Winston Churchill鈥檚 funeral in HD on 主播大秀 Parliament
James Rowland
Senior Media Manager, 主播大秀 Archives
Tagged with:
Filming the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill for the 主播大秀
Specialists from 主播大秀 Archive and 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production have worked together to produce an HD remastering of the Former Prime Minister鈥檚 state funeral in full. Here James Rowland explains the genesis of the re-mastering project and how through the process some footage that could have been lost has been secured and preserved for the future.
主播大秀 Archives were first approached in June 2014 with a request from 主播大秀 Parliament asking the Archive to consider making an HD re-mastering of The State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill from the original black and white film recordings to be re-broadcast as part of nation-wide events marking the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill鈥檚 death on the 30 January 2015. 聽
While planning the project the 主播大秀 Archives team discovered that a section from the funeral footage, reportedly featuring two buglers inside St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral playing The Last Post followed by Reveille, was missing from a transfer that had been made from the print of the original film many years ago. When the team checked the original film they found, to their relief, the missing section of approximately 3 minutes and 35 seconds was safely preserved on the original film. Up until the Eighties it was relatively common, although not permitted, for users of the Archive to physically cut sections out of the film to use in their programmes with urgent deadlines such as current affairs and we think that鈥檚 what may have occurred with the print of the funeral which was later transferred to tape and added to the archive holdings.
We wanted to re-master the archive footage and make the complete recoding of this historic event accessible and available. So work began to bring a third partner on-board to undertake the transfer and restoration of the film. Having already completed the restoration of the Coronation film footage for the Golden Jubilee of 2012, 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production with their specific experience and technical expertise were an obvious choice to join the team.
Richard Dimbleby presents coverage of Winston Churchill's state funeral for the 主播大秀
In total, 14 reels of black and white 35mm film negatives with mag tracks were retrieved from specialist film vaults at the 主播大秀 Archive Centre in west London where they are stored at 5°C and 30% humidity and then delivered to 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production for work to begin.
The film negatives themselves were in fairly good condition, but inevitably there was a certain amount of dirt and scratches. The sound was also of relatively decent quality, however due to the nature of how it was recorded there was a high-pitched whistle through much of the material.
The film was cleaned and then transferred to HDCAM SR tapes using Spirit telecines. Due to the recording being split over 14 reels (over 4 hours in duration) and the difficult nature of the content, ‘joining’ the film invisibly to give a seamless result was challenging for the transfer team. Also the individual sound and picture reels did not match or ‘sync up’ and therefore required ‘re-syncing’ on every reel changeover.
主播大秀 Studios and Post production carried out the noise reduction and graded the pictures during the transfer process. They then tweaked the picture shape which was achieved by warping and stretching the image in order to match the different film reels. After that, the footage was then taken into the ‘dustbuster’ stage for frame by frame blemish removal and to remove monitor twitches. Finally, a quality assessment was carried out by 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production before playout to a modern HD tape format that was then supplied to 主播大秀 Archives as the completed transfer.
Back at the 主播大秀 Archive Centre, the team were obviously keen to see the finished results, including the footage of the missing buglers. The buglers were there, however the team didn’t recognise the first piece of music as being The Last Post which it was reportedly meant to be (it sounded similar but not the same). It was vital that the detail around this missing section of footage was accurate so the Archive’s Music Library Team, who manage the 主播大秀’s collection of sheet music, were consulted and after listening to the piece, identified it as Watch Setting (2nd Post) and not The Last Post.
Watching the rest of the recording, impeccably narrated by Richard Dimbleby, made for compelling viewing. 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production had done a good job of reducing ‘hiss’ from the audio and the results with cleaning-up debris and damage from the picture without losing the authenticity of the original recording was also impressive.
In addition to the historic footage of the funeral procession and service inside St Paul’s Cathedral, the film captures a fascinating sense of 1965 London, which viewers will find equally interesting when it’s re-broadcast by 主播大秀 Parliament on the 30 January 2015, 50 years after the event. After leaving St Paul’s the procession travels by car to Tower Pier and then along the River Thames by barge with the famous footage of the dockers who lowered their crane jibs in a salute. Following this the procession resumes by car at Festival Pier where it travels past a building works on the Southbank and Richard Dimbleby comments on the ‘new’ Festival Halls that are under construction before the procession continues to Waterloo Station and on by train.
The completion of this exciting piece of work has been a result of a great collaboration between 主播大秀 Archives, 主播大秀 Parliament and 主播大秀 Studios and Post Production who have all liaised and worked closely together throughout the process to deliver a complete version of this historic footage. We hope it will help the nation mark the anniversary of Churchill’s death.
James Rowland is Senior Media Manager for 主播大秀 Archives
- This post also appears on the
- Follow for more archive-related news
- 主播大秀 footage of the funeral is also being shown at the as part of its exhibition on the funeral train
- Discover more 主播大秀 history on the History of the 主播大秀 website including a section dedicated to .