National Media Museum Trip

This week Year 11 students visited the National Media Museum to watch original footage from Imperial War Museums'.

Peter Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has created a new film using original footage from Imperial War Museums’ extensive archive, much of it previously unseen, alongside BBC and IWM interviews with servicemen who fought in the conflict.

Footage has been colourised, converted to 3D and transformed with modern production techniques to present never before seen detail.

Nadia, a student in Year 11, said "Today we experienced a truly moving film that gave us a real insight into World War One." 

Emmanuela, another student in Year 11 said "It was a great opportunity to watch emotive, interesting real life footage from WW1." 

The film was a superb opportunity for students to contextualise our students studies in History and to see in vivid, digital enhanced first hand footage the true suffering and sacrifice of soldiers in the first world war. 

This is what Peter Bradshaw, a film critic for the Guardian, wrote in his review

"To mark the centenary of the first world war’s end, Peter Jackson has created a visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front.

"This he has done using state-of-the-art digital technology to restore flickery old black-and-white archive footage of the servicemen’s life in training and in the trenches.

"He has colourised it, sharpened it, put it in 3D and, as well as using diaries and letters for narrative voiceover, he has used lip-readers to help dub in what the men are actually saying. 

"The effect is electrifying. The soldiers are returned to an eerie, hyperreal kind of life in front of our eyes, like ghosts or figures summoned up in a seance. The faces are unforgettable."