This afternoon I went to see Peter Jackson's latest film, a documentary about WWI, the War to End All Wars. Commissioned by the BBC and the Imperial War Museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the war, Jackson's brief included the direction that the materials be presented in a novel manner. The result is a masterful.
Scouring the War Museum's 100 hours of surviving archived footage and the BBC's 600 hours of oral history recorded in the '60's and '70's from surviving WWI veterans, Jackson and his cohort of digital artists undertook to restore the selected footage using a variety of image processing tools to pull every bit of image data from their sources, conform frame rates, and then very carefully introduce color. I'm not a fan of colorization, but Jackson makes it work. Jackson brought in lip readers to figure out what the men in the footage were saying and then hired vocal talent to give voice to these mute images. The BBC oral history material provides the bulk of the soundtrack. As a final touch, the film is rendered in stereoscopic 3D.
Rather than try to cover the whole of the conflict, Jackson chose to focus on the experiences of British soldiers in the trenches. The conditions under which they served and the dangers they faced is presented unflinchingly and one wonders how anyone survived, either physically or emotionally.
It is a powerful film, at once dreamlike, unflinching and honest. A must see for anyone interested in this subject. It's been in a very limited release in only a few cities so far, but I see that wide release will begin January 11th.
Scouring the War Museum's 100 hours of surviving archived footage and the BBC's 600 hours of oral history recorded in the '60's and '70's from surviving WWI veterans, Jackson and his cohort of digital artists undertook to restore the selected footage using a variety of image processing tools to pull every bit of image data from their sources, conform frame rates, and then very carefully introduce color. I'm not a fan of colorization, but Jackson makes it work. Jackson brought in lip readers to figure out what the men in the footage were saying and then hired vocal talent to give voice to these mute images. The BBC oral history material provides the bulk of the soundtrack. As a final touch, the film is rendered in stereoscopic 3D.
Rather than try to cover the whole of the conflict, Jackson chose to focus on the experiences of British soldiers in the trenches. The conditions under which they served and the dangers they faced is presented unflinchingly and one wonders how anyone survived, either physically or emotionally.
It is a powerful film, at once dreamlike, unflinching and honest. A must see for anyone interested in this subject. It's been in a very limited release in only a few cities so far, but I see that wide release will begin January 11th.
