When Apple requested me to make the music video, I used to be very reluctant – I believed my subsequent few months can be a hell of much more enjoyable if that difficult process was anyone else’s downside, and I might be like another Beatles fan, having fun with the night-before-Christmas anticipation as the discharge of a brand new Beatles tune and music video approached – in 1995, l beloved the childlike pleasure I felt as the discharge of Free As A Chook was inching nearer.
I might have that have as soon as once more – all I needed to do was say no to The Beatles.
To be sincere, simply enthusiastic about the duty of getting to make a music video worthy of the final tune The Beatles will ever launch produced a group of anxieties nearly too overwhelming to cope with. My lifelong love of The Beatles collided right into a wall of sheer terror on the considered letting everybody down. This created intense insecurity in me as a result of I’d by no means made a music video earlier than, and was not capable of think about how I might even start to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years in the past, had by no means really carried out the tune, and had half of its members not with us.
It was going to be far simpler to do a runner.
I simply wanted a bit of time to determine a very good motive for turning The Beatles down – so I by no means really agreed to make the music video for Now And Then (the truth is I nonetheless haven’t to this present day).
I informed Apple how the shortage of appropriate footage fearful me. We’d want to make use of numerous uncommon and unseen movie, however there’s little or no … Nothing in any respect appeared to exist exhibiting Paul, George and Ringo engaged on Now And Then in 1995 … There’s not a lot footage of John within the mid-seventies when he wrote the demo … I grizzled in regards to the lack of unseen Beatles footage from the ’60s … They usually didn’t even shoot any footage exhibiting Paul and Ringo engaged on the tune final yr.
A Beatles music video will need to have nice Beatles footage at its core. There’s no means actors or CGI Beatles needs to be used. Each shot of The Beatles wanted to be real. By now I actually had no concept how anybody might make a Now And Then music video in the event that they didn’t have first rate footage to work with, and this was removed from being a lame excuse. My worry and insecurity now had stable the explanation why they need to prevail and permit me to say no with out wanting an excessive amount of like a rooster.
I knew The Beatles don’t take no for a solution if their minds are set on one thing – however they didn’t even await me to say no. I discovered myself swept alongside as they rapidly addressed my considerations. Paul and Ringo shot footage of themselves performing and despatched that to me. Apple unearthed over 14 hours of lengthy forgotten movie shot throughout the 1995 recording periods, together with a number of hours of Paul, George and Ringo engaged on Now And Then, and gave all that to me. Sean and Olivia discovered some nice unseen residence film footage and despatched that. To cap issues off, a number of treasured seconds of The Beatles performing of their leather-based fits, the earliest recognized movie of The Beatles and by no means seen earlier than, was kindly equipped by Pete Finest.
Watching this footage utterly modified the state of affairs – I might see how a music video might be made. Truly, I discovered it far simpler if I considered it as making a brief film, in order that’s what I did… My insecurity with music movies didn’t matter anymore if I wasn’t making one.
Even so, I nonetheless had no stable imaginative and prescient for what this quick movie needs to be – so I turned to the tune for steering.
After we had separated John’s voice on the demo tape over a yr in the past, Giles had produced an early mixture of Now And Then. This had been despatched to me again in 2022. I beloved it. Since then I will need to have listened to Now And Then over 50 instances, purely for pleasure.
Now I began listening to it intently for various causes. I hoped that concepts or inspiration for the quick movie would one way or the other float up from the music. And that started to occur. As I saved listening, it felt just like the tune was creating concepts and pictures that began forming in my head – with none aware effort from me.
I teamed up with Jabez Olssen, my Get Again editor, to attempt to determine methods the brand new movie footage might be used to help these wispy concepts. It was a really natural course of, and we slowly began construct little fragments, sliding photos and music round in numerous methods till issues started to click on in.
We wished the quick movie to carry a number of tears to the attention, however producing emotion utilizing solely archive footage is a tough factor. Happily, the easy energy of this stunning tune did numerous the work for us, and we completed the primary 30 or 40 secs of the movie pretty rapidly.
Having executed that, we jumped straight to the ending and tried to craft one thing that would adequately sum up the enormity of The Beatles’ legacy – in the previous few seconds of their closing recording. This proved to be not possible. Their contribution to the world is simply too immense, and their wondrous reward of music has turn out to be a part of our DNA and now defies description.
I noticed we wanted the creativeness of each viewer to do what we couldn’t, and have every viewer create their very own private second of farewell to The Beatles – however we needed to gently steer everybody to that place. I had some obscure concepts, however didn’t actually know obtain this.
Happily, Dhani Harrison occurred to be visiting NZ presently. I mentioned the ending with him, and described one obscure concept I’d been toying with. His eyes instantly full of tears – so that’s the means we went.
Jabez and I now started enthusiastic about the center part. We might really watch the start and finish now, and rapidly realised our preliminary plan of getting comparable emotional energy proceed via this center part can be utterly fallacious. That was not who The Beatles have been. At their core they have been irreverent and humorous, and the center part ought to seize that spirit. We wanted to snicker at The Beatles, and snicker with them. They have been all the time sending themselves up – and the extra severely different folks took them, the extra they might clown round.
Fortunately we discovered a group of unseen outtakes within the vault, the place The Beatles are relaxed, humorous and relatively candid. These turn out to be the backbone of our center part, and we wove the humour into some footage shot in 2023. The result’s fairly nutty and supplied the video with a lot wanted steadiness between the unhappy and the humorous.
It was lastly completed after WētāFX accomplished a number of easy, however difficult VFX pictures.
To be sincere, whereas we hope we’ve given The Beatles an appropriate closing farewell, that’s one thing you’ll must resolve for yourselves when it’s lastly launched – just a few days from now.
Having obtained to the tip, I’m very comfortable I’m not ready for the discharge of anyone else’s Now And Then music video. I’ve real delight in what we made, and I’ll cherish that for years to return. An enormous because of Apple Corps and the Fabs for giving me all of the help I wanted – and never permitting me to wriggle away.
