Matt Allison Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 (edited) 16 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said: Right but do we know from which version of the film it was drawn? Or from where on the web it was sourced? I believe it is sourced from the Wilkinson frames that were made from the NARA copy, that she had to pay like 800 bucks to have made. Lets look at it from another perspective; first here is her version that I posted earlier, zoomed in. Below that is from this study, which looks slightly more plausibly shadow-like: https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf What I am asking from everyone here is why there are differences in these; whether it has something to do with copy generation, quality of film, alteration, whatever. I'm just looking for explanations. I have no agenda about this, as I've paid no attention to these claims in the past. Edited February 7 by Matt Allison Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Cohen Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 (edited) 12 minutes ago, Matt Allison said: What I am asking from everyone here is why there are differences in these; whether it has something to do with copy generation, quality of film, alteration, whatever. I'm just looking for explanations. I have no agenda about this, as I've paid no attention to these claims in the past. Matt, it would seem the only person who could answer this question is Wilkinson, since we have no idea what, if any, processing she and her colleagues did on the images. Also, I know the more zealous alterationists here dismiss anything Farid says, but his explanation for the back of the head shadow satisfies me. Edited February 7 by Jonathan Cohen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Aitken Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 7 hours ago, Matt Allison said: I believe it is sourced from the Wilkinson frames that were made from the NARA copy, that she had to pay like 800 bucks to have made. Lets look at it from another perspective; first here is her version that I posted earlier, zoomed in. Below that is from this study, which looks slightly more plausibly shadow-like: https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf What I am asking from everyone here is why there are differences in these; whether it has something to do with copy generation, quality of film, alteration, whatever. I'm just looking for explanations. I have no agenda about this, as I've paid no attention to these claims in the past. Definitely appears to be from the Wilkinson copy. Doug Horne discusses the Wilkinson copy of the Zapruder film in detail in this podcast, and makes his argument for alteration. I’m on the fence about Zapruder alteration, but Horne lays out a case for alteration that is pretty realistic compared to what others have proposed. The link also includes more snippets from the Wilkinson copy. https://castbox.fm/episode/MWN-Episode-107-–-Douglas-Horne-on-the-Zapruder-Film-Alteration-Debate-id1824370-id118549103 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keven Hofeling Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) 8 hours ago, Matt Allison said: I believe it is sourced from the Wilkinson frames that were made from the NARA copy, that she had to pay like 800 bucks to have made. Lets look at it from another perspective; first here is her version that I posted earlier, zoomed in. Below that is from this study, which looks slightly more plausibly shadow-like: https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf What I am asking from everyone here is why there are differences in these; whether it has something to do with copy generation, quality of film, alteration, whatever. I'm just looking for explanations. I have no agenda about this, as I've paid no attention to these claims in the past. Matt Allison wrote: Quote I believe it is sourced from the Wilkinson frames that were made from the NARA copy, that she had to pay like 800 bucks to have made. Yes, the source is Hollywood insiders Sydney Wilkinson and Thom Whitehead, and I posted several versions of the story of the provenance of their version of the film earlier in this thread which can be more easily accessed via the following link: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30120-so-is-david-liftons-final-charade-just-going-to-be-lost-to-history/?do=findComment&comment=527740 However, I can do even better than that by linking you to some materials from Sydney Wilkinson that were made public via Doug Horne which both provide an explanation from Wilkinson about the significance of the use of logarithmic color (as opposed to linear color) in the processing of the film, and which provide additional confirmation that the version of Z-317 that I supplied you earlier does indeed source back to Sidney Wilkinson. Doug Horne provided the following from Sydney Wilkinson during his 2019 podcast interview on the subject (you might want to listen to that podcast for background on where the whole Sydney Wilkinson documentary was at in 2019): ___________ "Our scans show everything in the frame, the good, the bad, and the ugly." By that they mean the scratches and the mold on the film. They wrote "There is so much detail that individual grains of 8mm film stock are evident in the 6k logarithmic scans. It's hardly pretty, but the images are glaringly sharp. That is why we see all the scratches, mold, dirt, stains, and other film anomalies. Linear color is what we view on our TVs and computers, the color looks right to us. The versions of the Zapruder film we see on television documentaries or DVDs like "Images of an Assassination" sold in 1998 or on YouTube have been cleaned up and color corrected. Much of the scratches, dirt, mold, etc., have been removed along with color correcting each scene to create a much richer looking element. The processes used to do this can be grueling and take a long time depending upon how much money