Paris Remastered - Joan Lennon
Photographs and film footage from the past are always evocative, now matter how shaky or blurred. Recently, advances in technology are being applied to them, partly in the name of preservation and partly as a way of bringing them even more vividly to modern audiences.* Have a look at A Trip Through Paris, France below -Instead of the jerky movements we're used to seeing in early film, the footage has been slowed down to a more natural pace. Instead of adding a (sometimes really dire) music sound track, there are the noises of horse traffic, bicycle bells and people talking. Watching this, I had a real sense of people wearing clothes, not people in costume. I loved the kid who stood right in front of the camera until poked out of the way with an umbrella. And those moving walkways in the snow - if I had seen this before writing Slightly Jones and the Case of the Hidden City, set in 1890s Paris, I would definitely have found a way to include them in the story!
* Peter Jackson's piece They Shall Not Grow Old, done as a commission from the Imperial War Museum, is another example, though I haven't summoned up the courage to watch it yet. (There's a short news report on it here.)
Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Slightly Jones and the Case of the Hidden City.
