Inverclyde Through Time (then and now)

This is a very different style of video compared to what we usually produce. In this video, we attempted to recreate scenes from old photographs of the Inverclyde area. This is a “then and now” video of Inverclyde, where old scenes morph into the present day.

The first task was going online and purchasing old postcards and photographs of the area. The next (and trickiest part) was to go out and attempt to recreate the scenes in the present day.

This was quite difficult because not all the locations where the original photographs were taken are still accessible. In some cases, the location is now overgrown. We tried to reproduce the original images as closely as possible. This was not always possible, and in some cases, there is a bit of a difference in terms of perspective. It was also difficult to get the images to match up exactly due to not knowing what lens the original photographer was using and what kinds of rework were done during the development and printing stages.

It is also worth noting that with old postcards, very often the printer would use a lot of artistic freedom to manipulate and alter the image. Sometimes things will be removed, and sometimes buildings that never existed are added to make a scene look more appealing.

We then scanned in the old images, cropped and cleaned them up using modern digital editing techniques. We did nothing to alter the images other than remove any damage that had occurred to them over the years.

We do feel this does a good job of showing just how much the area has changed over the years. In some cases, the opposite was true, and the lack of change is quite astounding.