Hi all!
I've been examining this footage and audio very very carefully since I came across it, and whilst I'm not about to give a definitive yes or no, here's some things I have picked up on.
POSITIVES:
- The set looks damn near identical to what we see in the crime scene photographs that are available ('damn near' is the key term here - I'll go onto that later). Even a full feature film in which Christine's suicide is reenacted at the end ('Kate Plays Christine') did not manage to recreate the set as accurately as they appear to have done here, if it is indeed a fake.
- I'm admittedly not the biggest expert, but I have studied sound production and the history of it to a certain extent, and so I can say with quite a bit of confidence that whilst it's not impossible, it's very difficult to fake audio quality as bad as the audio we hear in that clip without sounding as though it has been edited.
- Whilst it'd be difficult for someone who doesn't know 'the speech' off by heart to determine what she's saying, I know what the words that we hear are, and they do fit in with the vast majority of reports (again, 'vast majority' - this will be discussed later).
- Although it is fuzzy video quality, what we see of her in this footage does quite accurately resemble the description of her from Sally Quinn's Washington Post article on Christine.
- Given Steve Newman's comments about the tape in 'Kate Plays Christine', regarding the fact that it is probably disintegrating and would need to be restored soon if the images are ever made public, the quality of this video and audio is not surprising, and actually seems rather accurate.
NEGATIVES/QUESTIONS
Before I go into lecture mode, I have one initial thought. Christine Chubbuck killed herself almost 43 years ago - why are we only seeing this 'tape' now? Where has it been all this time?
Myself and a friend ran the audio of the footage through some audio filters to reduce hiss, white noise, etc. in order to hear what was going on as best as we could. I have attached a screenshot of the soundwaves as they appear in Logic Pro 9 (the software we used), showing the moments she is heard saying 'attempted suicide', and then the gunshot. As you can see, there is a very, very brief moment of complete and utter silence. When we compared this with the video, it appears that the tape glitches temporarily whilst the gun is pointed at her head, which could be argued as an explanation for this short silence. However, if this were the case, it could easily be suggested that the velocity (volume) of other silent moments in the broadcast would not show up as being as loud as they are, and yet they are fully audible. This suggests that some kind of audio editing has gone on.
Further more, when played through the cleanup filters which we used, we noticed that the audio of the gunshot, and the sound of her falling from the chair after, is much clearer, and is in much better quality, than the audio of her talking. This suggests that this audio is actually a sound effect which has been edited in. Whilst it's not impossible, a station as small and as low-budget as WXLT was unlikely to have had radio mics which Christine could have worn on her (and in the only piece of footage of Christine that's publicly available, she is not seen wearing one). There's very clearly no microphone on the desk itself (visible both in the footage and the crime scene photo), which means that it is highly likely that the audio was picked up by a boom mic hanging overhead. This causes some confusion regarding the velocity of the thuds which we hear. There are around 3 or 4 distinct thuds, all of which sound more or less exactly the same, and as though they are coming from the same material. If we are to believe what we see in this footage, then Christine hits the desk, then the chair next to her, and then the carpet on which her chair is positioned (we know it is a carpet from the Sarasota County Sheriff Department case file, and it's also rather visible from the crime scene photographs - we can assume given the low-budget nature of the station that it was a hollow floorboard). It's highly unlikely that these three separate surfaces and materials would create an identical sound when a human body falls onto each of them, and it's also impossible that the boom mic would have picked these 3 or 4 different signals up at the same velocity; yet, if we look back at the soundwaves of the audio, they all appear to be the same velocity, and they sound, to the human ear, to all be the same kind of volume. Now of course, there is the very small chance that she WAS wearing a radio mic, and that's why the thuds are the volume they are - but then that still doesn't explain the vast difference in sound quality between her talking and her falling, nor does it explain the gap of silence. This is further evidence that the gunshot and the audio of her falling is almost definitely fake. I will get around to posting a video showing the edited audio file as soon as I possibly can do.
