After watching They Shall Not Grow Old with the class I was uneasy that night. The movie was honestly very powerful to watch and I would argue was one of the better war movies I have ever seen. The most interesting part of the film for me came after the credits when we got to hear the director discuss his plan and the process of making this film. It was really impressive to hear and witness the hours they put in to listening to all the authentic audio from veterans and sifting through the hours of archival footage from the war. I thought it was also particularly interesting to hear about why he chose to specifically follow a British soldier on the Western front and leave out many of the other countries and people involved in the first World War. Also watching them recreate many of the artillery noises and shelling was really amazing because the whole time during the movie before the director’s portion I was completely engulfed and immersed in the battlefield. It truly felt like you were there, and considering it was all repurposed old archival footage from the war itself is just astonishing.

There are so many things I liked about this movie but two things in particular that stood out to me were the beginning of the film and the one section with the cuts from living soldiers talking to dead bodies of soldiers on the ground. The beginning of the film was impactful because it wasn’t shockingly repurposed until a while into the film. The beginning started on a smaller screen or winder too and actually expanded until finally filling up the whole frame. I remember specifically when it transitioned into the portion of the film that was colorized and I think everyone had a similar reaction in the audience, which was simply just shock and awe. One man in the theater actually let out an emphatic “wow!” This was incredibly slick by the director and really made me immersed in the film because as soon as it became colorized I was just there on the battlefield absorbed into the war.

The second thing that stood out to me was that section that the director discusses after the credits where they show a soldiers face as he is talking and then it cuts to them lying dead on the ground after artillery sound effects. This is repeated for several soldiers and I thought this was one of if not the most influential part of the film. It is really difficult to display the devastating nature of war, and WWI in particular was an extremely gruesome war. I thought by including this specific portion of the film it was really effective at not only relating us to the soldiers in the film but also just by framing how horrible war is. When the director told us these soldiers’ faces had been shown earlier in shots within the film it really sunk in why this part of the film was so impactful and it was because the audience genuinely felt like we knew these men. By fully immersing us in the war and showing us shots of these men from earlier, looking at them then lying dead on the ground was extremely emotional and powerful.

Similar to the skype with Dr. John van Wyhe about Digital Darwin, this film “They Shall Not Grow Old” gave me insight and shined a light onto a subfield of STS that I had never even considered: digital projects through filmmaking and movies. Although I thought the film was very well put together and captivating through its entirety, I found the half an hour documentary after the movie to be the impressive and moving element of the film. As the director of the movie explained how the movie was slowly put together in bits and pieces, I couldn’t help but be amazed by how all the moving parts came together to create this astonishing recreation of World War I. The following are notes that I took as the director explained each part of creating his digital project:

• Colorization
• Magazine/comics/sketch’s

Subconscious propaganda within

• Use of BBC audio tapes
• Being as authentic as possible throughout the building of the film
• 600 hours of audio
• 100 hours of video
  Cameraman can’t capture actual fighting
  • So cleverly used sketches from WWI magazine
• Had to think Morally and technically
• Static videos became moving shots
• Took photos of landscape in belgium
• Created their own sounds (sloshing, cannon shots, rifles)
• Microphones around new zealand real bomb shells
• Forensic lip readers
• Went into archives, June 30th- pep talk
• Music track… instrumental music
• Critics music: Mademoiselle from Armentieres
• British embassy
• There were many parts to WWI and had to focus on a specific element
  • Also had planes, nurses, home front, navy
• Dedicated to god father and great uncle who served in WWI
• Asked us at the end to look within your own family/lineage to see if your parents were in the world war

If I was surprised by how much effort was made into Darwin Online, I was really impressed and shocked by the dedication and thought put into this movie. Never did I expect so much audio footage and video footage to have to be scavenged, own sound effects, or even forensic lip readers. A highlight that the director mentioned was how the production team was able to find (almost 100% sure) the exact letter one of the sargents was reading to their troops in a famous scene before the World War I. The fact that they went through archives and found a specific date that would’ve made sense and aligned the lip movements to the archived letter was just wild to me. Whether this was extreme luck or mastery of filmmaking, this was a feat that put me in awe.

Overall, without the short film at the end of the movie, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate all the hard work and effort put into this movie. I just wouldn’t have known. From the moving shots of static images to actually travelling to Belgium in order to capture the genuinity of the landscape to the clever use of sketches, the movie had so many elements that were so well integrated into the movie. As the audience, I never had to question the authenticity of the movie nor did I stop to think about it. And the singing at the end from the British embassy…a scene I would’ve never expected. If there’s anything I definitely gained through this moving film, I have truly found an appreciation and newfound respect for digital projects and filmmaking.