Apocalypse World War 2 on channel 4 this Saturday (30/10/10)

siblers

Starts at 8 this Saturday on Channel 4. I presume it's the series done by Nat Geo but it's being shown on Channel 4. Looks really good and the footage seems unbelievable. Definitely gonna be checking it out.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/apocalypse-the-second-world-war

endakenny

I'm looking forward to it. More 4 has shown some fantastic documentaries over the past few weeks.

BlackEdelweiss

I just saw the add for this, is it WW2 The Apocalypse by Nat Geo or just another very similarly titled show by Ch4?

marcsignal

afaik it's WW2 The Apocalypse by Nat Geo. Looking forward to it also, some of the footage looks great !

FiSe

We'll see... I am a bit sceptical about all those programmes. The last time I tried to watch 'an unseen footage' in documentary was only recently. It was called The Unseen War or something similar on, was it, Channel 4 too?
It was from the Iwo Jima and most of the footage came from well known US Marine reel.
Hope I am wrong about this one

marcsignal

FiSe wrote: »

We'll see... I am a bit sceptical about all those programmes. The last time I tried to watch 'an unseen footage' in documentary was only recently. It was called The Unseen War or something similar on, was it, Channel 4 too?
It was from the Iwo Jima and most of the footage came from well known US Marine reel.
Hope I am wrong about this one

I had the same feeling about that 'Unseen Films' doc, a bit of a disappointment tbh

siblers

I got them on Sky Plus but haven't seen them yet, a lot of the footage on Apocalypse WW2 does look pretty unique though.

marcsignal

As soon as a link appears to view this programme/series online, please post the link in the documentaries thread Here.

BlackEdelweiss

I only saw a couple of the Nat Geo shows and they were fairly good but I am sure most people on here are somewhat like myself and have watched countless hours of documentaries on every aspect of ww2 so even if it is unseen footage you have probably seen something like it before, maybe not that exact peasant walking away from her burning village or that footage from that exact hurricane blowing up a train but nothing is going to really excite you that much. Saying that, it is a fairly good series and worth the watching on a quiet sunday evening.

FiSe

I didn't want to sound like fussy fecker. I don't mind the 'well known' footage at all. After all there's probably 1000's of hours of WH soldiers wrestling the mud, attacking LW aircraft or Soviet POWs marching into captivity. I would prefer long shots rather than this 1 - 2 second game like editing.
And I just never got some of the commentary over some of the footage in some of the 'documentaries'.
There's too many voices going: '...Germany put a hope into newly developped tanks like these Tigers...' while there's Pz-38 racing across some field. Or like the 'unseen footage' from Iwo Jima, where there were shots of Corsairs, but in nice and clear marking used during Korean war. But it's moreless H channel thing.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this one.

Morlar

FiSe wrote: »

I didn't want to sound like fussy fecker. I don't mind the 'well known' footage at all. After all there's probably 1000's of hours of WH soldiers wrestling the mud, attacking LW aircraft or Soviet POWs marching into captivity. I would prefer long shots rather than this 1 - 2 second game like editing.
And I just never got some of the commentary over some of the footage in some of the 'documentaries'.
There's too many voices going: '...Germany put a hope into newly developped tanks like these Tigers...' while there's Pz-38 racing across some field. Or like the 'unseen footage' from Iwo Jima, where there were shots of Corsairs, but in nice and clear marking used during Korean war. But it's moreless H channel thing.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this one.

I also hate the 2-3 second rule when you know they shot miles of footage at the time and insist on showing the 2-3 seconds over and over.

I have seen original newsreels popup for sale from time to time. There was one of a Pioneer group building a bridge - the original newsreel footage of this on sale (think it was 16mm) on a forum I use about 3-4 weeks ago.

Also inaccurate captioning in 9 out of 10 documentaries is annoying. One annoying one recently showed an SS Soldier in battle - then a 3d computer simulation zoomed in to show that he was wearing his SS Honour dagger in wear in combat. Deutsche Wochenschau are always a good source - even if you don't speak any German at all you can follow the gist of things. You can usually pick up the 6-7 DVD set of .avi files (complete pre-war and wartime set) for about €20 on ebay.

citizen_p

Morlar wrote: »

Also inaccurate captioning in 9 out of 10 documentaries is annoying. One annoying one recently showed an SS Soldier in battle - then a 3d computer simulation zoomed in to show that he was wearing his SS Honour dagger in wear in combat.

or some complete bull**** shows made for american tv
like Deadliest warrior and other similar shows that i see ads for from time to time = utter bull****,
apparently every ss man had a tiger tank and mp44, c96 as well as a Luger.
another show made by "spike tv" had the IRA fighting the taliban (found it very funny, do a youtube search for the video) to decide which group was better in a junk yard (IRA won), or ninjas versious pirates. ss vs viet cong
i didnt watch any of them fully, just a youtube clip of the IRA fight, but you can tell it will be complete bullsh!t



the thing i dont particularly like about the unseen footage documentries is that, yes they use well known footage over again but, also that they put survivors testimonys/interviews to mildly related footage. also the fact that they put sound to footage that was originally silent, the crackle of fire and sound of gunfire is ok when you see it on screen. but when they add screams or a baby crying for effect.


the internet also has some great footage, just do a google video search for
manner gegen panzer
or
deutsche scharfschutze

Snickers Man

Watched the first 20 minutes or so last night and thought it was rubbish. Only new thing was that they have colourised lots of old and familiar (to those of us who watch this sort of thing a lot) footage.

