Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/04/1896s-arrival-of-a-train-a.html
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8 Likes
Amazing. I wonder what the color would have been like. I like to imagine the clothing color was more vibrant than in the remake.
3 Likes
I was more impressed until they shew the original, which was actually a lot cleaner and sharper than I’d assumed.
Still, even if it’s only an indexical difference (like when Parents Mode on new TVs makes everything look like soap operas), it is interesting to see something that feels recent but was shot 124 years ago.
11 Likes
Everyone in this film is dead now. Even the little girl is gone.
Memento mori. 
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Except that the second “remake” isn’t “La Ciotat” near Marseille; it’s a GO station in Southern Ontario. 
I suppose if the production budget doesn’t cover a quick trip to France, you work with what you’ve got… 
10 Likes
But no cat faces. I was expecting cat faces.
I especially like how the neural net managed to produce an audio track.
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On a side note, it’s interesting to see the various styles of fashion, perhaps dependent on what region the passengers arrived from.
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But the station is still there, and the view is pretty much the same.
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What kind of shell game are these three women and two kids playing? I had to watch a few times before I could track who ended up where.
8 Likes
It’s a local train (then and now) so the passengers were all coming from fairly close, Marseille and Toulon being the biggest cities on the line.
1 Like
Interesting visual experiment, but this re-edit totally nerfed the storyline.
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Drr Zoch kütt!
To really rake in the cash they need to market this to families interested in restoring old 8mm and VHS tapes.
I’d pay up to and including $15 per hour of restored precious memories, but no more than that, I’m not that sentimental.
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Clever stuff. Surprised they didn’t colorize it, whilst they were at it.
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I’m disappointed with the soundtrack they chose. It sounds like a steam engine pulling into a station, and then coming to a stop abeam the microphone, whereas the La Ciotat train is still moving.
There’s no Dopler shift or anything.
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I’m not saying I’m right (merely speculating), but are you completely ruling out Italian travelers or people who arrived via ship?
VHS you can forget about…but 8mm is still film, and can be scanned at HD. From my experience, a 3 minute 8mm reels generally costs around $50 to transfer at 4K, much less if just going to DVD. I spent a few days scanning just a few frames from the cutting room floor of 1939, and then I promptly converted them to GIFs. How’s that for fun?! https://fckyeahggie.tumblr.com/
I have absolutely no idea what this is but it sounds like it was not aimed at me, so hopefully I will never get to witness it. I don’t watch soap operas, either, so there’s that, too.
I was wondering about that, too.
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I’ve seen it, though the TV I viewed didn’t call it Parents Mode. It gives movies a weird lighting effect that looks more like the closed-studio lighting you see on soap operas or public-access television.
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