and how much time the producers want to spend on it. But we did not want to make our images look prettier. We did not want to touch anything because our goal was to conduct a forensic scientific study of the film. We wanted to see what was really there in every frame not what might have been hidden or obscured by cleaning or color correcting. So logarithmic color, or log color for short, is what professionals use when coming from or going to film because it brings out much more detail in blacks and mid-blacks by stretching the blacks into grays. However, without color correction, which we have not done, the image looks a little washed out, but the amount of information in the blacks is substantially increased. The primary reason we want log color space was to see all the information in the shadows, and what we saw was astounding. If our transfer was linear color we never would have seen the patch on the back of the head in frame 317 or it would have looked like a shadow. Most importantly, log shadow space does not make a shadow look like a patch." ___________ If you want to hear this for yourself in the Doug Horne podcast, start at 138:30: https://midnightwriternews.com/?powerpress_pinw=1749-podcast At the Midnight Writer News site for the podcast, you can find the copy of Z-317 that Wilkinson supplied to Horne -- and several others -- embedded in the site, at this link: https://midnightwriternews.com/mwn-episode-107-douglas-horne-on-the-zapruder-film-alteration-debate/ ___________ Earlier in this thread you posed the following very insightful question: "...But my question is this: why didn't the same mark-ups appear in the versions Tink Thompson used in 1967?" https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30120-so-is-david-liftons-final-charade-just-going-to-be-lost-to-history/?do=findComment&comment=527815 I consulted my copy of Six Seconds in Dallas searching for an answer, and found that Z-317 isn't even listed in the index. On Friday, November 20, 2009, Dr. David Mantik and Sydney Wilmington had visited the Sixth Floor Museum to view the first generation Ektachrome transparencies of the Zapruder film created by MPI in 1997 and had found the back of the head black patch to be particularly stunning in those, especially in frame 317. Mantik wrote the following about that visit in "Masquerade as the Museum" (posted by me earlier in this thread via the link above): "While Gary Mack sat nearby, my first impression was the same as Sydney's--the resolution and color were so incredible that I felt as if I were seeing these frames for the very first time. But the greatest emotional impact came on seeing the black patch in Z-317. It was so blatant, so childishly done, that I almost laughed aloud. Whether I did or not is in some doubt, but I retain an image of clapping my hand over my mouth to prevent such a laugh.106 I was also easily able to verify the other abnormalities that Home had reported in his book, published just a week later in November 2009." The following week, Doug Horne's "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board" was published, with its last minute "Addendum: The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood," focusing on the discovery of the black patches. Then, when Sidney Wilmington returned to the Sixth Floor Museum with Thom Whitehead the following November to view the transparencies again she found that they had been resized and switched out with another set of transparencies in which the Z-317 black patch anomaly had been "fuzzed out" to make it spear more like a natural shadow. It was known that the Sixth Floor Museum had acquitted the Time-Life transparencies struck off of the "original" Zapruder film, which Josiah Thompson had worked with, due to a January 26, 2000 Dallas Morning News article entitled "Zapruders Donate JFK Film, Rights," written by reporter Mark Wrolstad, which stated: Gary Mack, the Museum’s Archivist, was all but whistling Tuesday as he examined what may be the gem of the bunch--oversized transparencies of each Zapruder film frame believed to have been made in 1963 or 1964. The article noted that Mack was actually (contemporaneously) examining these images--not that he expected to do so at a later time. Mack also stated: These may be in better condition than the original film is today. We may have something better or sharper, Who knows? So Wilkinson sought access to the 1964 transparencies through the Sixth Floor Museum and was told that the article had been the result of a mistaken press release, and that the museum did not actually received the 1963/1964 Time/Life transparencies--and didn't know where they were at the time of Wilkinson's request. To my knowledge, Wilkinson, Whitehead, Horne and Mantik were never able to locate the Time-Life transparencies, but Horne did have a combative encounter with Josiah Thompson and Rollie Zavada over the authenticity of Z-317 at the November 2013 JFK Lancer conference in Dallas at which Zavada conceded that Z-317 looks like it is an alteration (but says he refuses to believe it because he doesn't know how it could be done). "...In the breakout session, when Josiah Thompson asked him to display the controversial frame 317 and comment on whether the black object covering the rear of JFK's head was a natural shadow or evidence of alteration, Rollie [Zavada] put up the slide (a very dark, muddy image of 317 with much contrast present---an image greatly inferior to the Hollywood scans of the forensic copy), and then said words to the effect: "It certainly looks like a patch; it looks like it could be an alteration. But I haven't seen evidence of how it was done, so I refuse to believe it." [This is very close to a verbatim quote---guaranteed to be accurate in its substance.] I and several others, including Leo Zahn of Hollywood, then suggested---demanded, actually---that Rollie display ALL of frame 317---not just the portion showing JFK's head. When this slide was