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Know how the Beatles ended? Peter Jackson may change your mind
- haspoken 5y agohttps://archive.md/Sotxw https://archive.md/Sotxw
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago> Peter Jackson pored over nearly 60 hours of footage for his documentary “Get Back.” I thought that might be a mistake. But then it was said again in the article. It’s really not a lot - by our standards today. But then considered that, IDK, for 1969 this might be more then it seems.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoFor 16mm film at 24fps, that is 129600 feet of film, or nearly 25 miles. Long lengths of film became physically unwieldy in the days before digital video. (This is also why "footage" is called that.)
- steveBK123 5y agoYes! In college & for years after, my friends and I used to buy 100ft spools of film stock and can it ourselves for stills. Each 100ft spool got us about 18 rolls of 36exp which was good for a semester. Used for cine, that same 100ft was good for about 1 minute of footage..
- aidenn0 5y agoWere cinema frames smaller than still? Because at 24fps that number of exposures would be just 30s
- jdsully 5y agoCinema frames were vertical on the strip (less wide) while stills were horizontal. So still frame will used more space. For widescreen optical compression was used to compress the frame horizontally.
- klodolph 5y agoI searched for “shooting ratio” for documentaries… Google says 60:1, which means that if you were shooting a 1-hour documentary, you would shoot 60 hours of footage. So this is not an unusual amount of footage by today’s standards. It is unusual to have this much previously unreleased footage, from so long ago.
- JCharante 5y agoAnd it looks like this documentary will be 7 hours long, so it's a ratio of 60:7.
- dylan604 5y agoI think Jackson looks at a Scorsese film, and thinks "hold my beer" and doubles the runtime on his next project. Then releases the extended version just to juice the pot.
- texasbigdata 5y agoWell there may be a narrator or present scenes. It doesn’t necessarily have to all be the old stuff, just most.
- blihp 5y agoThat's actually quite a lot for back then. The 'pro' choices of the day were basically (studio) videotape[1] for TV and film[2] if you had something really important. While there were lots of people (gadget geeks mainly, I would bet) recording silent and shaky 8mm home movies at the time, 'professional' video recording was used sparingly due to the investment (money, time and people) required. The home VCR didn't happen until the mid-70's for those willing to shell out some serious money. It wasn't until the 80's that it became a mass market item due to affordability which is why you can find so much more video preserved from the 80's and after uploaded to YouTube. [1] It was expensive enough at the time that it was often recycled (recorded over) after whatever show it was for was aired rather than archived. [2] Also expensive and is a write-once medium so used even more sparingly.
- handmodel 5y agoProb a ton of footage technically but from the production side really nothing. I knew someone who did transcriptions for a reality show (essentially would write out dialogue and scene descriptions of something that was being filmed 24/7 so the producers could sift through it) and I imagine every episode had way more than 60 hours of raw footage.
- WalterBright 5y ago> essentially would write out dialogue and scene descriptions of something that was being filmed 24/7 so the producers could sift through it That sounds like an agonizingly dull job. I read once that the job of listening to tapped phones was a soul-crushing experience, as you're forced to listen to the banality of other peoples' lives.
- Stupulous 5y agoI think it's 'pored over' not doing enough work. I pictured him sitting there, very focused, watching the footage and thought, 'Oh, so he spent a week and a half on this'. But, thinking about it more, he's probably got to pay attention to each person for a whole viewing, replay anything worth including, figure out how to crop, zoom, and cut it together, and view drafts of the final product many times. No doubt he spent at least a thousand hours looking at that 60 hours.
- 2bitencryption 5y agoIt feels unreal to me that we have so many hours of video of The Beatles at work, not to mention all the released and unreleased studio recordings. The Beatles are probably the first artist(s) in history who will be both studied for centuries and there's hours of audio/video recording of them at work.
- bambax 5y ago> The Beatles are probably the first artist(s) in history who will be studied for centuries Hilarious video about what we'll remember about the Beatles in year 3000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI
- puranjay 5y agoOh this is gold. From 2009 too!
- squarefoot 5y agoLoved it, thanks! Might have been inspired by this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BQVaDx9ga0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BQVaDx9ga0
- fortran77 5y agoWell, there's hours of audio/video recording of conductors like Toscanini, conductor/composers like, Bernstein, performers like Gould, Callas, and they'll be studied for centuries In the Jazz world, people from Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis preceded and succeeded the Beatles, and they're sure to be studied for centuries, too. In Broadway, people like Sondheim will be studied for centuries, his career both preceded and succeeded the Beatles.
