They Shall Not Grow Old

[Griff]

If you get a chance make the chance. What Peter Jackson did here is simply genius. It took a guy with a passion for the subject, he owes his existence to the war. his Grandfather was badly wounded in WW1 and previously met his Grandmother in England when lightly wounded. Jackson has a huge uniform collection for color sampling, a couple howitzers for sound sampling, and the studio to put it all together. I think frame-rate matching was his most important addition to the footage. The men were shown in a truer light, the athleticism, the cold fear, the horse-play, and the humanity all pop out of these old films. He also rescued a lot of film that was too dark or too bright.

I will admit to a man-crush for this barefoot filmmaker.

https://filmmakermagazine.com/106589...-not-grow-old/

[xoxoxoBruce]

Jackson’s enhancement of 100-year-old newsreel footage places him squarely at one extreme of the archival debate as to whether or not vintage film footage must be handled as sacrosanct, never to be altered or “improved” in the process of preservation or restoration.

They are whining like he destroyed the archival films, which is bullshit. He used them as a base to create this film but the archival films are still there for people who want to see them. I doubt many will, however, beyond a few archive nerds. Because of the extensive research Jackson'e crew did, history buffs will prefer this film for accurate information on colors and attitude from dialog.

[Carruthers]

Unfortunately I didn't see this when it was shown on TV on Nov 18th so it's another one for the DVD section of my Amazon wish list.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

They are whining like he destroyed the archival films, which is bullshit. He used them as a base to create this film but the archival films are still there for people who want to see them. I doubt many will, however, beyond a few archive nerds. Because of the extensive research Jackson'e crew did, history buffs will prefer this film for accurate information on colors and attitude from dialog.

After the film Peter got into some of that. A lot of the originals were of no use to historians because they're washed out or too dark, people would immediately skip all that footage. Now they actually are useful. He showed one piece of film of an artillery crew where you could only make out a little stripe of sky. They brought it back to brilliant detail.

[xoxoxoBruce]

He said he was amazed when he was shown what the boys in the backroom could do with crap film. It really fired him up to do this project.