finally displayed, I asked everyone present in the room what explanation those who were against alteration had for the extreme difference in density between the shadow on Governor Connally's head, and the extremely dense and dark (almost D-max) "anomaly" on JFK's head in that same frame. The two so-called "shadows" have absolutely no relation or similarity to each other, yet both men were photographed in the same frame, at the same instant in time, on the same planet, with the same light source (i.e., the sun). The ensuing silence was more profound than that inside the whale that swallowed Jonah. Rollie and Tink had no explanation for this. Nor does anyone else, who believes that the Zapruder film is an unaltered film. The most reasonable, and currently the only known explanation for this paradox in frame 317, is alteration---the blacking out of the true exit wound on the back of JFK's head in that frame, and in many others, with crude animation...." 'JOSIAH THOMPSON AND RULLIE ZAVADA AT JFK LANCER: A CRITICAL REPORT' by Douglas P. Horne, author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/10709.html The article also delves into Josiah Thompson's conclusion that Z-335 and Z-337 are in his opinion authentic due to their consistency with the autopsy photographs, a conclusion with which Horne strongly disagrees. To me it appears highly likely that the black patch anomalies would be just as striking in the TIME-LIFE transparencies as they were in the 1997 MPI transparencies, but Thompson missed it, and now with the switcheroo at the Sixth Floor Museum Thompson is even more convinced that there was nothing to miss. It's either that, or Wilkinson, Whitehead, Mantik and Horne are attempting to perpetrate an elaborate hoax against the research community spanning back to 2009 which I don't accept as being a credible alternative scenario. Matt Allison wrote: Quote Lets look at it from another perspective; first here is her version that I posted earlier, zoomed in. Below that is from this study, which looks slightly more plausibly shadow-like: https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf 1998 MPI "Images of an Assassination" still of Z-317 https://youtu.be/Xorv0YCCRno?t=2506 The black patch is even more obvious in the crop of the 1998 MPI scan of Z-317 presented in Hany Farid's article which attempts to debunk the black patch thesis: https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf _____________ Z-317 from Hany Farid article https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf Z-317 from Hany Farid article https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/tr10a.pdf The black patch is equally evident in Jack White's presentation of the 1998 MPI scan of Z-317: And the black patch is also visible in this 9/2/2020 letter written by Rollie Zavada which includes Z-317: https://www.ebay.com/itm/403700159791 But for sure, Wilkinson and Whitehead's 6k scan of Z-317 from the "Forensic Copy" of the Zapruder film they purchased from the National Archives is superior to all of the above: Matt Allison wrote: Quote What I am asking from everyone here is why there are differences in these; whether it has something to do with copy generation, quality of film, alteration, whatever. I'm just looking for explanations. I have no agenda about this, as I've paid no attention to these claims in the past. I think that the following is your answer which Doug Horne provided from Sydney Wilkinson during his 2019 podcast interview on the subject (you might want to listen to that podcast for background on where the whole Sydney Wilkinson documentary was at in 2019): ___________ "Our scans show everything in the frame, the good, the bad, and the ugly." By that they mean the scratches and the mold on the film. They wrote "There is so much detail that individual grains of 8mm film stock are evident in the 6k logarithmic scans. It's hardly pretty, but the images are glaringly sharp. That is why we see all the scratches, mold, dirt, stains, and other film anomalies. Linear color is what we view on our TVs and computers, the color looks right to us. The versions of the Zapruder film we see on television documentaries or DVDs like "Images of an Assassination" sold in 1998 or on YouTube have been cleaned up and color corrected. Much of the scratches, dirt, mold, etc., have been removed along with color correcting each scene to create a much richer looking element. The processes used to do this can be grueling and take a long time depending upon how much money and how much time the producers want to spend on it. But we did not want to make our images look prettier. We did not want to touch anything because our goal was to conduct a forensic scientific study of the film. We wanted to see what was really there in every frame not what might have been hidden or obscured by cleaning or color correcting. So logarithmic color, or log color for short, is what professionals use when coming from or going to film because it brings out much more detail in blacks and mid-blacks by stretching the blacks into grays. However, without color correction, which we have not done, the image looks a little washed out, but the amount of information in the blacks is substantially increased. The primary reason we want log color space was to see all the information in the shadows, and what we saw was astounding. If our transfer was linear color we never would have seen the patch on the back of the head in frame 317 or it would have looked like a shadow. Most importantly, log shadow space does not make a shadow look like a patch." ___________ If you want to hear this for yourself in the Doug Horne podcast, start at 138:30: https://midnightwriternews.com/?powerpress_pinw=1749-podcast The following is from Doug Horne's last minute "Addendum: The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood," in "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board": "...But frame 317 provides the most damning