Rok Predin at Trunk Animation has created a vibrant, psychedelia-tinged animated video for Beatles' classic Here, There And Everywhere - the fourth that Trunk has created for the Fab Four in as many years, this time to coincide with the re-release of the monumental Revolver album.

Predin's video employs rotoscoping of classic Beatles footage from the mid-Sixties period when the album was recorded, supplemented by newly created 3D imagery of the band, and outlines a story of how the Fab Four's final days as a touring outfit before heading into the studio, through a series of wonderfully delineated sequences that also nod stylistically to the iconic cover of Revolver. 

The starting point for the making of the Here, There And Everywhere video was Paul McCartney, briefing Trunk on how much he always loved the visuals of the rotoscoped dancers from the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds section of Yellow Submarine, beautifully art directed by the late Heinz Edelmann. He also wanted to take the viewer on a journey of The Beatles world tour. 

Two obstacles stood in front of the Trunk team: a limited amount of useable footage for the rotoscoping technique, and the 6 weeks until delivery. With limited footage to rotoscope, and a yet a big story to tell, the 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. Having hit upon the idea of using 3D versions of The Beatles to fill the gap, they discovered that there was hardly anything in existence which were realistic, as opposed to caricatured versions of the band. 

“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,” explains Predin, who has previously worked with the likes of Elton John, The Rolling Stones, and U2. Thankfully it turned out that Apple Corps own archive held everything that was useable. 

Using the references from the extraordinary archive, modeller Omar Lawal set about sculpting the band over a couple of weeks, before Alan Towndrow got to rigging. 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. Rok led the compositing and tried numerous ways of recreating the rotoscoped look the team had originally provided as a test. Ultimately, by using a multitude of processes, he managed to recreate the line work that was coming from the rotoscoping.

“We were always confident that we could recreate the look," he notes. "But nowadays these things come down to a near mathematical formula, finding just the right levels of multiple effects, and balancing their outputs”. This technical R&D just opened the first door to the most important part - telling the story. Rok and producer Richard Barnett had both watched Peter Jackson's amazing ‘The Beatles: Get Back’ documentary, and reminded themselves of Ron Howard's 2016 doc ‘Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years’.

"Watching that again really reminds you of what those four guys went through, what the music meant to so many people, and what they were doing in the world at that time, which was a complete revolution," says Barnett. "I remember a clip of George saying that 'I always felt sorry for Elvis 'cause he was on his own. He had his guys with him, but there's only one Elvis. Nobody else knew what he felt like.' At least the band had each other. And that was a point that really hit home for us.”

Rok encapsulates that emotion in a poignant section in the video showing the four of them gathered around a table in a hotel suite as the environment around them constantly changes reflecting their physical journey from New York to Tokyo via Paris, Sydney and Rome. The cityscapes were superbly drawn by Sara Savelj.

Revolver changed everything - for the band and for pop music. To reflect that, the video uses a stunning colour palette that, whilst harking back to 1960’s psychedelia, is firmly rooted in the 21st century. Rok says: “Visual language is a contemporary interpretation of styles from the past using new technologies, complementing the sonic transformation that the song Here, There and Everywhere has undergone for the new release of Revolver.”

“We imagined the love that you've left behind, in the video this developed into this magical dancer animated by Eamonn O’Neill that each of the band see separately, before realising they are all seeing her together," says Predin. "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, representing the bands renewed enthusiasm for their music, but also the end of touring.” 

Alongside Jonathan Clyde at Apple Corps the Trunk team have previously worked on the re-release of The White Album, producing videos for Glass Onion, Back in the U.S.S.R., and then Here Comes The Sun from Abbey Road. Those three stunning videos continue to rack up views in the millions and there is every hope that Here, There and Everywhere, commissioned by Sophie Hilton at Universal, will follow suit.

Producer Richard notes: “When I sat revising for my exams back in 1996, I never thought that 26 years later we would have produced 4 music videos for the very tracks I was listening to.”