- mdoms 5y agoThe Beatles were a truly global phenomenon. No one outside of USA has heard of or gives a toss about Miles Davis. They're not even remotely comparable.
- lowercased 5y agoTheir pace of output - along with the quality - is still (to me) astounding decades later. June-Oct '68 they produce the white album, then... 2 months later, start the get back project, with a goal of writing/recording an album in just a few weeks. There must have been a feeling of what we'd call 'burnout' today, but they just kept pumping out non-stop work for... almost 7 years. It's telling that none of them kept up this pace in their solo years, though I think McCartney might have except for the large tours in between. He's put out about an album every 2 years for the past 50 years.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoAll the biogs say the same thing - some of the classics were written in hours. They'd jam, make a few changes, maybe argue a bit, and boom - done. Bands are like chaotic attractors. An unstable system is more creative (energetic) than a stable system. If a band is just unstable enough it will produce some amazing work before the inevitable breakup. The amazing work is a result of harmony and passionate dissent in unstable equilibrium. Sooner or later the dissent wins - but perhaps this is both more inevitable and less sad than we think it is.
- Supermancho 5y agoThe Police were supposedly the same way. They would go in, pump out a fully mixed song that would go on the album, go home.
- mabub24 5y agoThere's an article from the New Yorker recently on the doc, and it touches on how Paul especially was almost a workaholic. He eats, sleeps, and dreams, songwriting and can't help himself. Apparently they'd finish songs, and go off for a break. Then the very next day Paul would phone them and say, "right, I got some material. Let's get recording." Ringo made it sound inspiring, and pretty exhausting to interact with.
- coliveira 5y agoThis is less astonishing than most people think. I have watched interviews with several popular composers, and almost all of them say they wrote their best songs in just a few minutes. The difference of the Beatles is that they maintained for years this industrial-like machine of music creation and promotion.
- WalterBright 5y agoPoor Ringo. Always in the background. Only his foot is visible!
- Stratoscope 5y agoAt least they did get some footage of Ringo.
- geoduck14 5y ago>At least they did get some footage of Ringo. Haha. FOOTage!
- xNeil 5y agoWhy are you being downvoted? It's a nice joke :)
- Stratoscope 5y agoAs the one who told the joke, I disqualify myself here. But at the risk of being the downvote explainer, perhaps it is because some jokes are best left unexplained?
- drewcoo 5y agoLeft? I see what you did there. Ringo's face is also partially visible in Paul's armpit, for what it's worth. And George is distant. All of which seems appropriate.
- Stratoscope 5y agoSince I have not the slightest clue what I did there, I am glad that you understood it. Goo goo g'joob!
- BayAreaEscapee 5y agoI understand that discussion about voting is disliked on HN. But I didn't see or notice the joke until geoduck14's "FOOTage!" comment pointed it out. WOOSH!
- vlunkr 5y agoIt's cool that they have so much unused footage, but the idea that this is going to uncover some new info about how they broke up is pretty dumb. This isn't ancient history, 50% of the band is still alive. Paul McCartney has talked about their break up in interviews.
- Joeboy 5y agoPaul has said that watching the footage led him to reevaluate what went down during that period.
- WalterBright 5y agoYeah, our memories distort over time. My father's WW2 experiences were seared into his mind. He also kept a diary. He lamented to me once that reading his diaries decades later, they didn't line up with his memories.
- cm2012 5y agoMost documentaries have no educational value because they try too hard to push a POV or ideology. The exceptions are ones like this appears to be - just day in the life, showing things as they are.
- jdub 5y agoEvery retelling is subjective. This will be too. Complaining that "most documentaries" have "a point of view or ideology" makes you all the more susceptible to it everywhere else.
- cm2012 5y agoDid Jiro Dreams of Sushi, for example, have a clear POV? Compared to the 100 "Monsanto is bad" documentaries out there.
- parkersweb 5y agoI was one of the 2 audio engineers who worked on restoring this footage around 15 years ago - so very excited to see what the final docs look like. There’s definitely some interesting material in there - members of the band reflecting on why the Beatles are falling apart, moments where iconic Beatles songs came into being. Not being a particular Beatles fan I worked on the project for about 9 months and came away with a much greater respect for them.
- ggm 5y agoWhat was the original recording? I assume much would be 1/4 inch tape off a nagra with a decent microphone but given how much was in studio it could be full 1inch tape, kinda like a wild track left running. The biographies says the Beatles hated stereo right up to the end. But they did like high quality recording. (I got to play with a nagra in the 80s. It was wonderful)
- parkersweb 5y agoThe material had been transferred when I started working on it - but as I understand it, they had 2 x Nagra 1/4” machine running pretty much continuously. The cameras were filming sporadically and not all of the audio tapes had been recovered. My job was a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of watching the pictures and reuniting it with the correct sound for the first time since the original movie. Nagra made some amazing machines - such incredible precise engineering.