The commentary was trite, cliched, reinforced existing prejudices about Germans and Germany, offered no new insights and did nothing to question any of the inherited myths that people three generations on from the war have been fed for the past 65 years.

Just what we need in this day and age.

Not.

marcsignal

Snickers Man wrote: »

Watched the first 20 minutes or so last night and thought it was rubbish. Only new thing was that they have colourised lots of old and familiar (to those of us who watch this sort of thing a lot) footage.

The commentary was trite, cliched, reinforced existing prejudices about Germans and Germany, offered no new insights and did nothing to question any of the inherited myths that people three generations on from the war have been fed for the past 65 years.

Just what we need in this day and age.

Not.

Broadly agree, the narration in the first 20mins churned out a few of the old cliches, and nearly made me switch off, but I stuck it out and was happy enough that they were at least making some effort later, to show Stalin for what he was, and the fact he had a nice little extermination operation of his own going on, for people he didn't like too.

There was some footage I hadn't seen before, but not a lot. I recorded it anyway, so will probably watch it again over the week.

FiSe

It was OK. Apart from the usual oversimplified commentary, but you can't fit 3 years into such a short space. I really enjoyed the 'French' footage.

From my point of view, there were 2 scenes out of order: Panhards in German marking, while talking about time of Phoney war and StuG III C/D when talking about French campaign. None of these types were in the service with WH yet.
But I can get over it as it's just me and it wasn't tank from Skoda werke

Morlar

I'd agree with much of the verdict on here so far. The commentary was cliched and some glaring issues with it.

Some of the footage was interesting though.

One thing that struck me was that there seems to have been a shift away from describing roma gypsies as 'Roma Gypsies' - they are now just 'gypsies' which seems fairly inaccurate. A bit like saying jews were 'persecuted religons', technically there were jehovahs witnesses and mormons too, so they weren't all jews. You could describe them as 'Persecuted religons' - likewise not all gypsies were Roma. So you could call them 'Gypsies' instead but the vast majority were Roma so why the shift away from describing the Roma Gypsies as Roma Gypsies ? Why instead call them just Gypsies ?

Another issue I had with is one I have with a lot of WW2 documentaries, that is that as soon as a recording of hitlers voice was played the audio was treated. There was an ominous rumbling added to the background to make it more ominous and dramatic, and also a strange reverbey-echoey affect added to hitlers voice. That kind of thing is uncalled for and historical neutrality or at least an attempt at it would be nice for a change. It's cheap and tacky and serves no useful purpose in my opinion.

Other minor issues with it that I can remember were the letter, at one point the commentator mentions a letter after the Polish invasion. Sent from a German mother to her son on the Polish front which said something along the lines of 'Some day we will pay for this crime' - now in fairness how representative is that supposed to have been of the sentiment among germans at that time ? A far more accurate and representative comment would have mentioned the violence against ethnic germans (which I believe this programme completely neglected to mention - however it WAS a factor in the thinking at that time) and a comment about that would have been more truthful and representative of public mood. If you look back at any period in history you are bound to find some wacky correspondence completely out of step with current thinking, selecting the one which fits your premise and presenting it as if it were in someway representative of public mood seems deceitful.

Overally I'd say it was worth watching but could have been a lot less patronising, more truthful and interesting than it turned out to be.

siblers

The footage was good but the commentary was fairly basic, but I guess the show was aimed for a wider audience.

marcsignal

One contradiction I noticed in the narration, was the claim that there was a lack of fighting spirit, and cases of poor dicipline among the Wehrmacht troops during the Polish campaign. Yet when it came to the run up to the French campaign, the Wehrmacht troops were described as eager, fanatical and the embodiment of National socialist fighting spirit.

What changed in in 8 months to bring about this u-turn

The explanation given (that the troops felt they were now defending their country from the British and French), was a bit vague and wishy-washy imo.

Prefab Sprouter

Ah, give me "The World at War" any day. No promises of "Unseen Footage" or Sensationalist stories promising "new insights". Just good quality documentary. End of.

I do like some of these shows but I find myself always being disappointed by the footage shown. Sometimes they take stock footage and use it over and over. If I see a Russian SP gun in Berlin one more time........

FiSe

I would like to see original footage of the surrendering German soldiers the US Signal Corps took in the Czechoslovakia in May 1945. There are amazing conversions, field modifications and, of course, soldiers. Interesting resource of inspiration for my scale modelling.
There are hours of the material in the US archives, but you can see the odd 5-10 mins on the youtube or B/W copies from another sources.

But I can imagine that 'they' don't know what to charge for permission to use
such material and so we are getting the same footage all over again, as it's cheap and, let's face it, documentaries do not make money to pay for ridiculous royalty fees.
Basically the same could be said about photographs...

