Fact Check

Myth of Never Ending Stairs. Truth behind Escherian stairwell.

Rating

Claim

Trust me I’m an engineer.

My brain is FRIED from watching this 😳🤔

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Explanation

Escherian Stairwell is based on Penrose steps two-dimensional depiction of a never-ending staircase designed by M.C.Escher, a Dutch graphic artist. We’ve seen similar endless stairs concepts in many movies such as Inception, 13B etc achieved through meticulous planning, design and VFX.

However, this video claims that an endless stair is designed and constructed in Rochester Institute of Technology. As seen in the video, a person would purportedly keep returning to the same place again and again walking through these stairs. This video is shared by many social media users to claim that this is real, and many are awestruck by the video.

What’s the truth?

This video was made and published in 2013 by Michael Lacanilao, who was studying at the Rochester Institute at that time. This video is a perfect example of a filmmaking with precise editing and staging to create an optical illusion of never-ending stairs.

 

The maker of the video Michael Lacanilao had explained in another video published in his channel why he created this myth.

 

A youtube channel named “Captain Disillusion” has published a video explaining how the Escherian Stairwell myth was created through a near perfect film-making technique.

 

The video had been made to look very realistic by the brilliant acting of all the actors in the video and precise editing and measured camera movements. Some portions of the video are shot using a split screen technique used for shooting double action movies and some shots are shot with camera handoff and everything is stitched together in post-production. The maker of the video himself had declared that the video is staged, and the never-ending stairs is a myth but that doesn’t stop people making a visit to the Rochester Institute to see the stairs and be disappointed. Some share this video of the stairs even to this day.

Conclusion

Escherian stairwell is a staged and scripted video made by Michael Lacanilao. This staircase is not real and does not exist.

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