One for Spock to See

The forum for general posting. Come join the madness. :)
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
silverscreenselect
Posts: 23174
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:21 pm
Contact:

One for Spock to See

#1 Post by silverscreenselect » Sun Feb 03, 2019 3:43 pm

Mrs. SSS and I went to see the documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old today and it's an amazing experience. The British Imperial War Museum gave Peter Jackson (director of Lord of the Rings) access to over 100 hours of vintage footage and 600 hours of interviews made in the 1960s and 70s with actual World War I veterans. Jackson put it together into this documentary that recreates the experience of the soldiers on the Western front from enlistment and training through the years in the trenches. There isn't any footage of the major battles because the cameramen weren't taking part in the charges (instead they show some magazine drawings of battlefield scenes), but just about everything else is depicted in greater detail than I've ever seen before. Each scene features a number of the actual soldiers talking about that aspect of the war (like the food or their uniforms) accompanied by appropriate video footage.

After the documentary, there is a 30-minute feature in which Jackson describes how he made the film. He was able to clean up the existing footage (much of which had been unusable previously), get the camera speeds slowed down to actual time instead of the herky-jerky newsreel footage you often see and even zoom in on a number of shots to get greater detail of the soldiers' faces. He also colorized the film, recreated sound effects and even brought voice actors in to dub in the lines the soldiers were saying on the footage. Much of this footage hasn't been seen before because the film simply wasn't in good enough shape to view before Jackson restored it.

The movie was shown a couple of times as a Fathom Events special but is now playing in various cities in general release. Unfortunately, it's not eligible for the Best Documentary Oscar for some technical reasons, but it's certainly as good as any documentary out there.
Check out our website: http://www.silverscreenvideos.com

User avatar
BackInTex
Posts: 12780
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:43 pm
Location: In Texas of course!

Re: One for Spock to See

#2 Post by BackInTex » Sun Feb 03, 2019 3:54 pm

silverscreenselect wrote:Mrs. SSS and I went to see the documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old today and it's an amazing experience. The British Imperial War Museum gave Peter Jackson (director of Lord of the Rings) access to over 100 hours of vintage footage and 600 hours of interviews made in the 1960s and 70s with actual World War I veterans. Jackson put it together into this documentary that recreates the experience of the soldiers on the Western front from enlistment and training through the years in the trenches. There isn't any footage of the major battles because the cameramen weren't taking part in the charges (instead they show some magazine drawings of battlefield scenes), but just about everything else is depicted in greater detail than I've ever seen before. Each scene features a number of the actual soldiers talking about that aspect of the war (like the food or their uniforms) accompanied by appropriate video footage.

After the documentary, there is a 30-minute feature in which Jackson describes how he made the film. He was able to clean up the existing footage (much of which had been unusable previously), get the camera speeds slowed down to actual time instead of the herky-jerky newsreel footage you often see and even zoom in on a number of shots to get greater detail of the soldiers' faces. He also colorized the film, recreated sound effects and even brought voice actors in to dub in the lines the soldiers were saying on the footage. Much of this footage hasn't been seen before because the film simply wasn't in good enough shape to view before Jackson restored it.

The movie was shown a couple of times as a Fathom Events special but is now playing in various cities in general release. Unfortunately, it's not eligible for the Best Documentary Oscar for some technical reasons, but it's certainly as good as any documentary out there.
I want to see this.
..what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms.
~~ Thomas Jefferson

User avatar
silverscreenselect
Posts: 23174
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:21 pm
Contact:

Re: One for Spock to See

#3 Post by silverscreenselect » Sun Feb 03, 2019 4:08 pm

There's one scene in which an officer is reading a letter to a group of enlisted men. Jackson couldn't trust the lip readers to get all of his talk perfectly accurate so he did research to find out what the unit was and the date the film was made (it was the day before the Battle of the Somme). Then he searched through the archives until he found the actual memo that the officer was reading and brought it an actor to read it in time with the officer's lips.
Check out our website: http://www.silverscreenvideos.com

Spock
Posts: 4295
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:01 pm

Re: One for Spock to See

#4 Post by Spock » Sun Feb 03, 2019 4:15 pm

Yeah, hopefully it is in a theater close to me-but doubtful.

Either way I will buy it ASAP.

I have read that we are seeing the guys taken the day before the Battle of the Somme the day before they died.

Post Reply