Four years ago, Peter Jackson was approached with an opportunity to make a documentary about World War I, a conflict his own grandfather fought in with the British Army. He thought the task would be a simple tribute to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the armistice.

“At the time of the premiere of the last Hobbit movie in London in 2014, the Imperial War Museum invited me to come in for a meeting and they asked if I would be interested in doing a documentary to commemorate the Armistice of the First World War. So that was like in four years time," Jackson said recently at an L.A. event for the film. "So it seemed like a long, long time away. Easy.”

What he found was a much more daunting challenge.

After putting meticulous detail into recreating the fantasy battles of Middle Earth, Jackson put the same effort into re-visualizing WWI. He was given 100 hours of severely damaged footage and tasked with using only that to create his documentary.