Synchronized Dorman and Zapruder films on Elm street
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Dorman-Zapruder sync on Elm.aviThe two lower film inserts in the composite video above consist of a close real time sync of the Dorman film (lower left) and the Zapruder film (lower right) while the presidential limo traveled down Elm street. Elsie Dorman was filming with a Brownie camera for the first time out an open window very close (two windows below and two over) to the 6th floor sniper nest window.
Above the two lower film inserts, in the upper left quadrant of the video composite above, is a film from a Secret Service re-enactment of the presidential limo traveling down Elm. Since it’s obviously not contemporaneous with the other two films, it is not an exact synchronization, but appears to be fairly close, so is a good approximation of the perspective of the events timing as observed from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the book depository.
Importantly in the Dorman film insert here, her camera stops and associated off times are included in the sync in order to make the two bottom films sync, or align, continuously in real time. The timing is also closely aligned to the synchronization used in the epipolar geometric analysis of the Dealey Plaza amateur films compiled by D.K. Myers.
Dorman's camera would have stopped filming during this time if her finger came off the spring loaded run button on the Brownie camera. A key question is were Dorman's two camera stops, as seen in the above sequence before the end of her filming from the window, intentional/voluntarily for some reason, or were they unintentional/involuntarily for another reason (like startle) as indicated below? See the same video below with shot sounds superimposed.
The same synchronized film composite with rifle shot sounds superimposed at predicted shot timings.
The same synchronized film composite with rifle shot sounds superimposed at predicted shot timings.
Dorman-Zapruder sync on Elm with shot audio.aviJust above here is the same video composite as the first one above, but this time with the sounds of a carcano rifle shot overlaid at the proposed timing of three shots fired from the snipers nest just above and to the left of Elsie Dorman. What's new here is the first shot timing. The first shot is placed at ~z124 a timing determined by new analysis to be ~0.5 seconds before Zapruder restarted his film at z133, the second shot is placed ~z219 just before Governor Connally is coming out from behind the Stemmons sign as seen on the Zapruder film, and the third shot is placed ~z310 to correspond with the strike at z313. Be sure to turn up the volume on your playback device enough to hear the overlaid background gunshots. Also after first clicking on the video, toggling to full screen by clicking the action button at the bottom right hand corner can help visualize when playing.
A note about Dorman’s camera and her filming while being in near proximity to the snipers nest window: Having closely inspected a Brownie 8mm Movie Camera II, the same model that Dorman used in filming, one can see how easy it is to have a finger slip off the small spring-loaded run button, which will then automatically shut off the recording. The button design however makes it fairly easy to re-start. Depending on how you position the tip of your finger in the normal push to run mode holding the run button in, if that finger slips down as little as 1/8” it can result in the run button popping back out, shutting the camera recording off until the time it is depressed again to restart the filming.
At the third shot in this sequence her finger did not come off the run button. This may have been the result of a slightly tighter camera grip after the first two incidents that just occurred or the right hand pushing more into the camera in the right-to-left panning action she did at the time of the third shot, but more likely it was the result of a phenomenon called startle habituation where arm and hand motion is reduced after repeated startles occur within a short timeframe.*
*In startle habituation studies significant reduction of arm movements can sometimes be noticed by the 3th loud noise. For example in Phelps et. al. Demonstrating Habituation of a Startle Response to Loud Noise they noted “During the 3rd stimulus presentation, the degree of startle was somewhat reduced in magnitude, the vocalization was still present but no movement of the arm occurred.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275724431_Demonstrating_Habituation_of_a_Startle_Response_to_Loud_Noise
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