Home Movies - Omnipresence and Controversy

Omnipresence and Controversy

Portability and small size of digital home movie equipment, such as camera phones and PDAs with video capabilities, has led to the banning of such devices from various places, due to privacy and security concerns.

Pornographic movies of celebrities have been rumoured to exist for many years, but the ease of creating home movies on video has resulted in several celebrity sex tapes becoming available to the public, often without the permission of participants. The honeymoon video of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee from 1998 was the first highly publicized example.

Portability of digital equipment helps fuel other controversies as well, such as the incident on November 17, 2006 in which comedian Michael Richards got into a racist war of words with an audience member during his comedy club act. Large parts of the incident were captured on the camera phone of another audience member and broadcast widely.

Home movies have played important roles in controversial police investigations, a prime example being the Zapruder film of the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy shot using an 8 mm home movie camera on Kodachrome II 8 mm safety film. This film was published and broadcast extensively and became official evidence for the Warren Commission, which was established on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination that had taken place exactly a week earlier.