Zapruder film


The Zapruder film is a silent 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as United States President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Unexpectedly, it ended up capturing the President's assassination.
Even though it is not the only film of the shooting, the Zapruder film has been described as being the most complete one, giving a relatively clear view from a somewhat elevated position on the side from which the president's fatal head wound is visible. It was an important part of the Warren Commission hearings and all subsequent investigations of the assassination, and it is one of the most studied pieces of film in history. Of greatest notoriety is the film's capture of the fatal shot to President Kennedy's head when his presidential limousine was almost exactly in front of, and slightly below, Zapruder's position.

Creation

Abraham Zapruder stood on a concrete pedestal along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza holding a high-end Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera. He filmed from the time the presidential limousine turned onto Elm Street for a total of 26.6 seconds, exposing 486 frames of standard 8 mm Kodachrome II safety film, running at 18.3 frames/second.
After Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels promised Zapruder that the film would only be used for an official investigation, the two men sought to develop the footage as soon as possible. As television station WFAA's equipment was incompatible with the format, Eastman Kodak's Dallas film processing facility developed the film and Jamieson Film Company produced three copies. Zapruder gave two of the copies to Sorrels and they were sent to Washington. The original film was retained by Zapruder, in addition to one of the copies.
On the morning of November 23, CBS lost the bidding for the footage to Life magazine's $150,000 offer. CBS news correspondent Dan Rather was the first to report on the footage on national television after seeing it, although the inaccuracies in his description would contribute to many conspiracy theories about the assassination. In his 2001 book Tell Me A Story, CBS producer Don Hewitt said that he told Rather to go to Zapruder's home to "sock him in the jaw", take the film, copy it, then return it and let the network's lawyers deal with the consequences. According to Hewitt, he realized his mistake after ending their telephone conversation and immediately called Rather back to countermand the order, disappointing the reporter. In a 2015 interview on Opie with Jim Norton, Rather stated that the story was a myth.
Frame 313 of the film captures the fatal shot to the President's head. After having a nightmare in which he saw a sign in Times Square, New York City, with the phrase "See the President's head explode!", Zapruder insisted that frame 313 be excluded from publication. The November 29, 1963 issue of Life—which featured the "LIFE" logo in a black box instead of the usual red box—published about 30 frames of the Zapruder film in black and white. Frames were also published in color in the December 6, 1963 special "John F. Kennedy Memorial Edition", and in issues dated October 2, 1964, November 25, 1966, and November 24, 1967.
Zapruder was one of at least 32 people in Dealey Plaza known to have made film or still photographs at or around the time of the shooting.

Subsequent history

The Zapruder film frames that were used by the Warren Commission were published in black and white as Commission Exhibit 885 in volume XVIII of the Hearings and Exhibits. Copies of the complete film are available on the Internet.
One of the first-generation Secret Service copies was lent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C., which made a second-generation copy on November 25. After studies of that copy were made in January 1964, the Warren Commission judged the quality to be inadequate, and requested the original. Life brought the original to Washington in February for the Commission's viewing, and also made color 35mm slide enlargements from the relevant frames of the original film for the FBI. From those slides, the FBI made a series of black-and-white prints, which were given to the commission for its use.
In October 1964, the U.S. Government Printing Office released 26 volumes of testimony and evidence compiled by the Warren Commission. Volume 18 of the commission's hearings reproduced 158 frames from the Zapruder film in black and white. However, frames 208–211 were missing, a splice was visible in frames 207 and 212, frames 314 and 315 were switched around, and frame 284 was a repeat of 283. In response to an inquiry, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in 1965 that frames 314 and 315 had been swapped due to a printing error, and that that error did not exist in the original Warren Commission exhibits. In early 1967, Life released a statement saying that four frames of the original
In 1966, assassination researcher Josiah Thompson, while working for Life, was brought in to examine a first-generation copy of the film and a set of color 35mm slides made from the original. He tried negotiating with Life for the rights to print important individual frames in his book Six Seconds in Dallas. Life refused to approve the use of any of the frames, even after Thompson offered to give all profits from the book sales to Life. Following its publishing in 1967, Thompson's book featured some very detailed charcoal drawings of important individual frames, plus photo reproductions of the four missing ones. Time Inc. filed a lawsuit against Thompson and his publishing company for copyright infringement. A U.S. District Court ruled in 1968 that the Time Inc. copyright of the Zapruder film was not violated by invoking the doctrine of fair use. The court held that "there is a public interest in having the fullest information available on the murder of President Kennedy, saying that Thompson "did serious work on the subject and has a theory entitled to public consideration" and that "the copying by defendants was fair and reasonable."
In 1967, Life hired New Jersey film lab Manhattan Effects to make a 16 mm film copy of the Zapruder film's original version. Pleased with the results, they asked for a 35 mm internegative to be made. Mo Weitzman made several internegatives in 1968, giving the best to Life and retaining the test copies. Weitzman set up his own optical house and motion picture postproduction facility later that year. Hired in 1969, employee and assassination buff Robert Groden used one of Weitzman's copies and an optical printer to make versions of the Zapruder film with close-ups and minimize the shakiness of Zapruder's camera.
Before the 1969 trial of Clay Shaw, a businessman from New Orleans, for conspiracy in connection with the assassination, a copy of the film made several generations from the original was subpoenaed from Time Inc. in 1967 by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison for use at Shaw's grand jury hearing. Garrison unsuccessfully subpoenaed the original film in 1968. The courtroom showings of Garrison's copy in 1969 were the first time it had been shown in public as a film. Noted conspiracy theorist Mark Lane, author of Rush to Judgment, was in New Orleans at the time to assist Garrison in his investigation. Lane borrowed Garrison's copy of the film and had several copies printed at a local lab. These low quality copies began circulating among assassination researchers and were known to many journalists as well. The underground circulation of these copies, as well as the secret screenings to a select few who had the opportunity to see them, added an additional aura of mystery to the film, thus enhancing the idea that there was a secret to be found in it that was being kept hidden from the general public.
The first broadcast of the Zapruder film was on the late-night television show Underground News with Chuck Collins, originating on WSNS-TV, Ch 44, Chicago in 1970. It was given to director Howie Samuelsohn by Penn Jones and later aired in syndication to Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis.
Australians became the first mass audience in the world to view the Zapruder film on the Seven National News Network and a few minutes later the Nine News National Network, on February 5, 1975. Researcher and author of Proof of Conspiracy in the Assassination of President Kennedy, Ian MacFarlane immediately sent packages of resulting Australian press coverage (which included comments that the Warren Commission was now a 'sham' (ref Melbourne Herald; Andrew McKay; February 5, 1975

