First World War as you’ve never seen it before ...
WHEN you think of footage from the First World War, chances are you conjure up grainy, jumpy images from the trenches.
But a new 3D film by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson will bring the conflict to life in a way never seen before.
The Oscar-winner has restored and colourised 100-year-old footage from the Imperial War Museum’s vast archive – and early photos suggest that the results will be remarkable.
One comparison shot shows the dramatic transformation from poor quality black-and-white scenes to clear colour images, while another shows the radically sharpened faces of our troops.
Jackson said he hoped the film, which will premiere at the BFI London Film Festival before being shown on BBC1 later this year, will help audiences connect better with what they are watching. Explaining the painstaking process of restoring the footage, he said: ‘We started to do some experiments and I was honestly stunned by the results.
‘We all know what First World War footage looks like. It’s sped up, it’s fast, like Charlie Chaplin, grainy, jumpy, scratchy, and it immediately blocks you from connecting with the events on screen.
‘But the results are absolutely unbelievable. This footage looks like it was shot in the last week or two, with high-definition cameras. It’s so sharp and clear now.’
The Hobbit filmmaker added: ‘The faces of the men just jump out at you. It’s the faces, it’s the people that come to life in this film. It’s the human beings that were actually there, that were thrust into this extraordinary situation that defined their lives.’
Jackson and his team also combed through the BBC Archive, going through around 600 hours of audio interviews with veterans that had been recorded from the 1960s to the 1980s.
The ambitious film will be shown in every secondary school in the country to improve children’s understanding of the war, which killed as many as 700,000 British men. The project is just one of a season of events arranged by arts organisation 14-18 NOW.
The season will include a ‘mass participation artwork’ marking the centenary of the Representation Of The People Act, in which some women first gained the right to vote, and a work by filmmaker Danny Boyle to mark Armistice Day on November 11. Meanwhile, the BBC announced a ‘Year of History’ to mark the centenary of 1918, with programmes to mark the Armistice, the Spanish Flu pandemic, 100 years of the RAF and 100 years since some women were given the right to vote.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘This incredible cultural programme will help even more people learn how we went from entrenched conflict to peace in 1918.’