I enjoyed pretending I was a 21st cent' sparrow flying above the site and searching for the 1916 notable features. This summer video captures a mood I find agreeable. Thanks for your efforts.
one very interesting point is the reveal of what the soldiers in the film said. particulary the one looking at the camera. he said among others:" I hope we are not in the wrong place..." More about that look for "lip reader battle of somme"
This is very well done, and I like the music. I went to the Battlefields recently, for the first time with 'Discovery Battlefield Tours', just a family of three and the guide in his car. It meant we went where we wanted to go and not in a huge coach party. We followed my Grandad's battalion route ( 13th Royal Sussex). I found the trip very moving. I learnt a lot.
Another great view..I've walked up the lane a few times, there is the remains of one or two dugouts in clear view, a few yards up..I was trying to work out where Malins filmed the mine going up, I took some photos and thought it was from nearer the memorial, but wasn't sure. The small narrow cemetery would have been in the middle of nomansland, on July 1st And this drone footage gives a much better idea of how close the village was, yet it took another three and s half months to take it.
Malins filmed the Hawthorn Crater explosion, further back towards White City, you can sit in the exact spot. I tokk his photo with me and managed to get a near idential photo.
@@tooyoungtobeold8756 Out of curiosity, what was the focal length of the lens Malins used? Is White City near the road? Thanks. Someone should mark the spot on Google Earth. :)
Hey Jock. Thanks for the video and I dont mind the calming music at all. If it wasn't for the brave souls who fought here and in the other battles, we may not have the freedom to play the music we want, I don't think they would mind at all. I will be visiting next month and didn't realise about the 8th A and SH memorial which my grandfather was in and won the DCM and MM. Thanks for your help.
Hi C C...to many people read way to much into a piece of music, I've been going to Ypres and the Somme on the 11th November to pay my respects for over 25 years, and people have the choice to mute the music if the don't like it, i get bored trying to explain, this is simply a drone video to show where Geoffrey Malins filmed The Battle of the Somme film showing the terrain the soldiers encountered, but these self righteous fools would rather comment on a piece of music with no significance to what actually went on here.
At sunken lane 2wks ago with leger battlefield tours saw where Lancashire fusiliers was waiting to go over the top ,new memorial put up 1st July 2016 at 07.30 hrs.
Hi Jock, I have been to the Somme many times but you have captured this area brilliantly. I have actually stated Julie's house on the other side of the main road.
This is beautifully done and the pace is excellent. Also, the musical accompaniment is the perfect choice because it allows you to process what you're seeing without the stress of processing crazy wild music. I would have liked to have seen a close up of what appears to be a smaller monument and two rows of headstones. Well done!
Love the birdseye view - a good substitute for those cold winter evenings when I am far away. Minor comment, logic suggests the movie footage of the Lancashire Fusiliers was taken from higher up the sunken lane looking down towards the road. The soldiers would have wanted their backs to the bank nearest the Germans.- for protection as well as to keep out of German view (until the whistle blew). The cameraman (Mallins) would also have benefited from better cover higher up the lane,
Hi David, Thanks for the comment. The Sunken Lane is one of my favourite places on the Somme. Yes someone else commented that a while back, i was aware of filming in the wrong direction up the lane, my initial plan was to fly the drone down the sunken lane and then fly straight up to Hawthorn Ridge but with the amount of overhanging branches in the lane and the risk of one catching the drone and damaging it. We decided against it.
Drone footage of one of the most, for me at least, grim examples of fear and tragedy of WW1 - The Sunken Lane; the other being the Poperinge cells. My grandfather with the London Scottish went OTT at Loos, then was subsequently gassed... As far as the music - I quite enjoyed it - sounded like a Mauri choir...
Hi Dave...Thanks for your input, The sunken lane, hawthorn ridge and lochnagar crater are favourite places of mine and very poignant symbols of WW1... as for the music, some folk may or may not like it, but it has no significance for me one way or the other, just others reading to much into drone footage.
