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.

The outcome of all this hard work is a beguiling piece of work that beautifully compliments an iconic song.