They Shall Not Grow Old
Oct. 19th, 2018 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinIt's been a while since I did a movie review, but then it's been a while since I've been to see a movie, so that may explain it.
Last night I went to see Peter Jackson's endeavour for the WWI centenary, a collection of film clips from the time with reminiscences of veterans, recorded many decades later. The gimmick for this one was that the film was restored and colourised, which you can see very nicely in the trailer:
Overall it was a decently well put-together film – I liked that there was nothing intruding on the primary sources, just straight film clips and the voices of people who were there. There were a few "artsy" bits of compositing early on that looked like someone had spent a weekend in AfterEffects, but the intent was sound and subtle enough not to grate. The only new stuff seemed to be the foley and voices added to the silent footage, which was done with great prudence and craft, I thought. I've seen and heard a fair amount of WWI stuff over the last five years – including a very impressive exhibit at Te Papa in Wellington which appeared to have had several Weta people involved with it – and this probably communicated best what it was like to be there, and to know the people involved.
That it was sympathetic to the period and its people shouldn't be a great surprise: I've spent a lot of time with Edwardians in the last ten years, and rewatching Fellowship of the Ring recently, it felt so profoundly in accordance with the feeling of that time – not a modern filming of a book written by an Edwardian, but what an Edwardian might have filmed if he had the ability. There is a slight 'garage project' feeling to They Shall Not Grow Old, but that works in its favour, I think. It's got faults, but seems to have been made with love, which counts for more.
The colourisation, for the most part, was surprisingly successful. It felt more like early colour footage than like something coloured after-the-fact, and made the clips seem surprisingly current. What didn't work so well was the process used to bring the 16 frames-per-second film up to a modern standard of smoothness. There were some very successful clips (most of which are in the trailer), but for the most part it felt kind of swimmy, and the film grain tracked with people's faces which was a bit distracting. I'm glad I saw it in 2D, as a 3D process on top of all of that would have been difficult to watch. Animators figured out early on that most people perceive 12 frames per second just as smoothly as 24 (saving us a lot of work!) so I'd much rather have seen some sort of process which gave us the original 16fps footage playing at the correct speed. Almost no one would have noticed the lower frame rate, you'd avoid the jerky sped-up feeling of early film which happens when you play 16fps at 24fps, and it would have saved them time and money. But this is Peter Jackson and it's a shiny new piece of technology, so I suppose we should just be grateful he didn't try for 48fps.
Would I recommend you see it? I don't know. It's certainly not for the faint of stomach: there are some pretty vivid injuries, and one particularly memorable shot of Trench Feet (and hands), not to mention, you know, realities of war and stuff. If you're interested in history, and especially in that time period and the psychology of its people, it's really very interesting and worth your time. If you are particularly visually attuned, you may want to wait and see it on Netflix or whatever, as the smaller image would probably flatter the process more. But if you don't notice the smoothing on a modern TV, then you may not especially care about these effects.
One last comment: the trench songs as performed by Plan 9 were really quite engaging; raw but charismatic, in the best way of folk music. The credits listed about five songs and I only caught three; I hope they're available somewhere as music in its own right because I could definitely bear to listen to them again. Currently the only trench songs I have are in Charles Chilton's 1960s radio documentary The Long Long Trail (which loosely got turned into Oh What A Lovely War), but they're sanitized and with the 60s orchestration sound rather like Mary Poppins. So well done, Plan 9. I'd have liked more of that flavour to the footage, but it was nice to see anyway.
Last night I went to see Peter Jackson's endeavour for the WWI centenary, a collection of film clips from the time with reminiscences of veterans, recorded many decades later. The gimmick for this one was that the film was restored and colourised, which you can see very nicely in the trailer:
Overall it was a decently well put-together film – I liked that there was nothing intruding on the primary sources, just straight film clips and the voices of people who were there. There were a few "artsy" bits of compositing early on that looked like someone had spent a weekend in AfterEffects, but the intent was sound and subtle enough not to grate. The only new stuff seemed to be the foley and voices added to the silent footage, which was done with great prudence and craft, I thought. I've seen and heard a fair amount of WWI stuff over the last five years – including a very impressive exhibit at Te Papa in Wellington which appeared to have had several Weta people involved with it – and this probably communicated best what it was like to be there, and to know the people involved.
That it was sympathetic to the period and its people shouldn't be a great surprise: I've spent a lot of time with Edwardians in the last ten years, and rewatching Fellowship of the Ring recently, it felt so profoundly in accordance with the feeling of that time – not a modern filming of a book written by an Edwardian, but what an Edwardian might have filmed if he had the ability. There is a slight 'garage project' feeling to They Shall Not Grow Old, but that works in its favour, I think. It's got faults, but seems to have been made with love, which counts for more.
The colourisation, for the most part, was surprisingly successful. It felt more like early colour footage than like something coloured after-the-fact, and made the clips seem surprisingly current. What didn't work so well was the process used to bring the 16 frames-per-second film up to a modern standard of smoothness. There were some very successful clips (most of which are in the trailer), but for the most part it felt kind of swimmy, and the film grain tracked with people's faces which was a bit distracting. I'm glad I saw it in 2D, as a 3D process on top of all of that would have been difficult to watch. Animators figured out early on that most people perceive 12 frames per second just as smoothly as 24 (saving us a lot of work!) so I'd much rather have seen some sort of process which gave us the original 16fps footage playing at the correct speed. Almost no one would have noticed the lower frame rate, you'd avoid the jerky sped-up feeling of early film which happens when you play 16fps at 24fps, and it would have saved them time and money. But this is Peter Jackson and it's a shiny new piece of technology, so I suppose we should just be grateful he didn't try for 48fps.
Would I recommend you see it? I don't know. It's certainly not for the faint of stomach: there are some pretty vivid injuries, and one particularly memorable shot of Trench Feet (and hands), not to mention, you know, realities of war and stuff. If you're interested in history, and especially in that time period and the psychology of its people, it's really very interesting and worth your time. If you are particularly visually attuned, you may want to wait and see it on Netflix or whatever, as the smaller image would probably flatter the process more. But if you don't notice the smoothing on a modern TV, then you may not especially care about these effects.
One last comment: the trench songs as performed by Plan 9 were really quite engaging; raw but charismatic, in the best way of folk music. The credits listed about five songs and I only caught three; I hope they're available somewhere as music in its own right because I could definitely bear to listen to them again. Currently the only trench songs I have are in Charles Chilton's 1960s radio documentary The Long Long Trail (which loosely got turned into Oh What A Lovely War), but they're sanitized and with the 60s orchestration sound rather like Mary Poppins. So well done, Plan 9. I'd have liked more of that flavour to the footage, but it was nice to see anyway.