2:00 Top right, that's Newfoundland Park, where I was yesterday, filming with my drone at the 51st (Highland) Division Memorial. I did fly out to the sunken lane, but mostly focused on the moon landscape of Newfoundland. I'll try to upload this soon and send you a link. :) @@jocktamson275
If you had gone further back from the Sunken lane, also knowns as Hunter's Trench, you would have come to White City and halfway along that is King Street, Where the track bends, which Malins also filmed with soldiers preparing to go over the top. But I guess you knew that. We found a couple of unexploded Mills Bombs and a petrol can up there some years ago.
Yes have been at White City field walking, i love that whole area around Beaumont-Hamel, there's so much to see. While down at Butte De Warlencourt we came across an unexploded mills as well, still so much ordnance showing up 100 years later at the Iron Harvest. Thanks for your informative comment.
If you plan on going there again, try and get a good view on the field north of the treeline (the Malins filming location). You can still see the shapes of the trenches there.
Hi Jock, would it be possible to use a small amount of this footage, I am using my own footage from the ground but your aerial shots just help to paint the complete picture. I am happy to mention you in the credits for aerial shots and include link to this video. Best wishes, Brian.
1:06 the most haunting thing about the video in the bottom right hand corner is that almost all, if not all of the men being filmed would be dead in the next 24 hours within 1000ft(~333 meters) of where it was filmed. You are quite literally seeing these men’s last moments.
They were confident, but the blatant anti hero is the arrogance of the battle commanders. No surprise, broad daylight, no smoke bombs, superfluous, week long artillery barrage. It's so arrogant it makes me cringe.
The music was fine. I too went on a tour with Leger to these locations. The guide was useless he showed the Sunken Lane from the wrong direction when comparing the original to the Now location. We got nowhere near the scene of the famous explosion filmed by Malins, all our guide cared about was visiting cemetries. Now don't get me wrong I've paid my respects MANY times at these graves, but when you pay a lot of money to visit battlefields, endless cemetries can get a bit wearing
We always go Drive/Ferry to Zeebrugge, stay 3 days in Ypres, then down to the Somme for the remaining time. I hear what your saying about tour companies, We are fortunate that a friend who goes with us is a Battlefield guide and has taken us to some less well known interesting areas over the years. Leger have an itinerary, and do tend to focus on Cemeteries and the more well know areas of the Somme and Ypres, especially when you want to spend a bit of time exploring the area, but they cater mostly for the first time visitor.
Jock Tamson Ah, the resort to personal abuse. I always know I’ve won the point when the only thing someone can do is to play the man not the ball. You’re very defensive and need to learn to listen and take other people’s views on board - im not the only one to point out the issues with music and locations. If you’re going to publish things on public platforms like RU-vid you should learn how to take criticism better and if you’re going to defend yourself try not to get emotional, abusive and childish.
Give yourself a rest, you don't need to be an idiot every day of your life....the sychophantic praising of yourself as having won just confirms what a sanctamonious dolt you are.... just read what you have written about taking other peoples views onboard...and let it sink in dummy... you're so full of it, you don't even know you have shot your own argument down. End of conversation, i've wasted enough time on you.
Jock Tamson Ah, touched a nerve. You might do well to re read your own post which is abusive, poorly written, defensive and which fails to address a single criticism that I and others made. For example, you have not once sought to explain why you chose this music, or whether you think that it adds something to the video, or why you chose to film from the wrong angles. I can only assume you don’t know.
the footage wasnt filmed in the sunken lane it was filmed on the corner of the now main road were a small concrete building is... mallin needed to be far away due to the size of the blast
Does anyone see the Angel in spirit form?? Forget bright light and wings for a minute. At the beginning, its to the left of the white obelisk/cross. its a blue gassy looking haze at first, I can see it easily. The best place to start looking for it is right at 1:09 on counter, As the camera starts down the sunken road at 1:09 its on the left making the bushes look like figures related to what went on here. usually they condense the air within branches to make shapes but this one is in blue. At a point you may think its sun glare but its not. Then when the drone goes high to look at the crater to the left its spread across the ground to make the giant face in the field. Please tell me if any of you can see it?
Why the obsession with pointing the drone’s camera in the opposites direction from the field where the action took place? The labels were helpful - but didn’t point out Beaumont Hamel ot the German front line. Oh, and totally inappropriate music.
Great and important pictures, but the music really doesn’t match. Men were slaughtered here. Something more sombre would have been more appropriate. Music here better suited for beach holiday. Look at the faces of the Fusiliers.....they were terrified....that’s why Peter Jackson highlighted them in his recent masterpiece of restored film.
