Here, There and Everywhere

To promote the 2022 reissue of the “Revolver” album, Apple Corps published a promo video for The Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere“. This was the third promo video to support the “Revolver” reissue, after the release of “Taxman” on October 14, 2022, and “I’m Only Sleeping” on November 1, 2022.

From The Beatles – Here, There and Everywhere – YouTube:

“Follow the band on tour, as they face an ever-changing backdrop of cities, hotels, roads, and gigs, with only each other to rely on. A magical dancer appears to each of them, representing inspiration and creative freedom.” – Richard Barnett, Trunk Animation.

Get The Beatles’ Revolver into your life with the new mixes and expanded Special Editions. Available everywhere now across 5CD/4LP Super Deluxe, 2CD Deluxe, Picture Disc, 1LP, 1CD, Download and Streaming. Dolby Atmos Mixes + original mono mix accompany never-before-released session recordings and demos, plus the “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” EP.

The Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver changed everything. Spinning popular music off its axis and ushering in a vibrant new era of experimental, avant-garde sonic psychedelia, Revolver brought about a cultural sea change and marked an important turn in The Beatles’ own creative evolution. With Revolver, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr set sail together across a new musical sea.

Showcasing GRAMMY-winning original album artwork created by Klaus Voormann, the Super Deluxe CD and vinyl house a beautiful book featuring Paul McCartney’s foreword, an introduction by Giles Martin, an enlightening essay by Questlove, and insightful chapters by Kevin Howlett.

Music video by The Beatles performing Here, There and Everywhere © 2022 Apple Corps Ltd

From stashmedia.tv, December 20, 2022:

Label: Universal Music
Producer: Sophie Hilton

Client: Apple Corps
Producer: Jonathan Clyde

Production: Trunk Animation
Director: Rok Predin
Illustrator: Sara Savelj Predin
3D Modeller: Omar Lawal
3D Rigger/Animator: Alan Towndrow
3D Animator: Alex Watson:
2D Animator: Eamonn O’Neil, Layla Atkinson
Effects Animator: Leslie Dart
Compositor: Rok Predin
Archive Researcher: Adrian Winter
Archivist: Aaron Bremner
Producer: Richard Barnett

Roto: Rotomaker

Visually the whole film is an homage to the rotoscoping technique of animation as it was used in the film Yellow Submarine. We didn`t have the time (just six weeks) nor the budget to make it ‘for real’, so we had to think of a way to emulate the feel and look of it.

We had quite a few archive shots we could rotoscope and then comp in such a way as to make them look like the desired technique. We extracted alphas for the shapes of certain elements like skin, hair, coats, shirts, etc., and matted them to boiling colored textures.

We used the same passes to extract some lines using Adobe`s Cartoon effect. The mattes enabled us to restrict certain settings of the effect to just the desired areas.

Then we needed to match that treatment to the animation coming out of 3D. We used 3D models of each of the band members to tie the animation of separate archive shots together.

What we needed was a convincing 3D sculpt of each of the band, so that we could animate them, and then treat them in the same way that we would treat the live action footage. Using references from Apple Corps own archive modeler Omar Lawal set about sculpting the band over a couple of weeks.

We also imagined the love that you’ve left behind, in the video this developed into this magical dancer animated by Eamonn O’Neill.

We were always confident we could recreate the look, but nowadays these things come down to a near mathematical formula, finding just the right levels of multiple effects, and balancing their outputs.

The visual language of the video is a contemporary interpretation of styles from the past using new technologies, complementing the sonic transformation that the song has undergone for the new release of the Revolver album.

Rok Predin – Director – From stashmedia.tv, December 20, 2022

From The Beatles | Here, There and Everywhere – Trunk | Animation Production Company:

For the fourth time in as many years, Trunk has created a music video for The Beatles. This time for the track “Here, There and Everywhere” from the monumental Revolver album.

The brief, set by Paul McCartney, was to take the viewer on a journey of The Beatles world tour. The rotoscoped dancers from the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds section of Yellow Submarine were also given as a visual reference. 

Taking this as his cue our Trunk’s director Rok Predin and the creative team set to work. However, two obstacles stood in front of the team: A small amount of useable footage for rotoscoping, and the 6 weeks till delivery.

 With limited footage to rotoscope, and a big story to tell, the Trunk team had to come up with a way to re-create a rotoscoped look for some of the most recognisable faces in music history and fit them in with the existing archive footage. 

We set about creating a convincing 3D sculpt of each of the band, which could be animated then visually treated in the same way as the live action footage. 

Apple Corps Archivist Aaron Bremner sent detailed reference of what the band looked like, dressed like, and how they moved at the time. While researcher Adrian Winter, hunted through all the worlds archive material for usable shots. Thankfully it turned out that Apple Corps own archive held everything we needed.

Using the reference material, modeller Omar Lawal sculpted CGI models of the band which were then rigged by Alan Towndrow. Animator Alex Watson then put the characters into testing and we were able to get the comp team their first look at the raw materials. Although the first 3D iteration was good, with lovely hand drawn lines mixed with simple boiling textures over flat blocks of colour it needed to be better, to seamlessly sit alongside rotoscoped live action footage. Heads were scratched, and in the middle of the night Rok got up at 3am and went back to his workstation. By 7am the next morning he’d cracked it! By using a multitude of processes, he managed to recreate the line work that was coming from the rotoscoping. 

The release of Revolver spun popular music off its axis and ushering in a vibrant new era of experimental, avant-garde sonic psychedelia, and marked an important turn in The Beatles’ own creative evolution. Rok reflects this in his bold use of psychedelic colour and pattern as you can see in this pitch imagery.

With the visual language set, Rok created an animatic for the entire track following the band on their world tour. They travel in a whirl of taxis, trains and planes from New York to Tokyo via Paris, Sydney and Rome. These deft cityscapes were illustrated by our old friend Sara Savelj.

Here are some of Sara’s cityscapes before they were composited into the piece.

It was important for Rok to capture the hard slog that being on tour can be, and what keeps you going while away. Throughout the piece the band are haunted by fleeting glimpses of a dancer who gracefully sweeps through shots, reminding the band of loves left far away. Each of the band see the dancer separately, before realising they are all seeing her together. The dancer is the colour, the light, and the inspiration that keeps them going, and once back in the UK, she disperses into Abbey Road studios. She now represents the bands renewed enthusiasm for their music, but also the end of touring.

We worked with the talented animator Eamonn O’Neill to create the dancer. In a nice nod to the brief and originally visual reference, she is partially rotoscoped but Eamonn’s classical skills and light touch were needed to create the dancer’s transitions in and out of shot.

From The Beatles | Here, There and Everywhere – Trunk | Animation Production Company