The Zfilm, The copies and The Geraldo

[Ray Mitcham]

Disagree, John, but then that's what the forum is all about. Compare the lines of the two roof supports. (Shown in yellow) No matter what your perspective is, they go in totally  different directions..

[Pat Speer]

Here are the railroad men, as shown in all the photos. (Admittedly, some of these photos were cropped as first published, perhaps because someone knew how bad it looked to have people standing above the parade route.)

 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Richard Price]

On 4/4/2022 at 10:38 AM, John Butler said:

 

Another thing I might add is the BB Lady had a fairly large black box camera and the Lady in Blue looks like she has a smaller camera of a different design.

Just my two cents worth on this subject.  There is no mystery.  The woman (Babushka lady) is wearing a tan/khaki all weather coat.  In the above brightened picture you can clearly see that the coat is tan/khaki with the dark areas being in shade as you can even see this on the man and his son as well.  If you note the khaki pants on the young boy, note his extreme right side and how the shadow turns it almost black.  The so called black headband with a lighter area behind it is her hair and the head scarf is brightly lit by the sun.  As to the "smaller" camera, the picture is too blurry to make that assertion.  As to why so much of her seems darkened, look at the shadows - she is almost perpendicular to the sun's position and with her hands/arms up, she is blocking the direct sun from hitting most of her front side.  There is no suddenly appearing lady in blue who doesn't appear in other pictures or has been edited in.  Sorry to disagree, but there are enough mysteries and possible editing without going down an obvious rabbit hole.

[Chris Davidson]

2 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

Disagree, John, but then that's what the forum is all about. Compare the lines of the two roof supports. (Shown in yellow) No matter what your perspective is, they go in totally  different directions..

1964 Mercury Park Lane Breezeway

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Well, that should be the last we hear of the woman in blue mystery, the back-to-front car mystery, and the missing men on the bridge mystery.

In each case, an uncritical interpretation of a poor-quality image has led John Butler to conjure up from his imagination an enormous conspiracy involving teams of nefarious photo-alteration experts roaming the country, seizing films and photos, and altering them because ... well, we're still waiting to hear a good reason for any of that.

I hope we've also heard the last of the Moorman and Hill mystery, in which all the photos and films of the two women, along with Moorman's Polaroids, were faked because ... again, the reason doesn't seem important enough for John to explain it. In this case, there was no poor-quality image to inspire John's leap of faith. He just invented it because he felt like it.

I dread to think what he's going to come up with next. Flying saucers in Dealey Plaza? Bigfoot behind the fence on the grassy knoll? More worryingly, if his proof threshold is really that low, is there anything he wouldn't believe?

It may seem unnecessary or cruel to pursue John for making these types of absurd claims. After all, everyone (well, almost everyone) can see that these claims are nonsense, and of course he has the right to post pretty much whatever he likes, if it's about the JFK assassination. Why go to the trouble of challenging ridiculously far-fetched stuff that hardly anyone takes seriously?

It's because this forum is probably the one with the highest readership, and the one most likely to attract casual visitors who want to get an idea of what the whole JFK assassination controversy is all about. What would those visitors think if they read that all the images from Dealey Plaza were faked, and no-one questioned this sort of claim?

And what would the media say, if they came across the Butler-level stuff and found that it wasn't challenged? The main propaganda weapon the media uses against critics of the lone-gunman idea is to claim that all those conspiracy theorists are nuts. They're all living in a fantasy world! They're no better than flat-earthers, creationists, and the flying saucer and Bigfoot crazies! Don't listen to these people!

Of course, very few opponents of the lone-gunman idea are actually 'conspiracy theorists' in the propaganda sense of the phrase: people for whom conspiracy is the default explanation for events in the world. You can argue against the lone-gunman idea rationally, without having to claim that all the photos and home movies were faked, or that Oswald and his mother were part of a long-term doppelganger scheme, or that JFK's body was stolen from Air Force One.

The media angle is particularly important, because the case is unlikely to get resolved without the participation of the general public, and the media's job is to keep the general public from questioning the lone-gunman idea.

It's nothing personal, and I'm sure John is a perfectly pleasant guy in real life. But his far-fetched claims have the potential to be harmful. That's why, even if few people actually believe this sort of stuff, it should be challenged.

Now, would anyone care to address Sean Coleman's original post?

[Ray Mitcham]

13 hours ago, Chris Davidson said:

1964 Mercury Park Lane Breezeway

Thanks, Chris. Nice to see someone with superior skills posting.

[Sean Coleman]

8mm film

Incredibly small items to work with - for any unnoticeable alterations to take place would have needed an extremely talented film alteration artist/process? 
What would be the 1963 process utilise? Tiny brushes and paint? Cut n paste? Something manual anyway, as opposed to digital computery. Not convinced yet…

 

[John Butler]

43 minutes ago, Sean Coleman said:

8mm film

Incredibly small items to work with - for any unnoticeable alterations to take place would have needed an extremely talented film alteration artist/process? 
What would be the 1963 process utilise? Tiny brushes and paint? Cut n paste? Something manual anyway, as opposed to digital computery. Not convinced yet…

 

It is obvious you know nothing of film editing as practiced in the 1960s.  Check out David Healey's written work on film editing. 

