Hi all, I will add this here, although it concerns WW1, i'm sure many here will find it of interest... I am surprised to see no mention of this on any forums, but here you go.. Mods, please move or delete as necessary..
On Tuesday 16th October I went to one of the 250 UK cinemas showing, for one night only, Peter (Lord of the Rings) Jackson's new project "They Shall Not Grow Old". As has been mentioned before on this forum, Peter has a massive personal interest in the First World War, and is an avid collector. He was approached by the Imperial War Museum with a brief to use their WW1 archive footage "...in a new way". As his film company has massive technological resources at his disposal, he decided to see what could be done to restore the grainy old archive footage, as he puts it "the sped up Charlie Chaplin like figures", and bring it into the 21st Century, so that audiences could engage with it in a modern way.
The footage has been brought into sharp focus, and in higher definition, and has been recoloured. A new soundtrack intended to be as close as possible to the original sounds of the battlefield was added, and finally, the voices of the veterans (interviewed in the 1960's), were weaved in to tell the story of the individual soldier's experience on the Western Front 1914-18.
As someone who saw it on the big screen, the effect was incredible. Those soldiers from 100 years ago look like they were filmed yesterday. Their humanity, from the humour of the early days of the war, to the despair as the war progressed was immediately much more tangible, and very moving. The horrors of the trenches aren't shied away from either; it's now possible to see the effects of "Trench Foot" very clearly, and as the camera panned across the corpses in the mud it was now possible to see the flies moving across a dead man's lips. This wasn't for shock value, but to show the daily lives of the men. I can highly recommend seeing it if you can. I gather it may be shown on UK tv sometime soon...?
https://www.1418now.org.uk/commissio...peter-jackson/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHYRfukHToc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdY-1u-rk_M
On Tuesday 16th October I went to one of the 250 UK cinemas showing, for one night only, Peter (Lord of the Rings) Jackson's new project "They Shall Not Grow Old". As has been mentioned before on this forum, Peter has a massive personal interest in the First World War, and is an avid collector. He was approached by the Imperial War Museum with a brief to use their WW1 archive footage "...in a new way". As his film company has massive technological resources at his disposal, he decided to see what could be done to restore the grainy old archive footage, as he puts it "the sped up Charlie Chaplin like figures", and bring it into the 21st Century, so that audiences could engage with it in a modern way.
The footage has been brought into sharp focus, and in higher definition, and has been recoloured. A new soundtrack intended to be as close as possible to the original sounds of the battlefield was added, and finally, the voices of the veterans (interviewed in the 1960's), were weaved in to tell the story of the individual soldier's experience on the Western Front 1914-18.
As someone who saw it on the big screen, the effect was incredible. Those soldiers from 100 years ago look like they were filmed yesterday. Their humanity, from the humour of the early days of the war, to the despair as the war progressed was immediately much more tangible, and very moving. The horrors of the trenches aren't shied away from either; it's now possible to see the effects of "Trench Foot" very clearly, and as the camera panned across the corpses in the mud it was now possible to see the flies moving across a dead man's lips. This wasn't for shock value, but to show the daily lives of the men. I can highly recommend seeing it if you can. I gather it may be shown on UK tv sometime soon...?
https://www.1418now.org.uk/commissio...peter-jackson/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHYRfukHToc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdY-1u-rk_M
Thank you for posting this ! Very interesting ! Tom
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