiar to me. Haven't we heard it somewhere before, in MN?

Not only is the ad obviously a fake, but his attempt to seem like a regular guy just comes across to me as fake, too.

norm coleman doesn't deserve re-election. he's a right wing conservative who only becomes a "moderate" when its time to run for re-election again.

and yet, the democrats are going to blow their chance to unseat him by running Al Franken.

The correspondent reports on The Daily Show look more realistic than Laurie Coleman stuck in the corner for that ad.

I'll leave the Euclidian geometry to others, but I can say that the lighting is off. There is no bounce at all onto the glassy counter surface from her or her light colored clothes, in a kitchen that should have a lot of light bounce (shiny countertops, white cabinets) She's in very high key lighting from the left with secondary spot lighting lower and just to the right. You can see just how much reflection Norm gets onto surfaces from his lighting in the background.

But they can easily prove this is real by releasing *outtakes* and *b-roll*. This could be such an east slam dunk "you intertube trolls don't have a life" gimme for the Coleman folks if they're telling the truth, so, gimme.

You know this spot might be a fake, and it might not, but if you don't know what you're talking about, don't speculate.

Think the lighting is a little unnatural? Ever hear of digital color correction? Shit, I could make her skin purple with scales, but that doesn't mean she wasn't in the room. The same thing applies to focus (which I manipulate digitally on probably 75% of the products I make.) If you look at how bad the lighting on the rest of the kitchen is, I'm sure they had to fix a lot of shit in post.

The vocal timbre is a tell? In today's newfangled modern production world they have these things called microphones. Some of them can even be placed right up next to the subject nowadays, though if you WANT a guy to sound a little further from the camera, you could pull that off too.

Perspective? Most of you have obviously never shot low-budget video in a tight room. I've brought back footage framed so poorly the distortion would make Escher nauseous.

Those of you who think the coffee cup cutaway means she's in California, I don't know where to start.

Of course, most of that nuance is probably lost when you take out 90% of the spot's data by crushing it for the 'net, even if you do listen and watch through professional gear like I have here.

Don't get me wrong, the spot sucks. It looks fake. But the armchair analysis sucks worse. I've seen better composites, and I've seen (and shot) straight video that looks less believable.

It's oviously faked and green-screened. Even their voices echo differently in the room.

This is a non-issue, except for the part where they lie about it. Talk about stupid!

Look at Norm, he's ignoring her as she's talking. If they were there at the same time, wouldn't he have at least glimpsed at her as she spoke?

Fake ad, fake teeth:

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/norm_coleman_featured_smile_124.htm

So fake...

Look at the 11 second mark when Norm's creepy huge hand looks inches away from hers, and then magically two seconds later he's back at the other end of the counter.

I mean besides the perspective and lighting which are way off, that's the clincher to me.

He puts on a leather jacket to take out the garbage!

This footage has to be old and obviously fake.

To me the background appears to show green leaves blowing on a tree. Once Coleman gets outside the trees are bare except for the evergreens and there is snow on the ground.

Not a good image of Minnesota in the middle of June.

Fake. Like Slimy Norman Quimby himself.

As noted above, rumors are circulating here about Laurie showing up in various ERs with unexplained facial contusions. That she's elsewhere is probably for her own safety.

There had to be a production company who shot this. Surely they would care enough to disprove the compositing claims on behalf of their well-paying client.

Norman being a "hound" is a well-known fact, that sadly, has not yet been caught on camera - anyone, please...

The presence of Laurie Coleman in the kitchen seems as fake as the relationship has for years been rumored to be.

Coleman has shown himself to be an opportunist over the years. To his credit, he was an able Democratic mayor of St. Paul, then something happened. Switching to the GOP was a reasonable choice, I guess, but he lost his integrity along the way. He has pandered and assumed the attack dog role for the administration. Now his ads portray him as the moderate who's always searching for ways to work across the aisle. Former GOP Senator Dave Durenberger had the integrity that Coleman sadly lacks.

I'm no expert, but the other thing I notice is that when they finally have an interaction - when she asks him to take out the trash and he responds, they never make eye-contact. She kinda turns to the right, and aims her voice to the kitchen counter. Nothing conclusive, but it reminds me a lot of those Blue's Clues videos I had to watch with my kid when he was a toddler.

If it turns out to be true that the video is faked, the big problem now is that they would've lied about it.

The ad is real, the people in it are phonies though.

Raise your hand if you don't know it's trash day. I miss trash day once in a while because I think I can get in a shower before they show up in the morning... (I like to be spring fresh for the trash men, see) but I haven't needed to be asked or told to take out the trash since I was about seven...

Not funny, pal. Not funny at all. I'll have you know my wife (as I found out about a year after we got married, 19 years ago next month) shot her former husband for being late to the curb with the can. Well, actually she fired when he said (you'll say almost anything when you're looking down the barrel of a .25 pearl-handled automatic) the garbagemen were going to turn around and get the late can! Which they never do, of course, and when she heard that, the Judge dismissed the case!

Fake. No two ways about it. She is not in the same room and its OBVIOUS...

Why would the position of Norm's head matter? The theory is that Laurie was composited into a scene of Norm doing his thing. The most damning thing is that the outtakes still don't ever put them on the same plane of existence.

Why are we accusing Norm Coleman of petty things like technical jiggery-pokery in a commercial?

Why not accuse him of aggressively targeting and falsely charging and slandering a prominent British politician, basically lying and factually distorting the reality of the situation.

Hey Norm... when are you going to extradite and have charges filed against George Galloway?! I mean, you wouldn't just make up that kind of crap against people, would you?!