evidence of apparent film alteration.31 As David Lifton pointed out in his article in Fetzer’s anthology The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, when he first saw a Moses Weitzman 35 mm blowup of the Zapruder film in 1970 (a positive projection print), and again when he was using an Oxberry optical printer in 1990 to copy the Moses Weitzman high-quality 35 mm internegative of the Zapruder film loaned to him by documentary producer Robert Richter, he noticed that the back of JFK’s head in the frames following the head shot seemed unusually dark, and wondered if it had been ‘blacked out’ somehow during the film’s alteration. He was left with a very strong visual impression resulting from many, many hours of work with the film in 1990, during which he was often looking at magnified images of President Kennedy’s head. He talked about this repeatedly with me, and no doubt with others over the years, but no oral conversation could adequately impart the subjective impact of his visual experience. More than once I asked Lifton if his impression that the head had been blacked out could have been caused by looking at deep shadow on the back of JFK’s head, and each time he impatiently insisted: “No way! It was a patch! The back of the head is blacked out in the Zapruder film.” As the old adage says, “seeing is believing,” and in June of 2009, when Sydney Wilkinson forwarded to me a JPEG image of the HD scan of frame 317, I had my own epiphany. (See Figures 87 and 88.) The image of the limousine’s occupants in the HD scan of frame 317 forwarded to me by Wilkinson was not nearly as dark, or rich in color, as versions I had seen on television over the years, in documentaries. My initial impression (as a non-film person) was that the HD scan image of Z-317 was somehow washed out, or underexposed. As it turns out, I was incorrect; I was looking at a “flat” or “exposure neutral” scan of frame 317 from Sydney’s dupe negative of the extant film in the Archives. It had simply not been adjusted for purposes of aesthetics to make it more pleasing to the eye. What I saw was stunning. The lower half of the back of JFK’s head—hair that was very light brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray in the HD scan—was covered up by a jetblack patch with very straight, artificial looking edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head, in exactly the area where the Parkland medical staff had seen the exit wound behind the right ear in the posterior skull. My subjective reaction was that frame 317 was so obviously a composite image of artwork superimposed on top of a real film image that I literally expostulated “Holy xxxx!” when Sydney Wilkinson first brought it to my attention. Furthermore, when compared to the part of Governor Connally’s head that was in shadow in the same frame, the portions of the images of the two men’s heads that were supposedly in shadow were totally dissimilar. The portion of Connally’s head in shadow looked gray, and you could still see details inside the shadow; the black “patch” over JFK’s head was jet-black, with no details visible whatsoever. And guess what? You can actually see this patch with artificially straight edges on the MPI product sold in 1998, Image of an Assassination. It is best seen in the Close-up Frame view, using the ‘frame-by-frame advance’ feature on your remote. Even though the contrast of the image has been adjusted by MPI and the overall image appears much darker, with brighter and more vivid colors than the exposure neutral scan of Sydney’s, the curved trapezoid with improbably straight edges wrapped around the back of JFK’s head can still be seen! Take a look for yourself at home. In the surrounding frames on the MPI product, however—frames 313-337—the back of the head is so muddy and dark that the viewer cannot detect whether there is any overt, or blatant evidence of artificiality (i.e., straight edges associated with the black region on the back of the head) or not. The same is not true of the HD scans of the frames beginning with 313 (the ‘head explosion’), and continuing well past frame 337. The back of JFK’s head in all of these HD frames, beginning with 313, looks impossibly dark compared with the remainder of the image. The “black patch” on the HD frames, when viewed in extreme closeup on a high resolution video screen or monitor, appears to ‘hang in space,’ an impossibly dark mask supported by...NOTHING. Words are inadequate to convey how artificial this area of his head looks from frames 313 to 337 in particular, and even beyond that, until Jackie Kennedy pushes her husband’s head down out of view of the camera’s lens as she crawls out on the back of the limousine to retrieve part of his brain from thetrunk lid of the car. Frame 317 is just the most obvious of all of these frames, probably the one frame where the aerial imaging artist forgot to ‘fuzz up’ the edges of the black patch with his airbrush. The HD scan of frame 313 (the ‘head explosion’) also looks particularly bad when viewed in extreme closeup on a high-resolution video monitor: the ‘black patch’ actually comes down over the top of, and covers, the back of JFK’s shirt collar—and the so-called ‘head explosion’ seems to be coming from an area in space that is actually in front of President Kennedy’s head, rather than on his head. In other words, the aerial imaging artist who altered this frame screwed up twice, and in both respects depicted things that cannot be. One reason I am confident, even at this early stage in this investigation, that I am looking at the result of aerial imaging on an animation stand (such as described by Professor Fielding in his 1965 textbook), and not at a traveling matte, is that upon extreme magnification on a high-resolution screen, I believe I can see the real exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head bleeding through the black patch in frame 313. This is a subjective impression that most (but