Wednesday, December 16, 2020

New York 1911 Footage Updated

A while back I found a youtube video/channel where they corrected the framerate of old footage to be correct. I thought I posted it here on this blog but I don't see it now.

Now there's a new version where they also colorize and upscale to 4K using neural networks. Here is New York 1911 but if you like it, there are many more available including Paris 1890 and Japan 1913-1915.

The funny thing about old film, that I only realize now in retrospect, is the speedup and the hinkey-jinkey movement of all the people makes them seem somehow unreal. And this effect subliminally has pervaded all old timey footage of all historical figures I've ever seen.

 Now that the motion is correct, suddenly these are real people doing real things, living real lives. This is the closest thing we have to time travel and it's amazing how close it is. We are seeing the light that bounced off of real objects exactly as it did if we were standing there in 1911. And on top of everything, all the people we're looking at are dead.

No comments:

Post a Comment