WW2 GERMAN FORTIFICATIONS ON TV TONIGHT

[boatman]

HI Neil yes SNAP I get the same treatment from my missus if I start to rant while a programs on about summit wrong I get told off as she says im tryin to listen to that but trouble is I av'nt learned my lesson but I think i'll have to take a lesson from you an keep my mouth shut but its gonna be hard :nerd::smiling:LOL
CHRIS

[Guest]

a lot of 'action' footage was put together by the Americans during the First World War and it's often used to stand in for everything, at all periods.

That’s one I usually spot too — it’s easily recognisable once you know the clips. IIRC it’s from an American film made just after the war, which attempted to show what the fighting was like. A good effort for the time, but it’s often thought to be footage of real combat by documentary makers today.

When I worked at the IWM, we used to get complaints that some sequences in videos such as Desert War showed tanks etc in reverse. This was because the original makers (they were classic wartime propaganda films) felt the need for the Brits to always be advancing from the left and the enemy from the right, so as not to confuse the viewer.

Maybe ten years ago, the BBC re-ran their 1960s documentary series about the First World War, and added a behind-the-scenes/looking-back type of feature. In this one of the makers of the original commented that you would see a lot of left-handed Germans, for exactly the same reason you mention about the tanks in the desert.

I have only recently come to realise how much of modern day documentaries are staged or even rehearsed for the camera

You mean all those real-life shows? A lot of that’s not necessarily staged as such, but certainly manipulated and thought out a little beforehand so it appears much more dramatic than it would if it were just filmed as it was happening.

So what if it's not a Panzer III Ausf 55J from mid-December 1943? - unless the programme is about the development of the Panzer III I don't see that it really matters.

True, but the thing is that it also happens a lot with documentaries that are about the exact subject. Say, something about Tiger tanks (because the Tiger is the only tank that matters :rolling and then happily showing Panthers or Panzer IVs while talking about Tigers.