not all) people see when I show the extreme close-up of the HD scan of Z-313 to them on the high-resolution screen (1200 x 1920 pixels) on my laptop computer. I believe I am correct because the darker ovoid shape that I see “coming through the black mask” is in exactly the location where the exit wound was described by the Parkland treatment staff, and is also the same size they described—about the size of a baseball (or slightly smaller). For any part of an original image at all to be seen through a patch of black artwork means that we are looking at a composite created by aerial imaging, in which the black paint used by the animator was not completely opaque, and where the light projecting the original film frame up through the condensers onto the animation stand was a bit too bright—so bright that part of the original image could be seen through the non-opaque black paint employed by the visual effects artist on his animation cell. A matte insertion could not, by its very nature, allow any of the original image to “bleed through” the matte, since when a matte is inserted into a film frame that portion of the original image has already been optically excised. Aerial imaging seems the likely method employed to alter all frames of the head wound for two other reasons, as well. First, the area being covered up (the back of the head) is so small—it would even be small on a 7.5 x 10 inch animation stand in an aerial imaging set-up on an optical printer—that registration problems would surely have occurred if a 35 mm traveling matte had been employed to cover up the real exit defect. (No such registration errors are seen in the HD frames.) Second, aerial imaging artwork is ‘self-matting’ by its very nature, since the animation cell is superimposed over the top of the image being projected through the condensers in the optical printer—which means that the new, composite image can be captured on the first pass by the process camera, resulting in less contrast buildup than would be the case in a traveling matte, which would be two generations farther down the line. This aerial imaging hypothesis is the most likely explanation for the altered frames of the head wounds that will be tested throughout the Los Angeles investigation as it proceeds. And if the back of the head has been blacked out, it necessarily follows that the so-called massive head wound, seen most vividly in frames 335 and 337, is artwork also. (See Figures 89 and 90.) If one wound has been covered up, a substitute wound must be created to take its place. In her Warren Commission testimony—testimony that was deleted from the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits published in 1964, and only released by the U.S. government circa 1975—Jackie Kennedy said to J. Lee Rankin: “...from the front there was nothing...” when describing the head wound under oath. The full quotation of this section of her suppressed testimony is provided below: I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been, but from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on. [author’s emphasis] It should be no surprise to my readers that this testimony was suppressed! At a time when the Warren Commission, using the frames carefully selected by the CIA’s assets at LIFE magazine, was attempting to persuade the American public that JFK had an exit wound in the right-front of his head, our citizenry couldn’t be allowed to read graphic testimony like this that cast doubt upon the official cover story, or upon images from the Zapruder film published by LIFE. Jackie’s testimony, of course, was consistent with that of the Parkland medical staff in Trauma Room One, who overwhelmingly testified that the exit wound they saw was in the right rear of his skull, and consistently mentioned no damage to the right-front of JFK’s head. In later years, as pointed out elsewhere in this book, Dr. Peters, Dr. Crenshaw, Dr. Jones, and Nurse Bell all specifically stated that the right-front of President Kennedy’s head was undamaged when they saw him at Parkland hospital. The congruent denials of any frontal exit wound by both the President’s widow, and by key members of the medical staff who treated him at Parkland hospital, are the surest indications that the gross damage depicted in frames 335 and 337 (as well as in earlier frames between 313 and 335) is nothing but artwork, most likely painted onto animation cells on an aerial imaging animation stand in a modified optical printer, at the same time that the back of the head was blacked out in each frame...." Edited February 8 by Keven Hofeling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bojczuk Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Sandy Larsen writes: Quote I have indisputably proven that the blowout wound on Kennedy's head was indeed on the back of his head. Sandy's idea of what constitutes proof is somewhat looser than most people's. Take his "proof positive that one or both the [Zapruder and Nix] films have been altered": https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27679-possibly-the-easiest-to-understand-proof-that-the-zapruder-andor-nix-film-was-altered/ That claim, from two years ago, was debunked within minutes of going online. The anomaly in question turned out to be an obvious example of the parallax effect. You'd think Sandy would have learned not to use phrases like "proof positive" and "indisputably proven". