In the run up to the centenary of the end of World War One Nulight Studios has been working with award winning Testimony Films to digitally upscale and restore a remarkable video archive of interviews with WW1 veterans. Filmed over the past twenty five years by social historian and filmmaker Steve Humphries, the archive contains three hundred interviews with the last survivors from the battlefields and the home front.
Composed of a variety of standard definition video formats – many badly deteriorated – the archive failed to meet broadcast standards. Nulight used a bespoke high definition upscaling and deinterlacing process followed by manual restoration, to make it possible to include interviews with twenty seven veterans from the archive in two new television specials by Testimony Films.
In the first programme for BBC1 called “We Will Remember Them” presenter Huw Edwards travels across Britain to reveal the extraordinary story of the unique way Britain and her then Empire honoured the memory of those who lost their lives in the ‘Great War.’
A separate three-part series for BBC4 called “The Last Tommies” tells the vivid and heart breaking stories in the words of the soldiers who witnessed the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele. These are combined with stories from the last surviving women and children of WW1 who recount the important work they did and the devastating effects of the loss of loved ones.
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM with Huw Edwards – Sunday 4th November 8pm, BBC FOUR repeated Monday 5th November 9pm BBC One Wales
WW1: THE LAST TOMMIES – 3 part series starts Monday 5th November 9pm BBC FOUR, and continues at the same time on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th