[rfdearborn]

I find the ethical boundary between colorizing old footage and 'deepfakes' to be fascinating to consider. The former is celebrated here while simultaneously the latter is an object of increasing apprehension, abhorrence, and calls for regulation.

An obvious difference is intent. The intent of They Shall Not Grow Old is (I assume) to memorialize historic events and enable modern audiences to understand them more viscerally. The intent of (most) deepfakes is deception.

Still, what should we do when the same technology that enables deepfakes also enables better They Shall Not Grow Old's, perhaps concerning subjects more poorly-documented than World War I? It's acceptable to make assumptions about the colors and sounds of a moment from 100 years ago and represent them indistinguishably from truths, but how about assumptions as to who was present and what actions they took and words they spoke?

All of which reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/rivatez/status/1077035912494759936

[mips_avatar]

Peter Jackson addressed the ethics of colorization in the behind the scenes extra after the credits. He believed that the original camera men wanted to get the most accurate picture of the front lines. However color cameras and steady frame rate capable cameras were not available. He believed the artists would have picked better cameras if they were available so he wasn't violating the vision of the original people making the films

[yesenadam]

Sure, but the point is that the colours aren't real, isn't it?

It's like, say, a movie or novel based on a historical event we don't know much about - it may aid understanding of the event, but the details are made up. It's fictionalized, "based on a true story", and to present it as fact or as history would be misleading.

[mips_avatar]

I strongly recommend watching the behind the scenes extra with this film. Peter Jackson has this amazing personal collection of world war 1 stuff. Like the reason they knew what the uniforms color looked like was because peter Jackson has almost every type of uniform from world war 1. And the reason they knew how things like the wheels of the artillery sounded like was because peter Jackson has an extensive collection of world war 1 artillery. I’m sure it could have been better, but a lot of effort went into making this as close to life as is possible.

[yesenadam]

Sure, I haven't seen the movie. Sorry I didn't make it clearer - I was talking about what rfdearborn was saying more generally about colorizing, fakes, fabrication etc, not specifically Jackson or his movie at all.

[tfolbrecht]

I think using video as some source of truth is just as ethically shaky.

Synthesizing texture, adding faces, meh. It's all an array of pixels to aid hallucination. The sooner we break out of video = impartiality, video = truth, the better off society will be.

Choosing what to record, how to crop it, what to show destroys videos supposed fundamental impartiality.