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bojczuk Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Matt Allison writes: Quote You're trying to deflect using other people's claims that I have no interest in. My comment wasn't aimed at any one person, and certainly not at Matt in particular. Anyone who has been following the alteration debate for years will be aware that numerous claims have been made, based on different apparent anomalies in different copies of the film. There appears to be no agreement about which parts of the film are supposed to have been altered, or why, or how. If the general claim that the film has been altered is to be taken seriously by anyone outside the JFK assassination bubble, there really needs to be some agreement about the alterations that were supposedly made. Without agreement, it's just the usual pointless game of spot-the-anomaly that has been going on for over 20 years. Quote Explain what I posted. When an anomaly exists in one copy of an image but not in another, it will almost certainly be an innocent artefact of the copying process. As with every apparent anomaly, all we have to go on here is a digital copy of an analogue film. It is an uncontroversial fact that when a copy is made of an analogue film, information will be lost and anomalous artefacts are likely to be generated. This particular digital copy is probably several generations removed from the original image, and will not be a flawless representation of the original image. This copy comes from people who have an interest in identifying anomalies in this area of the film. They may have edited the frame by increasing the contrast in certain areas, thereby producing excessively dark patches with unrealistically sharp boundaries, as we see with the back of the head and the underside of the sleeve. If I had to guess, I'd say that if someone spots a dark blob where there shouldn't be a dark blob, that dark blob is most likely to be a product of the copying process. Since one common artefact of the copying process is an increase in contrast in dark areas, and since this part of the image is of dark hair in shadow, this particular dark blob might well be an artefact accidentally introduced during the copying process, and perhaps exaggerated during the editing process. But maybe it isn't. Maybe it's the product of deliberate alteration. The only way to know for sure that this particular dark blob is not an artefact is to examine the original film. That's a task for those who claim that the film has been altered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 19 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said: 20 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: I used math to show that it is statistically impossible* for 40 out of 50 witnesses to agree with each other and at the same time be wrong. 19 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said: Sandy, NOTHING is statistically impossible. Weird things happen in life. Coincidences happen all the time, no matter how unlikely they may seem. Were they impossible too? You left out my asterisked notation when you quoted me. It was: *For all intents and purposes. Sure, anything is possible over an infinite period of time, as long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics. Or the laws of God, whatever the case may be. (Though we don't know if the universe will exist that long.) But in this case, if we had a "Dallas" occur every year, once per year, it (i.e. 40 out of 50 witnesses getting the gaping hole location wrong) would likely happen just ONCE in 2,089,874,696,731,895 years. The universe is only 13,700,000,000 years old. So we would need 2,089,874,696,731,895 / 13,700,000,000 =152545 that many consecutive universes for it to happen JUST ONE TIME, that the 40 out of 50 witnesses got it wrong. Which pretty much means it was impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Griffith Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) On 2/4/2024 at 1:14 PM, Cliff Varnell said: On 2/4/2024 at 12:57 PM, James DiEugenio said: Sandy: On the back shot, I think that was a short shot. A short shot which traveled 90 yards thru swirling wind and missed the target by inches. Riiiiiiiiiiight...🥺 The back shot would not have been 90 yards away but only about 50-70 yards away from the sixth-floor window. The Z313 head shot would have been 90 yards away. A short shot (misfire) is a possibility. A number of witnesses said one of the shots sounded different from the others. Another possibility is that the back wound was made by a large fragment from the bullet that struck the pavement behind JFK's limo early in the shooting sequence. Regarding the Harper fragment, Dr. Angel only studied the photos of the fragment for a week or two. Dr. Mantik studied the photos of the fragment for years, and after refining and revising his analysis, he meticulously built a strong case for identifying the fragment as occipital bone, the same conclusion reached by the only three pathologists who actually handled the fragment. Edited February 8 by Michael Griffith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 18 hours ago, Tom Gram said: Respectfully Sandy, as a professor, you should have at least a basic understanding of statistics and running experiments, and should know that your “calculation” is totally meaningless. Respectfully Tom, you are wrong. I certainly DO have a "basic understanding" of statistics, more so than most people. I DO understand how to calculate the odds of something occurring or not a given number of times, given the probability of it happening in a single instance. And I DO know how to apply it to a real situation while maintaining its meaningfulness. The problem is, you are allowing your emotions to interfere with what the mathematics show. 18 hours ago, Tom Gram said: I really shouldn’t have to explain this, but think of all the variables involved in human perception and memory in a traumatic, chaotic environment. Pat and Gary Aguilar pointed out several. You cannot reduce something like this to a freaking coin flip. Period. Yes, I can reduce it to the flipping of coins, Tom. It is done all the time in statistics. If it weren't, statistics would be of no practical use to us. I don't need to account for all the details of human perception, memory loss, etc., etc., because I take the worst case situation and applied the calculations to that. The worst case situation is that ALL the witnesses were the most unreliable