"The Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson is going from Middle Earth to the Western Front, transforming grainy black-and-white footage of World War I into 3-D color for a new documentary film.
Jackson's movie, announced Monday, is among dozens of artworks commissioned by British cultural bodies to commemorate 100 years since the final year of the 1914-18 war.
The New Zealand-based director of "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" series has restored film from the Imperial War Museum using cutting-edge digital technology and hand coloring, pairing it with archive audio recollections from veterans of the conflict.
He said the aim is to close the 100-year time gap and show "what it was like to fight in the war."
"We all know what First World War footage looks like," Jackson said in comments broadcast Monday. "It's sped-up, it's fast, like Charlie Chaplin, grainy, jumpy, scratchy, and it immediately blocks you from actually More