Iv'e already replied to comments regarding the music...some like it some don't, the hard fact is, it's not consecrated ground, where nobody is allowed to walk, these are farmers fields now, and it's not meant to be a memorialisation, i'm well aware what went on here, thats why i don't hover the drone up and down over the graves on those fallen like a couple of other youtube videos of the Sunken Lane, it's simply a drone video showing where Malins made the film The Battle of the Somme....nothing else.
Jock Tamson I Guess if you know the history here, it’s a very emotional experience. I helped a Sherwood Forester pull an unexplored trench mortar from the lip of the mine crater opposite where thousands of Germans were killed, let alone appalling slaughter of the Highland Division and the Newfoundlers killed opposite Y ravine. Maybe, probably, I’m overreacting, but the Sunken Lane and the no mans land adjacent are sacred sites to me, imperishable in memory. A place or horror, terror, sacrifice.
by Joe and Ray 4th April 2014 J.R.R. Tolkien (writer of the "The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy") in the Twentieth Century: at the Somme, 1916 Scrape your fingers along your greasy scalp, pick out scabs, bits of lice with your nails. You are a signal officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers and your wife of 4 months, Edith, sings and dances across the Channel from the blood and death and mud which is the Somme. A shell-broken man bleeds on a stretcher, gestures, gargles: you understand and take his locket from around his neck. The weight of words press full on you, even when they are not words, just wet sounds. It's difficult to sleep; when you do, you dream of a mariner blown so far into the endless ocean he's accepted death. But he does not die: he's pulled off the deck of his ship, taught, by beautiful natives of an alien isle, language. A week after your battalion gets shredded on the wire you interrogate a captured German officer, map out enemy locations. He accepts your offered water, corrects your pronunciation, suggests red ink for the man-traps. In twenty years you will argue Beowulf is not a pagan fragment or a poor allegory but is a poem of lights opposing outer-darkness where a man struggles against the beast again and again and again and is overwhelmed.
I do understand that other people have an emotional attachment to areas in the Somme, I go every year on 11/11 to the Menin Gate and then to Thiepval and around the Somme to pay my respects to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and have done for over 20 years. I've had many conflicting comments regarding the music, some take it for what it is and others seem to be offended in some way, i just get bored explaining it's a drone video showing the areas around the Sunken Lane in Malins film, to give anyone who views the video a birdseye view of the scale and terrain the soldiers faced.
The soundtrack is totally innapropriate. It's not a trip to the Seychelles documentary. It's the sight of modern, industrial massacres of European people.
Music totally and utterly inappropriate. It’s like chilled out music in a massage parlour bar on a beach holiday somewhere in the Pacific. This is a video dealing with the slaughter and deaths of tens of thousands of men. Really, whilst the video is interesting the music is a very poor choice and should be changed. It’s verging on the disrespectful.
Jock Tamson I know I’m welcome to my opinion - it’s a public message board. You haven’t offended me; your video just shows a lack insight and sensitivity. To choose chill out club music to show an environment where thousands died is immature shows poor judgement. You also don’t, for example, show the sunken lane from the same side as the photo you show nor give any explanation as to what events took place or any of the context. Basically this is a gimmick of a video and there are far far better alternatives out there. Mind you, this is the modern generation I suppose. At least you’ve heard about the Somme even if you clearly don’t understand any of it.
To be perfectly honest, i can't remember what it's called, thats how significant the music is to me. but probably a song by Michael E. it sounds very like the kind of music he makes.
Where they had well trained machine gun posts with converging ranges. Nothing would get through any gaps. Everything that moved was most likely obliterated by repeated fire over the course of the next few hours. If you've read Birdsong, it describes the German snipers spending the afternoon practicing on the corpses' heads.
@@jocktamson275 bro adagio for strings exists and yet you chose this silly ass fucking child’s music. You’re a profound insult to the men who gave their lives on that grass
@@Lucky-sh1dm you have never been to the battlefields or paid respects on 11/11... you are just a troll, looking for a bit of fun...I've given the reason why several times before regarding the music, stop being such bore over a piece of music on a video you sanctimonious fool, this is my last reply to you sonny, so go bore someone else.