witnesses conceivable... poor perception, poor memory, etc., etc. Let's just say they were blind and they randomly guessed whether or not there was a gaping wound on the back of the head. Which is the same as if they each flipped a coin. Then I calculated the odds that 40 of the 50 would agree with one another, that there was a wound on the back of the head. The answer I got was 1 in 109,605 What this means is that if you have 50 coins and flipped them, you would have to do that 109,605 times for there to be a single occurrence of 40 of the 50 coins coming up all heads or all tails. The reason for this is that, when tossing 50 coins, usually you'll get close to 25 tails and 25 heads. It's unlikely that you'll get a lot more heads than tails, or vice versa. Specifically, the odds of getting 25 heads (or tails) is 1 in 9. The odds of getting 30 heads (or tails) is 1 in 24. The odds of getting 35 heads (or tails) is 1 in 500. The odds of getting 40 heads (or tails) is 1 in 109,605. It rises rapidly because it is exponential. Flipping 50 coins is no different than having 50 terrible worst-case witnesses essentially guessing whether or not there was a gaping hole on the back of the head. You should note that, rather than ignoring all the factors you point out affecting their judgements, I am essentially including them all! A witness can't be worse than a random coin flip. The reason for the other answer I got, 1 in 2,089,874,696,731,895, is that I assumed that the witnesses were a little bit better than a random coin flip. That is, of course, a reasonable assumption. I conservatively assumed that our 50 witness got it wrong only half as often as a coin toss gets something wrong. The odds of a coin toss getting something wrong is 1 in 2, i.e. 1/2. In my calculation I assumed half that for a real witness, or 1 in 4, i.e. 1/4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 21 hours ago, Bill Fite said: If I had to do it - (1) Assume the worst case scenario - all the witnesses are just guessing. (2) That gives a probability that any 1 witness is correct of 0.5. (3) If there are 50 witnesses on record then the probability that 40 are wrong would follow a binomial distribution. (4) So we have n=50, p=0.5, x=40. (5) I would then go to Python and use the binomial distribution to find the probability of 40 are more being wrong. (6) So, I would then use the following piece of code to get that probability: from scipy.stats import binom p = binom.cdf(39,50,0.5) print(f'The probability of having 40 or more successes in 50 trials is approximately {1-p:8.6f}') print(f'The odds of having 40 or more successes in 50 trials is {1/(1-p):,.0f} to 1') which prints out the answer: The probability of having 40 or more successes in 50 trials is approximately 0.000012 The odds of having 40 or more successes in 50 trials is 83,818 to 1 note: here a success is a person being wrong in their observation. Assumptions: * The probability of a person being wrong is not greater than if they had just guessed. * The person stated location is independent of other witnesses stated locations. So in the worst case scenario - defined here as independent guessing & independence of wound locations assumptions - I think the above works. Happy to have someone point out the error or errors. Yay, Bill Fite, a person who understands math! And knows how to apply it! Bill, as part of my proof, I did do it the way you did. But instead of getting an answer of 1 in 83,818, I got 1 in 109,605. I tried another online calculator and got the same. But it occurred to me that the two calculators might be using the same code. So I did the calculations manually, both on my HP calculator and on the Windows scientific calculator. Those calculators give a far difference answer of 1 in 112,236,203. Which obviously is a far different answer! I trust my HP calculator far more than any online calculator, which can be wrong due to the extremely large numbers involved with the factorial calculations. Do you have a scientific calculator that you can do the calculation on? Just to be sure. EDIT: I found the problem. The binomial probability formula I used to do the manual calculation has a typo. Using the correct formula, I again get 1 in 109,605. So I'm sure that is the correct number. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 19 hours ago, Tom Gram said: The problem is this isn’t just a right vs. wrong or in this case back vs. top scenario. We’re talking about specific location of a wound on a three-dimensional head, and as Pat has pointed out many of the early witness statements are not very anatomically specific, at all. The autopsy photos show a wound in the right posterior portion of the top of the head. This is a question of inches, not 0 vs. 1. My proof deals with just one thing... is there a hole on the back of the head or not? Yes or no. I'm not concerned with whether or not the hole extends elsewhere. Just if it can be seen on the back of the head. Yes or no. The reason being that the autopsy photo shows no hole there. It doesn't matter whether the witness placed it high or low on the back of the head. Because the autopsy photo shows the full back of the head, right side. No hole anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Varnell Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: The back shot would not have been 90 yards away but only about 50-70 yards away from the sixth-floor window. The Z313 head shot would have been 90 yards away. From the official statement of Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett: About thirty minutes after leaving Love Field about 12:25 P.M., the Motorcade entered an intersection and then proceeded down a grade. At this point the well-wishers numbered but a few; the motorcade continued down this grade enroute to the Trade Mart. At this point I heard what sounded like a fire-cracker. I immediately looked from the right/crowd/physical area/and looked towards the President who was seated in the right rear seat of his limousine open convertible. At the moment I looked at the back of the President I heard another fire-cracker noise and saw the shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. </q> The back shot occurred “immediately” before the head shot(s). Bennett’s account is corroborated by the location of the holes in the clothes (4 inches below the bottom of the collars, to the right of midline), Willis 5 @ Z201 (Bennett turned to the right), Altgens 6 @ Z255 (Bennett still facing right but with blurred features, indicating movement), and 55 other “bang...bang-bang” ear witnesses. