By Popular Demand...

Well, thank you to one of my readers for asking for more video.  Same as the last, this video displays clips from the Faux Noise production about Sarah Palin when she was a candidate for vice-president.  They got lots of footage from Elan Frank, who had shot video over 2-3 days encompassing April 8, 2008.  The reason this footage is so incredibly valuable (and likely the reason Faux has pulled its video of this very time frame) is because Sarah supposedly gives birth to Trig just 10 days later.

Clips here are taken from Part Two of the Faux Noise production (credit: Elan Frank) that I captured and converted.  There may be more coming, I still have to scour parts 3 - 5 of that "commercial for Sarah" that Greta Van Susteren narrated.  Take it for what you will, at least this time I figured out how to add some sound!

Governor Icon of Tight Ab-Land

I found a comment from Regina of Palingates on another blog today with a link to a series of YouTube videos showing the Sarah Palin special that FauxNoise broadcast almost 10 months ago. Thank you Regina, I've been looking for this footage for a long time! A lot of the video that Faux incorporates in their special was purchased from Elan Frank, an Israeli Air Force reservist and documentary director who interviewed Sarah Palin when she would have been almost eight months pregnant. Frank went to Alaska and filmed Sarah over a few days, and the best information I can find has April 8, 2008 as one of those days. (If any reader has confirmation or more precise information please let me know.

So, why is this video footage so important? Because just ten days later—April 18, 2008—is Trig Paxson Van Palin's birthday. Or so we have been told. Images of Sarah seemingly pregnant with Trig are scarce, and they are interspersed in the February-April 2008 timeline with images of Sarah clearly not pregnant.

I extracted an frame of Sarah from one of the videos and put it side-by-side with an image of another woman who seems to really be eight months pregnant. In case you're confused, that's Sarah on the left and a woman advertising a little strap-thingie that connects bra to jeans on the right.

I viewed all 5 parts of the Faux special and found more interesting material that may make it into blog posts in coming days.

Because snippets of the video are quite telling, I put a little movie together showing Sarah talking about her "tight abs" and cooing and giggling and looking ever so innocent as she talks to Elan Frank. I know, I should probably add music in here somewhere, but I'm still very much a newbie when it comes to making videos:

Things That Make Me Go "Hmmmmm"

April 2008 was a busy month for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  She had a budget bill to sign, polar bear protecting environmentalists to dissuade, a speech to deliver at an energy conference in Texas sponsored by oilmen, and a documentary shoot scheduled with Israeli filmmaker Elan Frank.  Her most avid supporter, blogger "Elephantman" (aka Adam Brinkley), joyfully announced the publication of her authorized biography, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down.

I'll come back to the Elan Frank film in a minute. But this information, from the first chapter of the Sarah biography, was just too interesting:

Born in Sandpoint, Idaho on February 11, 1964, Sarah Louise was the third of four children born in rapid succession to Chuck and Sally Heath.  The family moved to Alaska when Sarah was two months old... Her older brother, Chuck Jr., was two years old, Heather had just turned one, and Molly was soon to come.

Chuck Jr. was two, Heather just turned one, Sarah was two months and Molly was "soon to come."  [counts fingers, scratching head]

This means that Sarah was born just 10 months after Heather.  It also sounds like Sally was pregnant again just two months after Sarah was born.

Hmmmm.  I'm wondering if Bristol inherited this rapid-repeat-pregnancy tendency from Sally.

But back to Elan Frank.  He decided to do a documentary on 'women empowerment' and chose Sarah Palin as one of his subjects.  In early March, 2008 he was in Los Angeles preparing for his trip to Alaska when Sarah called him (from LA) and said she'd like to meet.  This get-together took place about a month before Frank traveled to Alaska to do his filming.

After Sarah was announced as a VP candidate, Frank remarked, "I was elated, it's like my best friend was picked for the job," and proceeded to sell his footage to Fox News.  In September, 2008 Fox aired a documentary that used substantial portions of that footage.

Elan Frank in Sarah's office, circa April 8, 2008

I can't find a video of that Fox program.  However, there is a video about Elan Frank recording Sarah Palin in which Frank describes his experiences shooting this documentary footage.

In a related Ynetnews story titled "Sarah Palin mesmerizes Israeli filmmaker", Frank says,

"I met her in my Hollywood office and we talked for over an hour… we instantaneously clicked and we had a blast. The funny thing is," he added, "that a few days later I got an email from a friend in Alaska telling me she was seven months pregnant. I didn’t notice a thing until later, when we were filming.

"I guess she's one of those women you can't really [tell] when they're pregnant, and she was probably dressing to hide it a little. You wouldn't know to look for it."

I can understand why Frank would be confused.  On one day he filmed Sarah slapping her squarish jelly-belly.  But a day or so before, she looked like this:

The 'fashion-assisting' scarf hangs straight down

The image above is a frame from the video about the documentary footage that Frank shot.  We see Sarah, Blackberry in hand, going out of her office, down some steps, and onto the sidewalk to greet daughter Piper who gets off the school bus. The only adjustments I made to this frame were to crop it and remove the letters that ran across the bottom.

For reference, here's the original frame, about the 00:02:03 mark:

By all accounts, Elan Frank shot this roughly 10 days before Trig Palin's official birthdate.  That would mean Sarah is supposed to be 33-34 weeks pregnant here.  I scrolled through more than a hundred pictures of women who are 34 weeks pregnant, and there's no reasonable comparison.

The author of a JewishJournal.com article about Frank's filming of Palin, titled Shooting Sarah Palin, tells us,

So yes, Frank seems to have fallen under her spell.  But Frank is no [sucker or fool] himself. This is a war hero who spent seven years in the Israeli army fighting a wily foe. He knows all about deception. He doesn't trust easily. He can tell real from fake and tough from soft.

"If Sarah Palin is anything," he says, "she's real and tough."

Hmmmmm.  Was Elan Frank mesmerized or not?  Was he under Sarah's spell?  Do seven years in the Israeli army enable you to tell the difference between a real pregnant belly and a fake one?