21 old films from 1895 to 1902 colorized and upscaled in 60 fps, w/sound
November 27, 2022 12:52 PM Subscribe
Lumiere films from the very early days of film, subjected to various ML refinements and coupled with foley sounds, and you've got some amazingly modern looking movies from 125 years ago! 21 old films from 1895 to 1902 colorized and upscaled in 60 fps, with sound runs 22 minutes, with the first 4m33s describing the upscaling process.
My audio was out on my computer, so I couldn't hear about the proces, which appeared fascinating.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:19 PM on November 27, 2022
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:19 PM on November 27, 2022
Big Ben plays not the expected three quarter hour chimes, but full hour chimes. Signal to SPECTRE, I'll warrant!
I like these sorts of things enormously, but I can never watch them without seeing the young boys and wonder if they survived the war.
posted by BWA at 3:44 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
I like these sorts of things enormously, but I can never watch them without seeing the young boys and wonder if they survived the war.
posted by BWA at 3:44 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is a really interesting technical exercise, and I appreciate that it led out with a disclaimer that this is additive and transformative work that should not be viewed as historically accurate.
posted by mhoye at 3:44 PM on November 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 3:44 PM on November 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
I could have done without the sound or color but raising the FPS was quite effective...
posted by jim in austin at 4:19 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 4:19 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Not to sound morbid, but the older I get and the farther away we move from these times, the more fascinating these films become.
The factory workers...the beach goers....the people waiting for the train. Every single one of them, with all their hopes, dreams, ambitions and stresses - gone. Not only are they gone, but in many cases everyone who knew these people while they were living is now gone. And one day, each of us will only live on in a handful of photos and videos too. It's sobering.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:32 PM on November 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
The factory workers...the beach goers....the people waiting for the train. Every single one of them, with all their hopes, dreams, ambitions and stresses - gone. Not only are they gone, but in many cases everyone who knew these people while they were living is now gone. And one day, each of us will only live on in a handful of photos and videos too. It's sobering.
posted by fortitude25 at 4:32 PM on November 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
This was interesting! I would’ve liked to see even more comparison between before and after.
I kind of always have the same comment when I see these enhancements - it’s so wild to me how the work makes these videos seem to utterly contemporary.
posted by obfuscation at 5:02 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I kind of always have the same comment when I see these enhancements - it’s so wild to me how the work makes these videos seem to utterly contemporary.
posted by obfuscation at 5:02 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
And one day, each of us will only live on in a handful of photos and videos too. It's sobering.
"It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn't it?"
"Too much. There's too much fucking perspective."
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:19 PM on November 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
"It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn't it?"
"Too much. There's too much fucking perspective."
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:19 PM on November 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
Gemma Files has a line in Experimental Film that every film is a ghost story because it’s all images from the past brought momentarily to life.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:05 PM on November 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:05 PM on November 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
My main thought was that most of these were taken 10-15 years before the beginning of World War 1. Many of those young men would be heading to a front at some point.
posted by jquinby at 6:06 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jquinby at 6:06 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
For more of this done even better, I strongly recommend Peter Jackson's WWI documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.
posted by doctornemo at 6:10 PM on November 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 6:10 PM on November 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
also, Lumière and Company is a 1995 compilation film using the original camera.
posted by ovvl at 6:14 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 6:14 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
These AI-amped versions of historic footage have been popping up in my feed for a while, including Charlie Chaplain & Buster Keaton films, Pathé newsreels—and one of the full Hindenburg disaster reel—among many other street and work scenes and things like that. I feel like I've just bought a new pair of glasses
The process, even in its nascent state, is fascinating. At no time do I feel like "this is crossing a line" (especially because usually the creators explain the processes they use to upscale all the things). I feel like it's similar to people using contemporary tech to make old wax cylinder phonograph recordings listenable, or maybe some aspects of fine-art restoration. Not the same for several reasons obviously, but analogous in places and ultimately useful as a tool so that we can appreciate the subjects more without being distracted by ancient artifacts like uncorrected fps-speeds. People railed when Ted Turner colorized stuff. I applauded it (as a kid) even though it was weak. And ultimately, it never seemed to catch on because it wasn't as useful for the films Turner was applying it to—it was a distraction rather than a feature. Now it's much less distracting.
