Actually, no. Despite all the chatter about that video, Joe Mordica was actually standing among real, hashing, heat-generating miners. Prior to the Hangout going live, Joe's audio was enabled and it was literally just a wall of noise coming through from his end so he decided to mute himself for the live call. Retroactively, that didn't help the case much.

It is safe to assume, however, that the angle of the camera and or lack of proper lighting may have been used to conceal the true scale of the (actual) mining operation.