Amazing color film footage of London in 1927!

[snagglepuss]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/mesmerising-colour-footage-of-london-in-1927

[ananda]

1. Wowzow!

That was awesome!

Thanks for posting.

[Sheldon Cooper]

2. Wow that was really nice.

Thanks.

[get the red out]

3. That's beautiful!!!

Thanks for posting it.

[Arugula Latte]

4. Wow! That is so incredible to step back in time. It looks like a storybook.

I wish my dad were alive and could see this. He would absolutely love it. He was a big Anglophile and a fan of old photos and film clips.

[snagglepuss]

5. One thing that really struck me was the complete lack of litter. Even the row boats looked like

they were swept out daily.

[Arugula Latte]

8. That's true.

Part of the reason is that in those days food was largely eaten at home (or sitting down in a restaurant) and there weren't fast food wrappers, snack bags bags and plastic soda bottles to be strewn about...but maybe there was a stray newspaper sheet from a fish and chip wrapping here and there.

[BlueJazz]

45. Yes !..and the cars and buses were not driven like race cars.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. There wasn't as much disposable packaging.

[Poll_Blind]

6. Hypnotic. A reminder that the day we carelessly live today will be soon looked upon with...

...wonder and nostalgia by eyes not formed yet, pondered by minds yet to twinkle into existence. Oh, and how future hands will caress the vidscreen in a yearning to be in the treasured, simpler, mundanity of our now.

"What would it have been like to meet these people?" they will say of us.

PB

[Arugula Latte]

9. When I was watching I kept thinking: "Oh, you poor people don't know WWII is heading your way."

[Posteritatis]

20. Hell, even the Depression.

Studying the early twentieth century, once you get sufficiently immersed, is totally "trainwreck in slow motion" territroy at times.

[galileoreloaded]

12. pretty sure our future looks more like "book of eli"

than star trek.

pretty safe bet.

[AverageJoe90]

35. I doubt that, TBH.(speaking from a rationalist perspective, BTW). n/t

[galileoreloaded]

37. i hope like hell facts lie. nt

[AverageJoe90]

38. What 'facts'? n/t

[former9thward]

7. Great footage, thanks for sharing!

[steve2470]

10. k&r nt

[Blue_Tires]

11. If I'm ever in charge of the world, I'll demand all men start wearing hats again...

heads look naked without them...

[bvar22]

13. Fascinating....

and I mirror the comment about absolutely NO litter...anywhere,
however, everything seemed soot stained...dingy (from burning coal?).

I wanted to be able to read more of the signs, but the res isn't high enough.

[MADem]

18. London "fog" was actually smog! It's much cleaner today. nt

[hibbing]

14. clean

Hey,
One thing that struck me was the relative lack of advertising as opposed to today where we are bombarded with adverts everywhere in every place it seems. Thanks for posting this.

Peace

[Brigid]

16. Grumpy Cat says the footage is not available.

Too bad, she says.

[MADem]

19. See post seventeen--I found a link of the same footage at YT. nt

[MADem]

17. Some might find this link smoother--it's really worth a look.

It's from the BFI.

I am a sucker for stuff like this...!

[krispos42]

21. That one was a little better

I have an older computer so YouTube often is a bit jerky for me anyway.

Thanks!

[MADem]

25. Happy to help...I just love stuff like this. nt

[Brigid]

41. That is wonderful footage.

I love stuff like this too -- even the old silents they sometimes show on TMC. Thanks.

And a to Grumpy Cat.

[emmadoggy]

22. What a TREASURE!

I was amazed at not only the fact that the film is in color (in 1927) - but also the motion seemed much smoother than I remember a lot of old films being. You know how they always have that jerkier look to them, or they are sped up.

Fascinating and beautiful look back in time...

[bvar22]

24. I though so too,

and for that reason, I believe that these strips have undergone some extensive digital enhancement. I first suspected they were "colorized",
but I don't believe so now,
but no doubt about the digital enhancement to reduce scratches and jerkiness.

[CBGLuthier]

23. for an allegedly inferior process it looks pretty good

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/585816/

The Open Road, shot between 1924 and 1926 by Friese-Greene and assistant-cum-chauffeur Robin Haworth-Booth, was planned as a series of ten-minute travelogues of Britain, to be shown before the main feature in cinema programmes, though it was designed primarily as a means of licensing the technology to other countries. He even crossed the Atlantic with the aim of capturing the US market, only to find his work outclassed by the technically superior two-strip Technicolor process. Following that disappointment, after a few trade screenings in 1925 The Open Road was abandoned, and after its creator's death the footage was donated to the National Film and Television Archive.

He and his father invented a colour process years before technicolor but the great war got in the way of exploiting it.

[Xithras]

40. It's inferior because it's technically only two colors.

Basically, the filming method simply used a camera that swapped a red and green filter in front of alternating frames, using black and white film. Each frame was then stained with the appropriate color when developed, and it gave the appearance of color when played back at normal speed. If you look very closely though, you'll notice that all of the colors are actually just shades of red and green overlaying grayscale. There are no blues or yellows.

The original Technicolor was a red/green two color film also, but full spectrum Technicolor had been invented by 1930, making the process used in this film permanently obsolete. It wasn't the war that kept them from exploiting it, but the fact that technology passed them by. WW2 didn't begin in Europe until 1939, and by then many full spectrum Technicolor movies had already been released (including the still famous Snow White And The Seven Dwarves), highlighting the flaws of this method and eliminating any real interest in it.

[CBGLuthier]

46. true but wrong war

I meant WWI or the Great War kept them from exploiting their color system so that by the time they did get it going technicolor already had their "allegedly" superior but still two strip process.

I have seen other two strip movies before and am aware of the limitations. My use of the words "allegedly inferior" referred to the comparison between two strip technicolor and their process and not the full spectrum technicolor that beat them both.

[darkangel218]

26. Is this the clip?

&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Eleanors38]

27. Thanks, snaggle. Impressive. I saw an early Technicolor (1925?) and...

it was brighter, but the FG process is still good.

IIRC, wasn't Technicolor developed by a husband-wife PhD team?

[Jane Austin]

28. Thanks so much!

Good thing the buses were red.

Not a lot of colour, otherwise.

Beautiful movie.

[whistler162]

29. Nice.... I was able to say been there and

seen that at a few spots.

[smirkymonkey]

30. Beautiful! Thank you so much for posting!

I absolutely love London. I actually prefer it to Paris.

[Boomerproud]

36. I love London too.

I spent the best two weeks of my life in Britain.

[ms liberty]

31. K&R, way cool...n/t

[kentuck]

32. Nice!

Very interesting and intriguing.

[JI7]

33. any other videos like this of other parts of the world ?

i'm always amazed seeing pictures and videos of different times and places.

[HughBeaumont]

34. K & R for tomorrow . . .

[dogknob]

39. wow! n/t

[Captain Stern]

42. I love stuff like that. Thanks for posting it. (nt)

[Captain Stern]

43. Some really cool video of San Francisco right before the quake in 1906

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this, but for those of you that haven't:

fascinating stuff.

[Honeycombe8]

44. That was beautiful and interesting! London was crowded even back then! And polluted?

The Thames had smog hovering around it. Loved teh clothes, especially. The young women had shorter skirts and the iconic hats of the era. Lovely. Did you notice how everyone is the same, just about? Same race, most are the same religion, I guess? Not a melting pot, at least back then. Seemed so different from America, which would've had even back then, different races and ethnicities.

No traffic laws yet, I take it. The cars drove wherever and however. Alongside horses!