Documentary
Following the success of his World War I documentary, Sir Peter Jackson has another war epic in his sights.
Digitally restored and audio-enhanced film footage transports you to the World War I battlefields of the Western Front in They Shall Not Grow Old
The latest film directed by Peter Jackson is no fantasy, but it delivers something akin to time travel. It’s also personal. His They Shall Not Grow Old is a World War I documentary in which digitally restored and audio-enhanced 100-yearold film footage transports you to the Western Front. When the film blooms from a square of scratchy black and white into full-screen colour and atmospheric sound, it’s spine tingling.
Having screened on the BBC on Armistice Day and in packed New Zealand cinemas since, it has gained Jackson his best reviews since The Lord of the Rings. Inevitably, TSNGO has been tagged as a passion project, given Jackson’s enthusiasm for Great War history, which originally sprang from hearing stories about his grandfather. Sergeant William Jackson served the entire conflict in the South Wales Borderers, often fighting alongside Kiwi troops at Gallipoli, Passchendaele and Le Quesnoy.
He died at age 50, in 1940, just as his own son, Bill, went off to World War
II. After his war, Bill, remembering his father’s admiration for the New Zealanders, emigrated here, where he met and married fellow English migrant Joan, who, during WWII, worked in a factory building Mosquito fighter bombers.
Now her son owns his own aircraft plant and has built his own squadron of WWI replicas.
Jackson was intrigued when UK WWI commemoration arts organisation 14-18 NOW, and the Imperial War Museum, got in touch about the possibility of freshening the museum’s film archive.
He pondered the possibilities of
applying the vast computer power at his disposal to the museum’s films. A test run found that while exposure and sharpness could be adjusted, the key factor was speed. Jackson’s team developed ways of compensating for the jerkiness of the original 13-15 frames-per-second (fps) – and the fluctuating pace of a hand-cranked camera – by creating new intermediate frames to achieve the modern standard of 24fps.
“When you fix the speed, these people become human beings again. Their facial expressions come alive and I was absolutely stunned. The results were so much better than what I expected.”
After the speed came the painstaking process of colourising the black-and-white footage and rendering it in 3D. Then came sound to help make it immersive and tell a story. Adding a soundscape to the silent footage required starting from scratch.
Lip readers deciphered what the soldiers caught talking in the footage were saying and actors dubbed their voices. Soundeffects artists trudged in basins of mud to replicate the sound of boots on the ground. Everything from buzzing flies to the clank of tank tracks and artillery fire was synced to the screen.
Jackson also asked the BBC for recordings made in the 1960s of veterans talking about the war and extracted 90 minutes of narration from 600 hours of audio. More than 120 voices are heard reflecting on the day-to-day lot of the ordinary soldier.
History might consider they were cannon fodder, but here, they sound like blokes making the best of a bad situation, enjoying an adventure, feeling lucky their number never came up.
“I thought, ‘It’s about them, let them tell their story,’” says Jackson.
“What amazed me was their lack of selfpity. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves and the majority of them didn’t feel sorry they’d experienced it.”
Jackson looked in vain for footage of the South Wales Borderers and his grandfather. He dedicates the film to him.
“It helped fill up a little bit of a vacuum in my understanding of what his war would have been like. So, it was personal.”
It was also fun to make. As the end titles say – “Shot on location on the Western Front 1914-1918” – all the hard work had already been done.
“I didn’t have to go through the agony of shooting on set. I liked sitting in the cutting room and just doing what I wanted with a whole lot of footage from some poor guys who were risking their lives on the Western Front 100 years ago.”
Jackson is still determined to have a go at WWII with a remake of The Dam Busters, the classic 1955 movie about the 1943 RAF bouncing-bomb raids on Nazi Germany. He still has the rights for another two or three years and doesn’t see an issue with possible funding – after Dunkirk and The Darkest Hour, the project may be well timed.
“That is certainly sitting there as a project that we would love to make and have every intention of doing. I am as enthusiastic about Dam Busters now as I ever was.”
Jackson’s enthusiasm for Great War history sprang from hearing stories about his grandfather, whose regiment fought alongside Kiwi troops at Gallipoli, Passchendaele and Le Quesnoy.