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To do that, the acclaimed New Zealand director
hired forensic lip-readers to go through old silent film footage
of the war and uncover the conversations that took place in the
trenches and on the battlegrounds 100 years ago.
Those words were mixed with interviews with former soldiers from
600 hours of tape in the BBC archives to create a documentary
that includes only the words of the soldiers themselves, in a
full-color war as they would have seen it.
"There's been lots of documentaries made on the First World
War...and I just decided for this one to strictly just use the
voices of the guys that fought there," Jackson, director of the
"Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings" series told Reuters on
Tuesday. "So no historians, no narration, no nothing."
Old film was meticulously restored. Computers were used, not
only to add color to black and white footage, but to remove
imperfections, fill splices and reconstruct missing frames from
film that was shot with fewer frames per second than today.
Forensic lip readers, who usually work with the police
determining what people say on silent security camera footage,
were able to decipher the words spoken long ago on film. Actors
were hired to give the soldiers on screen a voice.
The film will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film
Festival next week.
"It's not the story of the war," said Jackson. "It's the story
of the human experience of fighting in the war."
(Writing by Patrick Johnston; Editing by Peter Graff)
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