Some of the visuals do not match up either. Christine's body looks super imposed onto the footage, and it is confusing as to why she is sat completely adjacent to the camera, whilst sitting at a curved desk, with the camera facing the middle of the desk and Christine sitting slightly to the side. Why is she not facing into the desk with her head turned, or, more to the point, why has she not just moved to the centre of the desk?
The biggest standout inconsistencies for me in terms of visuals lie in the 'NEWSWATCH' sign which we see on the front of the desk. Whilst the font is pretty spot on, there are some very minor inaccuracies.
As we can see in the crime scene photo, there is a sun-like circle which is placed behind the 'N' right at the start of the word. However, straight off the bat, if we look at the exact placement of the 'N' in relation to the circle, we see that in the crime scene photo, the 'N' is located more towards the top-right of the circle, leaving more of the circle visible beneath the 'N' than above it, whereas in the footage, the 'N' appears to aligned perfectly central with the circle, with an equal amount of the circle visible both above the 'N' and beneath it. The circle itself also appears to be ever so slightly larger in the footage than in the crime scene photo.
The other letters seem pretty non-suspect, until we see the 'H' at the very end, and there's a clear difference between what we see in the crime scene photo and what we see in the footage - the gap between the two vertical lines in the 'H' is much much wider in the footage than in the crime scene photo, and even though the crime scene photo is taken from a different angle, it is very clearly different.
Finally, the entire 'NEWSWATCH' sign appears to be a larger font size in the footage than in the crime scene photo, and is perhaps a centimetre or two too high to resemble what we see in the crime scene photo.
Some people have mentioned that the movements seen in the footage do not resemble what Sally Quinn (who viewed the tape multiple times) wrote in her article - however, it's probably worth pointing out that even Sally Quinn made an error in quoting Christine's final words, writing that she said 'We bring you another first' instead of 'You are going to see another first', as most sources have reported, and also quotes Christine as having said 'AN attempted suicide' instead of simply 'attempted suicide' (this is a 50/50 split regarding who's reported what and what the correct wording was), so I personally would not use her description of the events as a definitive checklist of things to look out for in the footage.
It's possibly also worth noting that whilst the vast, vast majority of sources report the same version of Christine's final words (bar one or two minor confusions), the Sarasota County Sheriff Department case file for the incident has a transcript of the final few minutes of the broadcast, and the words listed there are as follows:
"In keeping with the WXLT practice of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood and guts news, TV 40 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living colour, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide."
However, once again, I would not use this as a definitive guide, as despite the fact that it's an official police document, this quote is presented in the case file as being different from the rest of the transcript - beginning on a new paragraph (something not seen in the rest of the transcript), and being bookended with quotation marks, something also not seen in the rest of the transcript. We know for certain that this wording was what Christine had written in her script (a newspaper article from the time of the event quotes both her on-air speech and also, in part, her script, and the two are different), so it is entirely possible that the direct transcript ends before 'the speech'.
I have attached screenshots of the relevant things which I have mentioned in this post.
Apologies for the super long essay, and for the incessant repetition of certain words and phrases! As I said at the start, I'm not here to provide a definitive 'yes this is the footage' or 'no this is a fake', however, I have picked up on several things which raise some issues and doubt. If you read all this, go you! You have a lot of patience
SCREENSHOT OF AUDIO FILE SOUNDWAVES:
imgur.com/a/CzH1KCOMPARISON BETWEEN CRIME SCENE PHOTO AND SCREENSHOT FROM FOOTAGE:
imgur.com/a/z3IhyFINAL PAGE OF POLICE TRANSCRIPT:
imgur.com/a/vUJIyNEWSPAPER ARTICLE PART ONE (featuring the on-air quote):
imgur.com/a/b64eYNEWSPAPER ARTICLE PART TWO (featuring the script quote):
imgur.com/a/El7P4Thank you for reading!