- kranke155 5y agoWorked with Nagra in film school (where they correctly forced us to use with before we could use digital). Loved it. The sound you could get from them was amazing.
- gorgoiler 5y agoI have to admit that it was years before I noticed the Beat in the band’s name. I felt like a fool but in my defence, when you grow up with them all around you it’s hard to notice what’s right before your eyes. Today, November 2021, let it be known that I’ve only just gotten the joke in their corporation name: Apple Corps. As in apple core, the middle part of the fruit. I feel like a complete numbskull!
- Joeboy 5y agoI think The Beatles was also a play on (Buddy Holly and) The Crickets.
- skinnymuch 5y agoWonder if it will include any Pete Best (original drummer and unofficial original manager because of how early this was in their history). None of The Beatles members ever properly did the right thing by him in their lifetimes. Quite a disappointment.
- lowercased 5y agoHe was nowhere around the band in 1969 when this was filmed. IIRC it was more his mother who was an early de-facto manager, not so much Pete himself. Unsure what "do the right thing" would have been, really. Most the reports around the time of Anthology (1995) were that he was paid fairly handsomely for the use of a few tracks he appeared on (Decca tapes and EMI first session) - north of a million pounds was mentioned as his payday. The living Beatles would have been able to veto that had they wanted, but they didn't. What else would you have expected them to do? They weren't terribly good friends before - he was someone with drums they latched on to and played with for a couple of years. The more awkward part for Pete (and Neil) would have been Neil Aspinall being involved in Pete's life for decades because of his Neil's affair with Pete's mom, giving Pete a brother (Roag). Pete was essentially permanently connected with someone at the core of the Beatles' inner circle for decades, whether he wanted to be or not.
- skinnymuch 5y agoI didn’t load the site so didn’t know it was 1969. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, sorry. Pete was the only one with any sort of normal non janitor life expectations before he joined the band. He was getting further education. None of other Beatles were. His life got chaotic because of The Beatles. He ended up being a janitor. Since that likely wouldn’t have happened if the Beatles had never been a part of his life and some Beatles members (Lennon, Harrison to a degree) get kudos and what not for being good guys, is it really that hard to imagine any of them doing almost any thing for him when they became the biggest band of all time a couple years later? Especially with Epstein still trying to help Pete out in the 60s. Do the right thing could have been almost anything besides what actually happened before 1995. The remarks The Beatles had made in the decade or two that followed were pretty weak. Pete Best was a suicidal janitor. As the biggest band in the world and of all time, during their peak, they settled a defamation lawsuit with Pete. The Beatles just being honest would have been better than what they did. Do the right thing could have been as simple as being honest and straight forward and doing what a decent person would do in a vacuum. A lot is rectified by 1995 of course. Wasn’t Aspinall the guy who didn’t acknowledge the half brother as his child for some time? I believe he has flip flopped his wording before for different things. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy, just adding on to how no one in The Beatles inner circle except Epstein seemed to do what I think people would do in a vacuum. When all of these people are worshipped beyond belief. Most media and reports about them are going to lean heavily in their favor too. Making it even harder to get the real truth on stuff. This fact is going to be known to everyone close to The Beatles. This isn’t dissimilar to what happened to Snapchat’s or Twitter’s ousted founders (Twitter’s story is the worst one by far and makes The Beatles and Best look like a fairy tale). Those cases are far worse than Facebook’s Eduardo situation. Yet people find Facebook’s relatively minor incident to be a negative reflection of Facebook and Zuckerberg pretty easily. I am not an exception to this. I fall into this same thinking. Overall, people can have a pretty easy time finding the actions of founder or early people separations like above to be bad. But exceptions or letting people off the hook can happen when I am a fan of or biased for specific people or entities. I get I rambled and didn’t stay in any lane. So probably not very cohesive. I also hope I didn’t write anything insulting toward you.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoI think Peter Jackson was initially going to say that Keith Richards stole the “Precious” from the Beatles. Just look at Keith Richards. The dude has stopped aging. Only a ring of power could keep that guy going for so long! However, he realized that public disclosure of this would rip the world apart as Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Queen Elizabeth, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Nancy Pelosi, and Xi Jinping would go all out to use this ring to make themselves immortal so they could continue their political careers indefinitely. So he instead left that part out of his movie. Right now he, along with Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are working to secretly take the ring from Keith Richards and destroy it.