The more fluid movement of the shorts is what brings me more into that liminal space; the colorization algos have a long way to go before I'm willing to suspend my disbelief about them, but I still appreciate the context the color adds—a clearer separation of objects in my visual field.* But I never conclude, "Oh, that's what the color of [that subject] was!"; however, I often think, "Oh, that's a much more natural feeling of movement." Which, hey, they're movies, not colories!
*(In fact, this reminds me that currently I have a cataract in my dominant eye which I'm getting surgically replaced in less than a month now [procedure's been suspended since 2019 due to the pandemic]. Unless I shut my dominant eye when looking at anything, things appear blurry and amber-tinted, or overrun by the diffusion of bright lights. I cannot wait for that shit to stop. If I could get an algo to correct for that rather than slicin' up eyeballs...)
Oh yeah, and I could do without the sound effects being added. Those are definitely on the "distraction" end of the scale and they sound out of place—rather than drawing me further in, it sounds like trickery.
posted by not_on_display at 7:43 PM on November 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
The process, even in its nascent state, is fascinating. At no time do I feel like "this is crossing a line" (especially because usually the creators explain the processes they use to upscale all the things). I feel like it's similar to people using contemporary tech to make old wax cylinder phonograph recordings listenable, or maybe some aspects of fine-art restoration. Not the same for several reasons obviously, but analogous in places and ultimately useful as a tool so that we can appreciate the subjects more without being distracted by ancient artifacts like uncorrected fps-speeds. People railed when Ted Turner colorized stuff. I applauded it (as a kid) even though it was weak. And ultimately, it never seemed to catch on because it wasn't as useful for the films Turner was applying it to—it was a distraction rather than a feature. Now it's much less distracting.
The more fluid movement of the shorts is what brings me more into that liminal space; the colorization algos have a long way to go before I'm willing to suspend my disbelief about them, but I still appreciate the context the color adds—a clearer separation of objects in my visual field.* But I never conclude, "Oh, that's what the color of [that subject] was!"; however, I often think, "Oh, that's a much more natural feeling of movement." Which, hey, they're movies, not colories!
*(In fact, this reminds me that currently I have a cataract in my dominant eye which I'm getting surgically replaced in less than a month now [procedure's been suspended since 2019 due to the pandemic]. Unless I shut my dominant eye when looking at anything, things appear blurry and amber-tinted, or overrun by the diffusion of bright lights. I cannot wait for that shit to stop. If I could get an algo to correct for that rather than slicin' up eyeballs...)
Oh yeah, and I could do without the sound effects being added. Those are definitely on the "distraction" end of the scale and they sound out of place—rather than drawing me further in, it sounds like trickery.
posted by not_on_display at 7:43 PM on November 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm mostly enamored with the younger kids' faces, the way they interact and laugh at the camera. Did they live happy lives? Were they loved? The commonality of human reactions ("Oh jeez; there's a camera. Do I doff my cap? Laugh? Look into the distance?") is delightful and moving.
posted by but no cigar at 9:49 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by but no cigar at 9:49 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
fortitude25 > The factory workers...the beach goers....the people waiting for the train. Every single one of them, with all their hopes, dreams, ambitions and stresses - gone. Not only are they gone, but in many cases everyone who knew these people while they were living is now gone. And one day, each of us will only live on in a handful of photos and videos too. It's sobering.
Ain't it tho? From WP:
posted by cenoxo at 10:56 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ain't it tho? From WP:
- The oldest known cave painting is a red hand stencil in Maltravieso cave, Cáceres, Spain. It has been dated using the uranium-thorium method to older than 64,000 years and was made by a Neanderthal.
- Timeline of the evolutionary history of life: we share the tiny pink Primates bar at the top.
- World population growth from 10,000 BCE to 2021 is going nearly straight up.
