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Series presenter Dan Cruickshank interviewed the descendants of the people captured on film (right). |
Today, after nearly three years
of dedicated restoration work by
the British Film Institute (BFI), this
unique social document of life in
working class England between 1900 and
1913 comprises the third largest early
collection of non-fiction archive films in
the world.
The remarkable footage, which has
inspired a new BBC2 mini-series entitled
The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon,
is the work of a photographer and
a cabinetmaker, Messrs Mitchell and
Kenyon. The two Lancashire businessmen
shot one-reel dramas, as well as
‘local topicals’ at cricket and football
matches, factory gates, soup kitchens
and community events and even from
the tops of trams, capturing moments
in the lives of ordinary working people mainly in the North West of England at
the beginning of the 20th century. Prior
to the advent of structured cinema, the
pair handed out flyers inviting locals to
see their images projected in music halls,
working class institutes or at fairgrounds.
"The BBC has built an amazing 3D picture
from this early film archive," remarks
Director of Photography Johann Perry.
"After considerable detective work, they
have combined Mitchell and Kenyon’s
fabulous films with reconstructions of
the businessmen’s lives presented by historian Dan Cruickshank, shots from the
exact locations in which they filmed and
interviews with the descendants of those
captured on camera a century ago. It was
quite an emotional experience for people
when they viewed the footage of their
great grandparents for the first time."
Perry admits he was amazed when he
first saw the restored sequences. "The
stock had a very high silver content, which
has given the black-and-white images an
extraordinarily beautiful silvery
look and, because
it was filmed
at around 25 to 30 ASA, it has a super smooth silky
texture. The images are crystal clear and,
amazingly, there’s no perceptible grain.
The BFI have restored the films to absolute
perfection," he enthuses.
Incredibly clean
A specialist in observational arts and
documentary films, Perry chose Kodak
VISION2 100T 7212 for The Lost World
of Mitchell & Kenyon after viewing
tests at Kodak. "I settled for Super 16mm
because it’s incredibly clean and the grain
size is similar to Mitchell and Kenyon’s
original negatives," he says. "They hand
cranked film through a box without a
viewfinder and told their story in a fixed
frame, with no pans or close-ups, so we
decided to shoot the reconstruction of
their lives as they would have shot it
- as a series of single reel silent movies
in locked off wide shots. It was a very useful lesson for me, because normally
I use wide shots, close-ups and tracking
shots to direct a story. However, this time
I limited myself to an Aaton XTR Prod, a
single 26mm Zeiss lens - which is fairly
wide for a 16mm camera - 5kW lamps
and reflective polyboards and I moved the
camera rather than changing lenses."
Fount of knowledge
Lighting the wide shots and
constructing moods or differences in
tone in a single frame was the most
technical aspect for Perry. "I recreated an
open three-sided daylight studio, which
would have been similar to Mitchell’s and
Kenyon’s, but I had to bounce, refract
and reflect light in dark scenes in a very different way to bright daylight scenes,
even though I was using the same
lamps," he notes. "Early cinematographers
managed to control the sun onto
their sets in a myriad of different ways,
bouncing it off mirrors and directing light
in all sorts of very complicated ways.
Fortunately my Gaffer, Stuart Hadley, who
has been in the business for 40 years,
helped me to light the wide shots. He’s a
huge fount of knowledge and, although
he’s worked on Ridley Scott films and has
collaborated with some amazing directors
of photography, he was excited to be
stripping everything back to basics for The
Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon."
After careful study of the early footage,
Perry determined the exact camera
positions that Mitchell and Kenyon
had used at Lords cricket matches and
various streets and factory gates, then
he matched up their shots with a similar
lens at the same height. "We originally
planned to shoot in colour, grade to
black-and-white, then tint the film as cinematographers
did around the turn of the 20th century - but Kodak VISION2 100T
7212 looked so beautiful in its own right
that we simply desaturated the colours a
fraction," he says.
Colin Peters, Colourist at The Farm
Group, was involved from the outset,
collaborating with Perry and Director
Emma Hindley from the initial viewing
of the early film archive. "It was quite
unusual for me to have such a degree of
involvement," remarks Peters. "Initially,
Johann shot tests for the reconstructions
on digibeta, Super 8mm and Super 16mm,
then we played around with them in the
grading suite to see which would give us
the look that was closest to the Mitchell
and Kenyon archive, without creating a
horrible pastiche. Super 16mm came out
tops."
Pin sharp
"We did the telecine transfer at
different film speeds, because we wanted
to recapture the slightly flickery look of
the hand cranked days and decided on
16fps for the key shoot. 20fps proved a
good transfer speed because it gave a
slight jerkiness, without making it look too
artificial." When the films were returned
to Peters, he laid them flat and did a full
frame technical grade in telecine. "Even
though Johann had framed them for 4
x 3, we did a full 16 x 9. The BBC gave
us special dispensation to transmit the
programmes in 4 x 3, because transferring
them at 16 x 9 gave the Editor more
flexibility in post-production. When the
original footage, the reconstructions and
the interviews had been edited together,
we did a tape-to-tape grade so that I
could bed the different elements and get
the right look."
Peters didn’t want the reconstructions
to "grate" against the original footage
so, rather than go for black-and-white, he desaturated certain colours, brought
others through and achieved a slightly
pastel, hand-tinted look. He placed dark
vignettes around the edges to give the
reconstructions an aged feel and the
Editor added the occasional hop, so that
the frame moved around. "The optics are
superb and everything looks pin sharp, so
we didn’t want to falsify the degradation
of the reconstructions at the editing stage; we only took
the shine off
them slightly,"
he notes.
"The archival footage is gob smacking,"
states Peters. "Although it was filmed 100
years ago, it looks as if it was shot just the
other day. We all laughed our heads off
at the reconstructions; the performances are brilliant and the slapstick humour is
hilarious. They complement the Mitchell
and Kenyon footage so beautifully. You
just couldn’t top them," he says.
Director of Photography Johann Perry
was particularly surprised to see how
people interacted with the camera in
those early days of cinematography.
"Many seem used to it already and the
V-signs and ‘hello mum’ gesticulations are
very similar to what you’d expect today.
It’s extraordinary footage. Absolutely
amazing," he exclaims. "Mitchell and
Kenyon were real entrepreneurs.
Apparently they made the UK’s first
Hollywood blockbuster in 1904, a two minute
comedy called Diving Lucy."
Crew List
Director Emma Hindley
Producer Annabel Hobley
Director of Photography Johann Perry
Assistant Cameraman Anton Jeffes
Gaffer Stuart Hadley
A BBC and BFI Co-Production
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Cinema & Television
