The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

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aj
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by aj »

You don't have to repost everything you find on the web. The forum has seen it all before.

BTW Likely this film is not the most watched.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by eightmm »

Enjoy????
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by harryhausendisney »

Enjoy with the quality of the telecine job and with the beatifull colour! The film is very sad, of course.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by yolia »

It's probably the most famous 8mm footage ever shot although the framing is atrocious. I read that Zapruder sold the rights to that reel for $50,000 and donated all the money to some charity. I'm convinced there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination but don't quite understand why the conspirators ever allowed this footage to be released to the public.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by aj »

The $ amount is wrong and they didn't give away the money. First the film and rights where sold to a publisher. Later the rights were bought by the US governement to make sure the film would be safe in a national archive or something.

Mr Zapruder agreed only when one of the bloodiest frames would never be published. He didn't want his president remembered like that.

For research all grassy-knoll frames were photographed onto 4x5 slide film.

USA has free speech and free press. Check the forum archive for all silly theories. Free speech here too.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by Jim Carlile »

LIFE Magazine ran the frames a few days later in a special rushed issue-- the one everybody saved--but they left out the worst ones. Those weren't seen until the 80's.

There's a whole interesting history about how and what Kodak did at their Dallas plant to process the film. Seems they didn't have a way of making R8 duplicates there-- only Rochester and a few other of their labs could do that, much like the Sonotrack striping.

So they first viewed the unslit 16mm film in a special viewer they used for this purpose. Then they found a local lab that could make duplicates, but the lab didn't have the print stock. So Kodak had to rush over the stock.

There's a whole subculture obsessed with this:

http://www.jfk-info.com/mshack1.htm

If you weren't around then, it's difficult to understate the paralyzed feeling people had about this. Nobody knew what was going on or what was going to happen next.

What's interesting is that if this happened nowadays, Zapruder would have had the film snatched away from him by the authorities, and arrested in order to cover it up (probably prosecuted, too.) Can you imagine what the media would do to him now? They would have claimed he was in on it-- I can hear Nancy Grace's voice this very minute. He'd be lynched.

It was a much more genteel age back then, and a lot less fascist, too.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by Jim Carlile »

P.S.

In case anyone's interested, here's an example of the kind of crankiness that surrounds this topic:

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:pm ... cd=7&gl=us

Much of it involves a deep misunderstanding these guys have about printing processes-- they don't know the difference between optical and contact prints.

They think the outside lab did optical prints, but they didn't, they used a Bell & Howell 5205 Model J contact printer, modified. But "optical prints" gives them the opportunity to pursue their fantasies about special effects or whatever.

What I think is interesting is that the Kodak Dallas lab had the 8mm perf film but couldn't do the prints. So I suspect the stock they gave Zapruder was not Kodachrome duplicating film, but regular Kodachrome unsplit camera stock. That would effect the winding and the quality through the base in a contact printer.

It's an interesting topic to pursue but these guys are unreliable when it comes to the facts.

I'm also curious how Kodak made their KII duplicates back then-- 2 at a time or 4? That would explain why only the bigger labs could do it.
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by Jim Carlile »

P.S.S.

Ah, the obsession continues. The answer as to what kind of film stock Kodak supplied Zapruder is here. A good article, too. Sane:

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/za ... proof.html

Since it was tungsten KII camera stock, in 25 foot rolls, the quality of these copies has to be bad. The wind is wrong for a contact printer, the color is going to be off, everything. The lab just ran off 3 separate 16mm copies, 8mm perf, with a specially adapted 8mm sprocket and mask. Then Zapruder must have rushed back to Kodak to have the KII copies processed, again
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Re: The 8 mm most watched movie in the world

Post by Scotness »

It would be interesting to see this effect applied to it.

Image

Don't know what we'd learn from it though? - anyone with too much time and skill on their hands want to give it a go?

Scot
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