For They Shall Not Grow Old, the film-maker entered unknown territory: “I had no idea what the result would be because I had never done it [colourising black and white footage] before.
They Shall Not Grow Old is in cinemas now and is aired on BBC Two on Sunday 11 November at 9.30pm.
The BBC TV premiere and cinema release of They Shall Not Grow Old, the first world war documentary created by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, will mark a high point of this weekend’s Remembrance Day commemorations, which mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the conflict in 1918.
Culled from footage and audio from the Imperial War Museum archive, They Shall Not Grow Old has already attracted rave reviews for its painstaking conversion of grainy footage of British troops on the western front into startling colourised images.