Morlar

FiSe wrote: »

I would like to see original footage of the surrendering German soldiers the US Signal Corps took in the Czechoslovakia in May 1945. There are amazing conversions, field modifications and, of course, soldiers. Interesting resource of inspiration for my scale modelling.
There are hours of the material in the US archives, but you can see the odd 5-10 mins on the youtube or B/W copies from another sources.

But I can imagine that 'they' don't know what to charge for permission to use
such material and so we are getting the same footage all over again, as it's cheap and, let's face it, documentaries do not make money to pay for ridiculous royalty fees.
Basically the same could be said about photographs...

Documentaries do make money. Think for a second of the costs,
a) voiceover actor, editing suite & video editors, marketing, 'historian', legal etc.

That's it. There are rarely original computer animation, or 1st unit original interview footage being shot - it's a voice over and old footage. Original research and fact checking are minimal.

They are repeated infinitely, put on rotation on multiple channels, are sold all over the world due to the strong interest in WW2, and all told years down the road they will be packaged into bulk dvd box sets and re-sold again. In addition they are cannibalised in a year or two into a 'new' documentary from the same documentary maker so it's the gift that keeps on giving.

It's an interesting point about fees, I believe that using short snippets for educational uses are free. This would explain why 95+% of documentaries show between 4-8 second snippets and very rarely anything more - when we know for a fact that the original footage was often shot on one camera continiously and editing in the 1940's was not as 'mtv' then as it is now, long single camera shots were left for minutes at a time (triumph of the will, Deutsche wochencshau etc). I think the reason why the same footage keeps getting used is that they cannibalise each other and the makers are lazy & ignorant. You can even look on ebay and see from time to time original footage cropping up for sale so it is still out there and does pop up from time to time.

marcsignal

Morlar wrote: »

Documentaries do make money. Think for a second of the costs,
a) voiceover actor, editing suite & video editors, marketing, 'historian', legal etc.

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it there Morlar, expense.

I remember studying Media Law for my degree. In fact, the area dealing exclusively with copywright law is worthy of a seperate module all on its own it's so complicated.

If I recall, using clips under 8 seconds is ok, and up to 10 seconds, depending on whether it's for educational purposes etc. It really is a minefield, excuse the pun

tbh, i'd have to go through the books again to be certain, so don't quote me on it.

However, if you were a college/uni lecturer, you could complie clips/reproduce pics/copy extracts from books etc. to show your class without any fear of breaching copywright, under a clause called 'Qualified Privilige'

Funny, I remember seeing ww2 docs in Germany on the RTL tv channel that had clips i'd never seen before. I guess that backs up what you say about access to 'Wochenschau' clips, by German networks.

Slightly off topic, but one of the reasons it took so long for 'Reeling in the Years' to come out on DVD, was for exactly that reason. RTE's legal people had to go theough a quagmire of paying off different networks for permission to distribute some clips of international event's of the time (mainly BBC clips, and some US networks), where as, airing them on a one-off broadcast was ok, because many of them were under a certain length.

Just gives you an indication of how complicated it is.

Morlar

I thought last weeks offering of this was even worse than previous. They described rommel as an 'enthusiastic nazi' while dismissing keitel and jodl as 'servile'. However by far the worst thing I have seen in a documentary in recent years they dismissed the holdomor as 'a series of agricultural reforms'.

gbee

siblers wrote: »

I got them on Sky Plus but haven't seen them yet, a lot of the footage on Apocalypse WW2 does look pretty unique though.

That's because it's from 'The Forgotten War' vicious atrocities on both sides, 1 Million Jews killed and the source of the 'Holocaust' and 'Ethnic Cleansing' too many skeletons from all involved.

My comments from watching S1/3 [Sunday 13th Nov].

marcsignal

Morlar wrote: »

I thought last weeks offering of this was even worse than previous. They described rommel as an 'enthusiastic nazi' while dismissing keitel and jodl as 'servile'. However by far the worst thing I have seen in a documentary in recent years they dismissed the holdomor as 'a series of agricultural reforms'.

I have to agree, the narration seems to be deteriorating rapidly as it goes on. Really basic blooper by the producers, was getting someone with a strong regional accent to narrate. if you're going to do that, at least make the effort to ensure they can properly pronounce German names.

Completely agree on the holdomor also. It's as if certain groups want to hold on to their monolopy on mass murder, and play down anything else that, in their opinion, doesn't come up to the mark, something that was evident in the Defamation Documentary by Shamir.

endakenny

Morlar wrote: »

They described rommel as an 'enthusiastic nazi'

Good point! Rommel was never a member of the Nazi party. He disobeyed Hitler's orders to deport Jews in France, execute Jewish POWs and Austrians POWs who were in the French Foreign Legion and the Commando Order. However, the description of Jodl and Keitel was correct and they obeyed Hitler's orders. They paid for their cowardice with their necks at Nuremberg.

FiSe

And what about those water landings this Saturday? What was it, Aichi D3A and Zero?
Nice footage for a change