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: A short shot (misfire) is a possibility. A number of witnesses said one of the shots sounded different from the others. Utterly absurd. A short shot traveled roughly 90 yards in swirling wind and missed the head by inches? Complete nonsense. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: Another possibility is that the back wound was made by a large fragment from the bullet that struck the pavement behind JFK's limo early in the shooting sequence. More nonsense. Bennett’s account debunks such a scenario. Edited February 8 by Cliff Varnell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 7 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said: Sandy Larsen writes: Sandy's idea of what constitutes proof is somewhat looser than most people's. Take his "proof positive that one or both the [Zapruder and Nix] films have been altered": https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27679-possibly-the-easiest-to-understand-proof-that-the-zapruder-andor-nix-film-was-altered/ That claim, from two years ago, was debunked within minutes of going online. The anomaly in question turned out to be an obvious example of the parallax effect. You'd think Sandy would have learned not to use phrases like "proof positive" and "indisputably proven". That wasn't my "proof." I got it off of Jeff Morley's website. I naively assumed that he wouldn't allow such a proof to be published on his website unless it had been thoroughly vetted. Because of his reputation for being so cautious. It was so simple that I made a thread for it and said, hey take a look at what could be the simplest proof ever. The proof was quickly proven wrong. I admitted so. But, as I said it wasn't my proof. Jeremy bringing this up is indicative of his desperation to discredit me. Which he does because he can't prove me wrong on the current proof at hand. The one that IS mine. And Bill Fite's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Griffith Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) 31 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said: From the official statement of Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett: About thirty minutes after leaving Love Field about 12:25 P.M., the Motorcade entered an intersection and then proceeded down a grade. At this point the well-wishers numbered but a few; the motorcade continued down this grade enroute to the Trade Mart. At this point I heard what sounded like a fire-cracker. I immediately looked from the right/crowd/physical area/and looked towards the President who was seated in the right rear seat of his limousine open convertible. At the moment I looked at the back of the President I heard another fire-cracker noise and saw the shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. </q> The back shot occurred “immediately” before the head shot(s). Bennett’s account is corroborated by the location of the holes in the clothes (4 inches below the bottom of the collars, to the right of midline), Willis 5 @ Z201 (Bennett turned to the right), Altgens 6 @ Z255 (Bennett still facing right but with blurred features, indicating movement), and 55 other “bang...bang-bang” ear witnesses. Utterly absurd. A short shot traveled roughly 90 yards in swirling wind and missed the head by inches? Complete nonsense. More nonsense. Bennett’s account debunks such a scenario. So you believe that the back shot occurred immediately before the Z313 head shot??? Even the altered Zapruder film shows JFK reacting to an apparent back shot at least 87 frames, or 4.75 seconds, before the Z313 head shot. Do you think it's wise to rely so heavily on a single eyewitness recollection? I think Bennett clearly merged some events and compressed their time frame. There is no way that the back shot came immediately before the Z313 head shot. Edited February 8 by Michael Griffith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Varnell Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: So you believe that the back shot occurred immediately before the Z313 head shot??? According to Bennett, the bullet holes in the clothes, Willis 5, Betzner 6, and 55 other “bang...bang-bang” ear witnesses. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: Even the altered Zapruder film shows JFK reacting to an apparent back shot at least 87 frames, or 4.75 seconds, before the Z313 head shot. So he reacted to a back shot by holding his fists in front of his throat? Other than the product of your imagination, there is no proof of this at all. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: Do you think it's wise to rely so heavily on a single eyewitness recollection? His account is heavily corroborated, and was initially recorded in writing a few hours after the killing. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: I think Bennett clearly merged some events and compressed their time frame. You can produce no evidence supporting what you think. 2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said: There is no way that the back shot came immediately before the Z313 head shot. There is no way a pet theorist will get off the scenarios they’ve married. Edited February 8 by Cliff Varnell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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