Lost Film Footage of The Sphinx Excavations Found and Restored
After a video showing vintage photographs of the Sphinx excavations from the 1920s and 30s I went on the hunt for more, and came across something I had never seen before, actual video footage of the Sphinx excavation and renovation work from nearly 100 years ago.
2022-11-03 19:00:00 - Ancient Architects
Most vintage black and white footage of the Sphinx comes from after 1930s, and you can tell this because the headdress has been restored, but finding footage of the Sphinx pre-1930s is incredibly rare.
In fact such footage is generally stored on archives, owned by private companies and it never gets to see the light of day.The footage I’ve discovered this week was in black and white, was incredibly grainy and full of noise, very little contrast in the shades of grey and of course it is low resolution. Some of it was also flipped horizontally.
I’m no expert in video restoration but I sharpened the video as best I could, added a little more contrast and also attempted to colourise the footage, to bring it to life nearly 100 years after it was filmed.
I found the video on the Huntley Film Archive, a private company that discovers vintage video footage, digitises it and preserves it, before making it available for commercial use.
The cost for me, as a YouTuber, was way out of my price range, but the good people of Huntley Film Archive have allowed me to publish the footage with their watermarks still in place.
Please watch and Like the video and comment your thoughts and observations in the description below.
Thank you.