Bluntly Bruntling Things Up

More than a year ago, more precisely on August 23, 2011, our reader, Guerra, placed a link to a video in a comment to our post Tapas Quiz Question #5.

The question in question of that post in particular was to ask why were 4 people seated at Tapas Bar table #211 AKA the "Tapas Table" AKA the T9BRT (T9 Big Round Table), a table we were told had 9/10 covers, when there were other tables available that particular evening.

I had seen the video before and quite honestly didn’t give it any importance as at the time it didn’t cross my mind that the Ocean Club could have been involved in any way with the T9.

As you know, I quickly understood that we were before a swinging scenario but initially limited the people involved only to the T9.

I, like so many, looked at the Tapas Bar as the place where the T9 did have dinner when they said they did. It involved Portuguese staff so it never crossed my mind the possibility of them being involved. So I saw this video, at the time, the same way we all did, and that was that it proved how impossible it was to have visibility of the apartment as claimed by the McCanns as well to show that the distance was much further than they said it was.

It was, apparently, a video condemning the McCanns as it proved that the McCanns were lying when saying that it was just like having dinner in one’s back yard. I just shook my head and mumbled to myself how negligent these McCanns really were.

But that was a long time ago. As you know I now know how wrong I was in thinking that on that night and following days in Luz that the T9 were the only ones involved in the foul play, so when I revisited this video I looked at it with a totally different mindset. And there were, like in so many other pieces of information about this case, many things to be seen that no one had noticed before.

So let’s see what it tells us, what it intends to tell us, and what it really does tell us.

Let’s start with the three non-controversial facts that it provides us with.

FIRST, it’s VERY important that we finally have a visual registry of the T9BRT.

We finally have someone, Mr Martin Brunt,  telling us that that table was the T9BRT. That table and no other in the world. If anyone ever shows us a table different to that one, in material or colour, then Mr Brunt has a lot of explaining to do.

I’m sure that Dianne Webster’s pictures will confirm what Mr. Brunt has stated when they surface…

SECOND, it’s that it validates the Tapas bar furniture pictured in Amaral's book. Those two chairs on the left of Mr Brunt are identical to those that appear in the book. No question about that.

Looking at the pictures does it really look like Tapas Bar was a restaurant that served steaks and sardines? Or one that people would queue up to go to?

I see a lot of small square tables and two small round tables and none are exactly suitable to seat 4 people for DINNER. Just picture how you would layout the cutlery, the plates, the glasses, the napkins and the various drinking receptacles, for wine, water, sodas, sangrias, etc…

But if we’re made to believe that there was a kind of “Peter Pan" abductor who walks in through a front  door and flies out of a closed window, then surely we can make an effort and try to stretch our imagination to see all those things on those small table tops.

And after you've stretched your imagination, do stretch it a little more. Imagine now 47, or more, seating places in that esplanade that we showed that supposedly existed in our post Tapas Quiz Question #6. After all, one is free to imagine anything, isn’t one?

THIRD, we can determine with some precision, where, within the Tapas Bar esplanade was located the T9BRT.

The plastic canopy is made up of two parts, each with a big transparent window, as shown in pictures (1), (2) and (3). The beam in the middle is easily identifiable (yellow arrow) and that can be used for reference.

In picture (1), you can see that there’s some distance between Mr. Brunt and the beam.

Having other elements of reference, namely the tree (white arrow) you can extrapolate that the T9BRT was located between this tree and the beam, the furniture seen in picture (3) (blue arrow).

By simple triangulation it can be determined that the table is exactly where Gerry McCann says it to be: between the canopy and the tree in the side of the esplanade nearest to the building.

Strangely enough, there, where the T9BRT is supposed to have been, a corner of a square table is distinctly noticeable, as can be seen in picture (3), so we'd think that Mr Brunt would be sitting at a square table and not a round/oval one as appears to be…

To sum up, with this video Mr. Brunt shows us, CLEARLY, the T9BRT and where it was.

Is that all he shows us? Of course not.

Lest we forget, image management is this man’s profession. Any TV Reporter is a master of showing exactly what he wants to show.

I would say that Mr. Brunt and his crew threw in all the tricks of the trade known to them when filming the T9BRT. I smile just thinking the discussions that took place to set up things just the way they were to be shown. Many rehearsals and many more takes, certainly... Quite crafty are these people as you’ll see…

Today let’s just show you one trick. The shadow trick.

Look at the picture again:

Where is the table’s shadow? Mr. Brunt has the left half of his face lit up, while the other side is in shadow, meaning that a light projector from his left was used.

The table ends up in (2) and not where the brain immediately assumes it does, in (1).

The space between (1) and (2) is the table's shadow. The way it was filmed, it gives the impression that the table is much bigger than it really is.

This is reinforced by how carefully Mr. Brunt places his hands and arms. Notice that his right hand is only partly placed on the table top. By positioning the body the way he does it seems that his right forearm is supported by the tabletop when in fact it isn't touching anything.

This might seem a minor detail but it has a huge effect. The idea, as said above was to make the table bigger than it was. And by distorting its size it also distorts its shape, doesn't it? Not that the shape is important because it's not as we've stated before. The size is important and an optical illusion about it was created by Mr Brunt and his filming crew.  

This is how your brain reacted when you first saw the video: how many people were there? Nine. How many chairs do you see? Four (one is where Mr. Brunt is sitting). Is the table big enough to accommodate them? It seems to be. Ok Brunt, go on.

He’s telling you where the T9 had their dinners in a way that as your brain processes the information as he speaks, it meets the requirements that your subconscious has set, so you accept it as valid. Neat little trick, isn't it?

If he showed you the real size of the table, you wouldn’t accept that 9 people sat around it, would you? 

Of course there's the possibility that you can't see what I see but then there's a reason for that and it isn't because I need an optician.

Such as this visual trick there are others. All there for you to see. I’ll speak about them in later posts.

Please don’t feel disappointed for having been fooled. There were so many doing their  best to fool you, that no one, really no one can say that they weren’t fooled in one way or another.

That’s why the taste of victory in this case will be much sweeter than in any other.