[John Butler]

7 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Well, that should be the last we hear of the woman in blue mystery, the back-to-front car mystery, and the missing men on the bridge mystery.

I don't think so.  There will be the same material and more to come.  I'll make sure you have a chance to review it in your usual manner.

[John Butler]

7 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

Thanks, Chris. Nice to see someone with superior skills posting.

Ray,

That is a case of seeing what you want to see.

Edited April 7, 2022 by John Butler

[Jonathan Cohen]

3 minutes ago, John Butler said:

It is obvious you know nothing of film editing as practiced in the 1960s.  Check out David Healey's written work on film editing. 

It's obvious you know nothing about it either, as the preposterous level of Zapruder film alterations you propose would be completely impossible to achieve given technology available in 1963.

[John Butler]

5 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

It's obvious you know nothing about it either, as the preposterous level of Zapruder film alterations you propose would be completely impossible to achieve given technology available in 1963.

Same to you.  It seems there are lots of folks who know nothing posting.

[John Butler]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:34 PM, Pat Speer said:

Here are the railroad men, as shown in all the photos. (Admittedly, some of these photos were cropped as first published, perhaps because someone knew how bad it looked to have people standing above the parade route.)

This looks like the 3 Camera Cars at 1 to somewhat over a minute after the assassination.  It does not relate to what I said earlier.  By the time of the events of this scene people had time to move over to the railroad bridge over Elm Street.  I believe this is a Dilliard photo from Camera Car #2 and after the assassination.

There is at least 5 photos showing no one on the bridge.  Compare the difference:

A crop of the same scene:

[Sandy Larsen]

9 hours ago, Sean Coleman said:

8mm film

9 hours ago, Sean Coleman said:

Incredibly small items to work with - for any unnoticeable alterations to take place would have needed an extremely talented film alteration artist/process? 
What would be the 1963 process utilise? Tiny brushes and paint? Cut n paste? Something manual anyway, as opposed to digital computery. Not convinced yet…

 

Ask the producers of the 1964 film Mary Poppins how sophisticated film editing was done back then. It certainly wasn't done directly on the original film.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:05 PM, Richard Price said:

In the above brightened picture you can clearly see that the coat is tan/khaki with the dark areas being in shade as you can even see this on the man and his son as well.

 

What you say is not true. There is no tan to see on the woman at all. (With the possible exception of a belt.) If, for simplicity's sake, we ignore the woman's face and neck, we can see the following non-black areas, beginning at the top of the dress:

1. Her left and right hands. (Her left hand "touches" the man's right cheek.) They are blurry because she is moving them. To me it appears that she is either clapping or is holding a big, dark camera with both hands. (In the same Costella frame it looks more like she's clapping.)
2. A belt-like horizontal line. (The belt "touches" the man's right shoulder.)
3. A bright squarish-shaped area below her dress. (This "touches" the boy's left shoulder.) This is the boy's left hand. (I had to look at the same Costella frame to make it out.)

See... there is nothing tan in her coat or dress. Unless you claim that the visible part of her tan clothing is completely covered in shade. In which case your argument would be as follows:  Look, we can see her tan dress right there in the frame... it is fully shaded to make it look black. Which is not a convincing argument.

 

On 4/6/2022 at 12:05 PM, Richard Price said:

  If you note the khaki pants on the young boy, note his extreme right side and how the shadow turns it almost black.

 

Yes, that happens. But note that the shadow down his right leg isn't there because of the angle he is standing. It is there because of his left arm. The darkness down his right leg is a shadow from his left arm. If his left arm were down (out of the way), his right leg would be as bright as his left leg.

The point I just made has to do with the following claim:

On 4/6/2022 at 12:05 PM, Richard Price said:

As to why so much of her seems darkened, look at the shadows - she is almost perpendicular to the sun's position and with her hands/arms up, she is blocking the direct sun from hitting most of her front side.

 

I reject the claim that the woman is standing almost perpendicular to the ray of sunlight, thus creating a shadow on her front side. But even if the woman were turned at that angle, we would still see the left side of her coat which would be directly facing the camera. And it's brightness would be roughly the same as the boy's slacks (minus the shadow from his left arm).

 

On 4/6/2022 at 12:05 PM, Richard Price said:

There is no suddenly appearing lady in blue who doesn't appear in other pictures or has been edited in.  Sorry to disagree, but there are enough mysteries and possible editing without going down an obvious rabbit hole.

 

I won't go down this rabbit hole because it would be a waste of time. But I also won't pretend the mystery is solved just to justify my not going down the hole.

The mystery stands.

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Sandy Larsen