Sam Pratico
The Movie, “They Shall Not Grow Old” was a piece of digital media unlike anything I had ever seen before. I have seen a lot of old war footage, and historical fiction tv shows and movies, however the life and realism that Peter Jackson brought to these real-life scenes from a war over a century ago invoked thoughts and emotions that these other forms of media struggle to achieve. The connection you feel with the characters when you can hear them speak while seeing them, when you can look into their eye moment before their death, and see their fear before running into battle, it is like looking through a window into one of the most horrifying events in recent world history.
For the sake of creating a narrative in such a short period of time, I thought the decision by Jackson to focus on British men in their journey from signing up for the service to the frontlines, and for some of them back home, made sense. However after seeing the advancements this project made in the restoration techniques themselves, I would be very interested to see further projects focusing on the homefront, women in the war, other countries and warfronts and maybe even a more in depth look at some of the colonial regiments that served, because there are many interesting social and cultural implications surrounding the fact that these people served and died for the UK. I am hoping that Jackson, or others will take the opportunity to apply some of these techniques that were developed to explore some of these subjects or even other events and archives of historical footage.
The techniques they developed themselves were extremely interesting. It was amazing to see how focused and deliberate this project was in making something as authentic as possible while still using modern day techniques. By having access to, documents, sounds, clothing and physical locations, Jackson was able to perfectly blend the old and the new for a very natural looking product. I thought one of the most exciting stories was of the speech that they had footage of but no sound recording. It shows how important digital archives can be even for multimedia projects, which is relevant after the Digital Darwin talk. It was funny to hear how Peter Jackson was reading off this document they found of a “pump up” speech from the same date and place and trying to match the recording of his voice to the video.
It was cool to see the enthusiasm from Peter Jackson, a long-term WW1 fanatic whose grandfather served in the war. Jackson is a physical embodiment of how the spirit of the War lives on, and how it has been passed down by generations. I personally have no recent military history in my family, however it is still awe inspiring to see how much so many gave to fight for their countries. I was heartbroken to see how much of a non-event it was to so many after the war back in the UK, however movies like this help the brave actions of those soldiers live on in infamy.