Study of the film

Every frame of the Zapruder film has been put together into a panoramic movie. Each object that appears during the film has its starting position equal to where it appears first in its frames. The objects' positions are updated during visibility in the Zapruder frames, and they stay motionless once each object moves out of those frames.
The Orville Nix film had the same technology applied to it. The Nix and Zapruder films were then combined into a direct simultaneous comparison movie.
Between November 1963 and January 1964, the FBI examined a copy of the Zapruder film, noting that the camera recorded at 18.3 frames per second. It is not clear from the film itself as to when the first and second shots occurred. It is apparent that by frame 225 the President is reacting to his throat wound. However, no wound or blood is seen on either President Kennedy or Governor Connally prior to frame 313. The fatal shot to the President occurred at frame 313 with the visible effects of the head wound.
There is also a stabilized high-definition version of the Zapruder film that is synchronized with the Dallas Police Department audio recording. The version of the Zapruder film used here is the first-generation copy that went to France. The video also shows the immediate aftermath at Dealey Plaza and the press conference of JFK's assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff.
A 3D-rendering of the Zapruder film was created by computer animator Dale Myers to provide better clarification of what happened during the time of the assassination.

Dispute over authenticity

The Zapruder film is often thought to have captured the shooting from beginning to end, and it has been described by some as a "complete record of the Kennedy assassination". This view is, however, challenged by Max Holland, author of The Kennedy Assassination Tapes, and professional photographer Johann Rush in a joint editorial piece published by The New York Times on November 22, 2007. Holland and Rush have pointed out that Zapruder temporarily stopped filming at around frame 132, when only police motorcycles were visible. When he continued filming, frame 133 already shows the presidential motorcade in view. Holland and Rush suggest that the pause could have had great significance for the interpretation of the assassination.
One of the sources of controversy with the Warren Report is its difficulty in satisfactorily accounting for the sequencing of the assassination. A specific mystery concerns what happened to the one shot that missed. Holland and Rush argue that the break in the Zapruder film might conceal a first shot earlier than analysts have hitherto assumed, and point out that in this case a horizontal traffic mast would temporarily have obstructed Oswald's view of his target. In the authors' words, "The film, we realize, does not depict an assassination about to commence. It shows one that had already started."
The evidence offered by Holland and Rush to support their theory was challenged in a series of 2007–08 articles by computer animator Dale K. Myers and assassination researcher Todd W. Vaughan, who defended the prevailing belief that Zapruder's film captured the entire shooting sequence.
The authenticity of the image in frame 313 was challenged by Douglas Horne, Senior Analyst for the Assassination Records Review Board and Dino Brugioni of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center. Brugioni was considered the world's foremost imagery intelligence analyst until his death in 2015. Horne discovered the NPIC worked on two different versions of the Zapruder film on Saturday and Sunday nights immediately following the assassination, which had occurred Friday. The work was done by separate teams which had been compartmentalized and ordered to not speak of their work, causing the teams to not know about each other; even the personnel from the two teams normally worked together on a daily basis. When Horne showed his findings and evidence to Brugioni, Brugioni re-examined a copy of the extant Zapruder film, provided by Horne. Brugioni then stated the Zapruder film in the National Archives today, and available to the public, specifically frame 313, is an altered version of the film he saw and worked with on November 23–24, the earlier of the two versions handled by the NPIC. Brugioni recalled seeing a "white cloud" of brain matter, three or four feet above Kennedy's head, and said that this "spray" lasted for more than one frame of the film. The version of the Zapruder film available to the public depicts the fatal head shot on only one frame of the film, frame 313. Additionally, Brugioni was certain that the set of briefing boards available to the public in the National Archives is not the set that he and his team produced on November 23–24, 1963. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza denies that the Zapruder film has been altered, or that any of the frames are missing from the film.

Cultural effect

In 1994, the Zapruder film footage was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry.
Some critics have stated that the violence and shock of this home movie led to a new way of representing violence in 1970s American cinema, both in mainstream films, and particularly in indie and underground horror movies.
The film has been featured in films or other media, such as the Oliver Stone film JFK. A closeup from the portion of the film showing the fatal shot to Kennedy's head is also shown in the Clint Eastwood film In the Line of Fire.
Abraham Zapruder is sometimes presented as a forefather of all citizen journalists.
The Zapruder film, kept from public viewing for years, has evolved into one of the most viewed films in history, now available on the Internet for public access.
In "Murder Most Foul", a musical meditation on Kennedy's assassination and its effect on American counterculture, Bob Dylan sings 'Zapruder's film I've seen that before / seen it 33 times maybe more'

Footnotes