colour footage Europe 1944-1945 by Jack Lieb

[Art Blade]

"Cameraman Jack Lieb comments on original footage of 1944-45" (full colour) from London to D-Day in Normandy to Paris to Berlin. No war coverage but stuff all around at the end of the war. Impressive and strange to see all that in colour. This is outstanding.

[PZ]

That's the best footage I have seen! The  color sure does bring it to life.  +1

[fragger]

Excellent find Art, +1 for that superb film

It always amazes me what a difference colour makes to archive footage. There is a 13-part series on Netflix called "World War 2 In Colour" which is an outstanding piece of w0#k, containing a great deal of previously unseen footage and colourized B&W film. And as innovative as the visuals are, it also happens to be one of the best WW2 documentary series I've ever seen, and I've seen many. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the conflict. It's also available on DVD (and presumably blu-ray, but I haven't checked).

But back to this one: War correspondents in those days displayed a singular kind of bravery, sometimes charging into the thick of it armed with nothing more than a camera and a notepad. Without those folks, our knowledge of what went on in those conflicts would be drastically reduced. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

There was one thing I found a bit odd, though. At 6:32 and again at 7:55, Lieb talked about how he met troops of the US 101st Airborne Division boarding, or already aboard, landing craft. I wasn't aware that any of the 101st went ashore on landing craft - being airborne, i.e. paratroops, I thought that all of them, along with all of the US 82nd Airborne Division, parachuted into Normandy the night before D-Day. I don't know what role airborne troops would have played during the beach landings other than as additional ground forces. Must look into that.

At 39:26 he says, "Wars don't seem to prove very much except to destroy property and kill people". If only humanity would learn that bloody lesson, and not forget it.

[Art Blade]

thanks, chaps. I watched tons of that stuff myself and thought this to be outstanding. Apart from the visual, I also enjoyed Lieb's commentary tremendously as it lacked the typical newsreel type of voice acting. It was simply presented in a pleasant voice and the information given was also interesting, not propaganda. It seems to be a recording from 1976 which likely explains the difference in presentation.

As to the 101st Airborne, they suffered the heaviest losses and required replacements quite frequently. I suppose that you didn't just fly any replacements over from the States and then "drop 'em" straight to where they were needed but instead got those replacements there in any way suitable.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, I'll have to watch that when I get more time. But one thing I noticed is that the film has the timing issue you see in a lot of old movie film, as in, it runs too fast. Everyone looks like they are hyper. Too bad they didn't slow it down to the proper speed to make people walking and talking look more natural. That's one thing I saw in the recent WWI films restored by Peter Jackson I think, they made the speed more natural looking along with adding color. Normally I'm not a fan of colorizing old films, especially if there was a decision to film in black and white, but for historical things like this, colorizing isn't an artistic decision, just a way to more accurately portray what things actually looked like.

[Art Blade]

I am convinced that this here isn't colourised. They actually did have colour film, albeit it was rarely used and that's why there are so few examples (like, of the few, even fewer survived)

[PZ]

It looks like color film was used at the time to me as well - it was far too natural for the typical colorization of b/w I have seen in the past. Those colorizations have occasional strange color shades that detract from the experience.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah this does look like actual color film, but there is a lot of other stuff from that time period and earlier that obviously wasn't and has since had color added. For historical stuff similar to this like the recent WWI film restoration, I don't mind, but some movies were intentionally filmed in black & white and adding color to those is pointless and in some cases goes against the original creator's intent for the film.

[Art Blade]

agree.. and it looks *bleep*.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I file colorization just slightly above making a non-3D film into 3D. They both use computers to do the task and how much time is spent tweaking the output directly effects the result. I avoid 3D films if at all possible, most are really not well done, and if you compare to a film that was actually shot in 3D, with two cameras, the difference is night and day. Same goes for coloring, a lot of the time it's not done well and just looks bad.

Don't get me started on the trend to show old movies and TV shows cropped to fit today's wide screen TVs, just so the image doesn't have black bars on the sides because the original image wasn't the same shape as today's TVs. It used to be movies would get cropped to fit the old TVs, and that was bad enough, now they are taking old TV shows (and they aren't even that old, like Seinfeld) and cropping the top and bottom of the 4:3 image to fit on a widescreen 16:9 TV. Then there's the even worse offense of stretching the image to fit the TV.

[PZ]

Totally agree, D_B 

[Art Blade]

yes, I too agree.

Speaking of 3D.. don't get me started. Well, a just little:

Actual 3D practically means that you use the distance between your eyes to see one object from two different angles at the same time. Like, put a coffee cup in front of you and observe the handle. At about an arm's length, your physical capacity of looking "around" an object simply ends. Because 3D is dependent on the distance between your eyes and an object to "look around," it also limits 3D to smaller objects.

Simply put: you will never be able to see a house in 3D. Unless the distance between your left and right eye is greater than the house is wide and tall.

The three dimensions of larger objects and small objects in a distance greater than perhaps an arm's length are being determined essentially by parallax shifting. By changing one's position towards an object, one can determine the structure and details of an object (like, ah, there's a door on the back side) and therefore you get "the whole picture" without that being perceived as actual "3D." Also, the impression of distance ("3D") is essentially achieved by parallax shifting. All of that is basically happening in 2D. Which is why someone with only one eye can still perceive distance and structures as long as they can move their point of view. It also explains why, if you close one eye, you won't be able to consistently grab that cup of coffee from the cupboard or pour coffee without moving your head a lot.

And that, my friends, is the reason why 3D films are absolute NONSENSE.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, 3D "vision" is essentially a trick the brain does to make you think you're seeing 3D and is mostly used to better determine distance.

3D films, though, are another thing. A film shot in 3D, with two cameras, set a distance apart, to produce two distinct images that are them projected in a way so that each image is perceived only by the eye that needs that image, is much different than a film that's shot by one camera and then processed into 3D. The real 3D technique produces and much more convincing and realistic image for the brain, as it's getting the information from two different perspectives much like it would looking at the actual world with two eyes. Processed films from flat to 3D uses a trick that essentially cuts out sections of each frame and layers them in a way that once viewed, looks like the things in the foreground are closer to the viewer than things in the background. I imagine the computer uses differences in lighting and focus to achieve this trick. When done well and carefully, it's not too bad, but it's still fake, or more fake than the "real" 3D technique of using two cameras.

[fragger]

Fun fact; Many photos taken during the American Civil War were actually shot in 3D. Think 3D photography is something relatively new? Think again - it goes right back to the 1860s, almost right to the beginnings of photography itself.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2011/04/150-years-old-3d-photos-of-civil-war.html

[PZ]

That's cool fragger