- Human life expectancy is rising slowly.
posted by cenoxo at 10:56 PM on November 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm a fan of 60fps motion upscaling but colourisation always looks terrible to me.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:01 AM on November 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:01 AM on November 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
There's a moment at 5:28 where a younger woman looks distractedly around and seems to be interested in going to the left, and an older woman, presumably her mother, grabs her skirt and hauls her to the right. That felt very universal!
posted by tavella at 1:11 AM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 1:11 AM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm a fan of 60fps motion upscaling but colourisation always looks terrible to me.
I concur. The colorization/tinting was a bit distracting for me. In some scenes, it felt more like a light sepia-toning. But, I suppose if one is going to colorize, it’s best to do it lightly rather than slapping technicolor on the scenes. For the most part, I would far prefer leaving the films b&w.
The cleaning-up and upscaling, though, was quite good. Well, except for the one image-stabilized scene. Ugh. He would have done better just to leave the scene as-is.
The audio, as always, is the weaksauce in the process, largely because he makes the usual mistakes. Horse in the scene? Add the “pppffthh” sound. Goats? Bahhhing. Big Ben? Chimes. The one sound that actually made me chuckle was in the ship-launching scene (which, honestly, was really dramatic and well-framed). In the scene, these giant chains are dangling across the boat, but the sound he adds was a tiny toy-like “tinkle tinkle”.
Overall, though, these were really well-done, and a great, enjoyable, find!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:02 AM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
I concur. The colorization/tinting was a bit distracting for me. In some scenes, it felt more like a light sepia-toning. But, I suppose if one is going to colorize, it’s best to do it lightly rather than slapping technicolor on the scenes. For the most part, I would far prefer leaving the films b&w.
The cleaning-up and upscaling, though, was quite good. Well, except for the one image-stabilized scene. Ugh. He would have done better just to leave the scene as-is.
The audio, as always, is the weaksauce in the process, largely because he makes the usual mistakes. Horse in the scene? Add the “pppffthh” sound. Goats? Bahhhing. Big Ben? Chimes. The one sound that actually made me chuckle was in the ship-launching scene (which, honestly, was really dramatic and well-framed). In the scene, these giant chains are dangling across the boat, but the sound he adds was a tiny toy-like “tinkle tinkle”.
Overall, though, these were really well-done, and a great, enjoyable, find!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:02 AM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
There’s a brief timeslice beginning about 6:20 where one photographer (handholding a large ‘portable’ view camera) among several disembarking a sightseeing boat pauses and appears to take a still photograph of the cameraman filming the scene. I see you!
Consider that every image in time we capture, process, and present by mechanical and/or electronic methods — no matter how fast the shutter speed — must always be of the past. Although we can anticipate the future, the ‘present’ is too fleeting to be captured.
posted by cenoxo at 7:55 AM on November 28, 2022
Consider that every image in time we capture, process, and present by mechanical and/or electronic methods — no matter how fast the shutter speed — must always be of the past. Although we can anticipate the future, the ‘present’ is too fleeting to be captured.
posted by cenoxo at 7:55 AM on November 28, 2022
This is well-done from a technical perspective, but I have to admit, I kind of like the herky-jerky look of hand-cranked films played back on a modern screen. It's part of their charm, like those big ol' ah-OOOO-ga car horns or boneshaker bicycles. Whereas this looked more like the trailer for a 2023 period drama with a REALLY good set/costume designer.
posted by basalganglia at 9:41 AM on November 28, 2022
posted by basalganglia at 9:41 AM on November 28, 2022
> ...the older I get and the farther away we move from these times, the more fascinating these films become.
Menschen am Sonntag (1930, Eng Subs, "People on Sunday")[*] :P
posted by kliuless at 11:32 PM on December 1, 2022
Menschen am Sonntag (1930, Eng Subs, "People on Sunday")[*] :P
posted by kliuless at 11:32 PM on December 1, 2022
19th Century Portraits Brought to Life (YT — Mystery Scoop, April 18 2022), if only for a few brief moments as we too pass through this mortal coil.
posted by cenoxo at 10:05 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by cenoxo at 10:05 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
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